Managing Money & Your Banking Relationship

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host, and I'm the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd be thrown into Vukoririasis if you wormed in with the idea that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate with What's Up.

Kate Martignetti
Hey Tony, I'm on it. Managing money and your banking relationship. Let's talk about money, a topic people fear more than the dentist or death. And let's talk about the place your nonprofit keeps its money, a bank. Keith Mestrich doesn't fear talking about liquidity and cash management, reserves, lines of credit, debt, negotiating bank fees and interest, getting the most from your bank, CEO and board money management KPIs, and more. He's Senior Advisor at Crescent Cares. On Tony's Take 2.

Tony Martignetti
Remembering Sam's studio.

Kate Martignetti
Here is Managing Money and Your Banking Relationship.

Tony Martignetti
It's my pleasure to welcome Keith Mestrich to Nonprofit Radio. Keith is Senior Advisor at Crescent Cares. He brings more than 30 years of experience leading financial institutions, including his tenure as president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank. The company is at crescentcares.com. You'll find Keith Mestrich on LinkedIn. Keith, welcome to the show.

Keith Mestrich
Thanks, Tony. It's good to be here.

Tony Martignetti
Pleasure to have you talking about financial management. For nonprofits. Give us, um, give us a little lay of the land. The, the, uh, the banking industry— I don't, I don't think nonprofits are, especially small and mid-sized nonprofits, our listeners, are, um, first and foremost in the, in the banking industry's minds. Is that— would you say that that's, uh, probably accurate?

Keith Mestrich
I think that's exactly right. Um, I think there's a few reasons for that. I think there's some misperception that they're not as well run as, you know, for-profit businesses would be. I think that there's some misperception that sometimes nonprofits might just have very low balances and might not be able to bring a lot of financial upside to, to a financial institution. Um, I think it is true that there are lots of nonprofits that don't borrow money, um, as a general rule, um, and that's how banks oftentimes make their money, is, is lending to their clients. So I think there's a predisposition to not go out and seek nonprofits as clients. I think there's sometimes a sense that if a nonprofit goes to the bank, the nonprofit's gonna ask that bank for a bunch of contributions, and banks might wanna try and avoid that. So I think you're right. And because of that, it's also, there's not a lot of bankers that understand how the nonprofit industry works, and they haven't either brought on bankers who are sensitive to the needs of those nonprofit institutions, nor have they developed products and services that really meet the needs. Um, that nonprofits need when it comes to their financials.

Tony Martignetti
All right, so if we're walking into Bank of New York, uh, we're getting screwed. I mean, they really don't care. I mean, I, I don't think, you know, they're just— there aren't products and services, I don't think, for, for small and mid-sized nonprofits, for all the reasons you, you know, all the reasons and sort of stereotypes that, uh, that you just laid out. All right. So what are, you know, like, all right, let's, why don't we start with some financial advice? All right. And then, and then I'd like to talk about, you know, if you, what if you are dissatisfied with your Bank of America relationship? I can't, what's some other huge banks that wouldn't, that don't really care about nonprofits besides?

Keith Mestrich
Well, it's an interesting thing. A lot of nonprofits, especially ones who have been around for a while, probably started out their banking relationship with the bank down the street. And then that bank might've been a local community bank. That might have actually cared about having a relationship with a small or medium nonprofit because that was part of the fabric of their community. But then that bank got bought by some big regional player, and then a big bank like Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Chase bought that big regional bank. And so now, now that nonprofit's banking with some gigantic financial institution that will say that they have a nonprofit business model, but they really don't. They certainly bank lots of nonprofits because As you know, Tony, there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of nonprofits around the country, so they're gonna be at every bank.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Keith Mestrich
But, but, you know, you know, that local branch banker or that, that commercial banker has been, you know, tuned up to be able to think about how to bank, um, a small business or a manufacturing company or a local retailer. And they think about the financials of those organizations and, and, and think about how to provide services for those. They don't really understand the things like how grants, you know, need to be managed, or the cash flow of organizations that might raise their money, you know, in a spring and a winter annual appeal and maybe have a granting cycle that comes in, but the cash flow is very choppy. And so you really want to try and find a banker who understands that and will work with you to find a way to maybe have you have a line of credit that can help get you through those kinds of difficult periods, or can help you think about how to increasingly take technological tools sometimes that nonprofits aren't as familiar with, credit card processing and managing electronic payments and other things, and really teach them how to do that and do it really efficiently. Takes a banker with, I think, a special affinity for the nonprofit world to be able to do that. And there are some out there that can offer that service.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. And we'll get a chance to, you know, you can talk about Crescent Cares. As, as one of those that, that cares. Crescent, it's in the name. Crescent must— you must care. It's named Crescent Cares, where you're a senior advisor. All right. But before we go, before we go there, let's, um, all right, we're all getting screwed. I'm putting it bluntly. It's, uh, small and mid-sized nonprofits. Let's talk about some of your financial advice about, uh, Liquidity, cash management, you know, yes, uneven income might be a lot. It's— I don't think it's uncommon, like 50, 60, 70% of fundraising revenue could all come in this 4th quarter that we're in right now. Mm-hmm. And then the grant cycle as well. How do we— yeah, how do we like even things out? How do we make sure we can keep the lights on? In, uh, in July when we're not going to have a big fundraising surge until, let's say, 4th quarter? You know, how do we—

