Q+A with HIV Edmonton

First, please tell us a bit about what HIV Edmonton is and the work you and the organization do for the community.

Catherine Broomfield: We started as a grassroots organization run by people who were directly connected to the AIDS losses in the early 80s who wanted to support their friends and family who were dying from the disease at the time. We’re coming up on 40 years since then and are now a charitable non-profit operating to serve those that are living with or impacted by HIV and other sexually transmitted bloodborne infections (STBBIs). We’re strongly moved by the principles of equity and harm reduction, wanting to ultimately remove the stigma of the disease so that people who are living with HIV can have the best quality of life and thrive.

What specific initiatives and engagements does HIV Edmonton offer for the community?

Catherine: First, we offer community support programming for those living with HIV, supporting them in their experience is living with the disease – advocating for and walking alongside them. We also have a strong harm reduction focus for people who are at risk of HIV or STBBIs and that looks like distributing sexual health and other supplies that ideally inhibit or stop transmission. And then we have our prevention and education stream which focusses on more broadly educating those at risk and the community as a whole of supports available and how to access them.

Let’s talk about the challenge HIV Edmonton was experiencing that led to you placing a call to MNP for support. What was going on in the organization at the time?

Catherine: We had a turnover in our long-term financial director role which led to us hiring a replacement. This replacement appeared to have the skills needed to support us but throughout the course of a year some red flags started to appear. Come audit time, those red flags became serious problems for us and we were once again left without anyone in a financial administrative role at HIV Edmonton.

What was behind the decision to call MNP and what did that engagement look like?

Catherine: Having worked with MNP in a previous role of mine, I knew I could count on them to provide us with the immediate support we needed to deliver payroll on time and clean up our books. I had learned the value of what MNP can offer in terms of having that third party external financial management service and in speaking with an advisor this time around I saw that I could save a lot of money compared to what we had been paying a full-time employee in that role. We knew we were going to have a lot of work ahead of us to right the ship but that support was fulsome and has yielded excellent results.

What makes non-profits unique in terms of their financial reporting needs?

Catherine: Essentially, there are multiple funders who have multiple restrictions on how those funds can be used and they require a different kind of reporting than you’d typically see at a for-profit business. No two funders require the same thing so there are nuances in how we need to code expenses, how we delineate where money is being spent, etc. For example, multiple funders may be contributing to one employee’s annual salary so ensuring we are accurately accounting for and monitoring that is really important.

After speaking with Catherine, what solutions did MNP present for HIV Edmonton?

Darrell Wiens: We needed to tackle the immediate needs of the organization right away so payroll was number one. We proposed our ease service to Catherine as a way to meet the ongoing needs of the organization with a more specialized approach to their financial management. Things like transitioning from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online and electronic expense and revenue reporting through Dext ensured all of their pertinent financial information was easy to access and accurate. We proposed a holistic approach to budgeting and offered training in the new QuickBooks program to ensure all employees who need to use it were well-versed in how it works.

What did that transition process look like?

Darrell: We got to work right away on how to best transition their systems into a more intuitive and collaborative program in a way that made sense for them. For non-profit clients we focus our attention on the technology they run and how we can improve their systems with our knowledge of the options available to them. While we know that it can be a heavy lift for our non-profit clients to get up to speed on the latest programs and see the end goal through the challenges, we know the work pays off.

From your perspective, what has the outcome of these initiatives been?

Catherine: There were several positive outcomes but the one which cannot be understated is the removal of stress from my life. Obviously, you have to be precise with financial reporting and if we don’t have quality information, we can run into a whole mess of issues with the CRA, with our donors, etcetera. Working with MNP restored my faith in our accurate financial reporting and that it’s clear where our money is coming from and how we’re spending it. I have the information at my fingertips to be able to answer any questions about our finances and that is a huge relief to me. There is now significantly less potential for conflict or fraud in our organization and that gives me the peace of mind that our community can continue to rely on us as a viable non-profit in good standing for years to come.

What ongoing work is MNP doing for HIV Edmonton and what does that look like long-term?

Darrell: We are currently handling their monthly bookkeeping and bi-weekly payroll needs and we have ongoing projects with them from budgets to managing charitable receipts, and digitizing employee timesheets.
Our ease group loves working with non-profits like HIV Edmonton for the long run because we get to follow their progress and see real-time how beneficial it can be when the stress of their financial obligations are greatly reduced and leaders can focus on the work they’re passionate about. Supporting HIV Edmonton as they continue their impactful work in the community is an extremely rewarding task.