Building Foundations in Finance
Q&A with Tracy Sazue: Building Foundations in Finance
For nonprofits, tracking expenses and managing grants can quickly get overwhelming. Over the last year, Tracy Sazue has helped build stronger financial management systems for many of Emergence’s clients—to support sustainability and their ability to push toward their goals. Going forward, he plans to expand the ways Emergence can serve organizations in creating budgeting systems that work, enjoying “geeking out” over Quickbooks along the way.
It’s been a year since coming to Emergence! What’s been the best about this experience?
I think it’s been helping my clients with their financial operations—being able to make things a little easier for them, step by step. And the ability to build my own skills and knowledge at the same time.
When I first came on board, I dug into a lot of new training in Quickbooks, and then I started working with our client Tanka Fund, which was an amazing and eye-opening experience for me. At the time their executive director was the only staff member—so I had to backtrack quite a bit to get up to speed on the organization’s finances. But she had confidence in me to start putting some new systems in place, to support her and let her focus on other work. So I built out a payment form, and started managing grants so that we were able to track expenses better—what I call a mini-audit. Then we built out Quickbooks in a way to easily monitor spending, so the team could always see, in real time, what was left in any particular grant. All that work has been awesome. And I’m always just trying to build off of that as I move forward.
When you’re connecting with a new client, what are some of the first things you focus and work on?
I really dig into understanding what systems they have set up in place—so that I fully understand what they have already. And from there, I really try to understand what the client needs, and fill any gaps that exist. Some of our clients have some systems already in place, but may not be fully up to date—and others don’t have any existing systems. Either way, there are some standard tools we work on—from grant spreadsheets, to payment or reimbursement request forms, to Quickbooks expense tracking. I try to guide them through that process and help set up what they need to stay consistent, so that things don’t fall through the cracks later. Keeping things consistent is one of the toughest parts, particularly if you’ve got limited staff—like a few of our amazing clients. I see my job is helping them create the financial systems they need to achieve their missions. And when we get to the reconciliation portion of everything, and all the balances fall in line, that’s the payoff—I just really geek out on it!
What advice would you give like a small nonprofit that's trying to figure some of these things out?
It really boils down to taking good notes and keeping track of things. If you have good information as a baseline, then you can set up everything else you need—spreadsheets and a strong filing system, whether it’s hard copies or something like Google drive. I have to say, I was a little bit old school when it came to financial filing! but there are a lot of amazing new tools out there as well.
Looking back over this year, what have been your favorite moments with clients?
Just the way my mind works, I always want the budget to zero out when you’re closing out a grant—to spend things down to zero and have the spreadsheets as clean as possible. So whenever I have that opportunity to get my client’s books really organized in that way, it’s definitely satisfying for me. And just to develop the trust with our clients to have them feel comfortable handing over these tasks to me—that feels great.
I’ve also had some great experiences exploring how to help my clients save money as well. With grants, you have to spend funds down—but that doesn’t mean we can’t help them get more out of that particular grant, if we spend in a slightly different way. Sometimes I’ll dive into some research and come up with an idea, come back to the client with it, and it ultimately makes a big difference in their programmatic work. Those are some of the best experiences.
What are you looking forward to in the years ahead?
After this first year, my new goal is to be the CFO—you know, the supreme knowledgeable guy in finance! But, in all seriousness, I’ve seen so many organizations and programs get dismantled because of not having a sound financial system, or mismanagement of their funds. My goal is to expand my knowledge—become certified as a CPA—so that I can help our clients build sustainable programs, so that they can continue their work 10, 20, and 30 years down the road.
I also love that Emergence is committed to giving our clients the tools they need to carry the work forward on their own. So if I can help an organization become more financially stable, and have the knowledge to run with their own systems, then I can move on and help another organization, and then another, and then just keep that going. And my own personal vision is seeing organizations begin to help one another, as they learn to grow and emerge and develop systems that work.
If I can teach someone, and then they can teach another person, just think of how much better off our indigenous communities can be? I can get goosebumps thinking about that—how strong our communities can become, by helping amazing nonprofits get staffed up and build out the infrastructure they need to move toward their missions. And then continuing to support and stand with them in the background as they move forward—providing new tools and resources to help them grow even more. I just think that's the coolest idea in the world, and that's why I love it here.