Keith Mestrich
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a great question. And, and especially for smaller nonprofits, you really have to understand what your cash needs are. And I think that's really important. Um, we spend a lot of time thinking about budgets every year and how much we're going to need to pay for personnel and how much we're going to need to pay for rent and how much we're going to need to pay for utilities. And we know what that number is going to look like on an, on an annual basis, but Oftentimes I think what nonprofits don't do is they don't think about how much money do I need every month or every pay period? And do I have enough cash on hand to be able to support myself, to pay my employees, to pay my landlord, to make sure that the lights stay on and then do all the programmatic work, et cetera, that needs to be done? So really that kind of cash flow projecting and getting good at that and having somebody on your team who can help you as an executive director or a senior program manager or something like, that really understand in January I'm going to need this much cash. I've got this much on hand, I've got this much that's likely coming in, and I've got this much going out the door. And while it's difficult to make 100% accurate predictions, it's pretty easy to make pretty close ones. And I think making sure that, you know, you're going to have enough cash in the organization is really important. So, and then, and then obviously having reserves so that if you run into, into time periods where those cash period, those, those cash projections don't come in, You have some money you can draw on to be able to pay your basic bills.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, we'll get to reserves and endowment. Um, but so in terms of making an educated guess about what your, what your cash needs are going to be each, I guess, each month, um, I mean, is it a matter of, you know, looking at, looking at the history? What was, what was last, this time last year like? And what do we anticipate seeing this year? I mean, Is it that simple?

Keith Mestrich
Most nonprofits, the largest expense by far is employment costs. So the salaries and wages of your employees, and then the benefits that come or the taxes that you're responsible for, you know, your portion of Social Security, etc. That's a very, very noble fact. And for many organizations, that's going to be 75%, 80% of what their budgets actually look like. So just begin to plot that out. Pay period by pay period or month by month. You know your rent. That's oftentimes another really, really big expense. Plot that out. You'll know what that's going to be. And then think about, right, for those other unanticipated expenses, do you have higher utility bills in the winter? Do you have certain kinds of programs that you run at a certain time of year that have programmatic expense? Try and plot those out on the calendar so that you'll know when you actually need cash on hand. And to the extent that you can look backwards and think about when money flows in, either because you have a known grant cycle that is going to come in, or grant payments that have been pledged and you know where they're going to come in, or when you run your annual or semiannual or quadraannual fundraising appeals, etc., you want to be able to think about when is money actually coming in and doing that. And if you just think through those basics, right, you can get a pretty good sense of what your cash needs are going to be, and, and will you have enough cash to cover your basic expenses.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, if you're coming up a little short, um, or very short, even worse, uh, before we get to reserves, a credit line can be valuable. We had, we had, uh, Stephen Halasnik on last week or the week before talking about, uh, the value of a credit line. But what's your, what's your advice around coming up short? All right, I know, I know. We are not going to be able to— I mean, take a worst case, like meet payroll next month the way things look.

Keith Mestrich
I think a credit line is a great tool to be able to have. A lot of people are scared by having debt. Properly managed, a good credit line can be a way to get through those ebbs and flows in your cash cycle or when that projected big check from a big donor just doesn't materialize. And that could be for lots of reasons, right? That you're— you have a way to get through it. One of my pieces of advice is the best time to get a credit line, though, is when you don't need it, is to go to your bank and work with your banker when you're— when you're— when your financials are in pretty good shape, when you have enough cash on hand, and when you can say to the banker, I don't need to draw this today, but I might in the future, because the banker is going to look at your financial health. And what you don't want to be doing, Tony, is trying to arrange for a line of credit when you're at a point of distress and you really need it. So good planning. Right? Good planning is to be able to go to your bank and be able to negotiate a line of credit for a couple of months of expenses to be able to do that. Now, it'll cost you a little something. Usually a bank will charge about 1% of the maximum draw amount on a loan. But I think that's really worth it to have the financial peace of mind to be able to weather any kinds of financial stress that an organization might have. The best thing is you never actually have to use it. Worst case is you've negotiated, you can do it, and then you can pay it back and relieve yourself of that interest expense when you, when you have the ability to cover your expenses and pay back that loan again. It's just smart financial management.

Tony Martignetti
How much of a credit line should we ask for? Do we, should we, should we look for like a month of expenses? Should that be the maximum? Or how do we decide? I mean, the banker's gonna decide too. We may not get what we ask for. But how do we know how much of a line to ask for?

Keith Mestrich
Yeah, I've always thought that it should be equivalent to what a good amount of reserves to have. And, and, and the best advice oftentimes for nonprofits is to have 6 to 12 months of reserves in place so that if something happened in the organization, you could operate for another 6 to 12 months. The more you have, the better. Um, 12 is, is, is great. 6 is, is oftentimes adequate. But it's not so long ago that we had things like the pandemic where organizations all of a sudden found themselves without operating capital for an extended period of And so trying to think about being able to have that, that, that kind of thing. If you can get 12 months of operating expenses from your bank, I think that's great. If you can get 6 months, you're gonna be able to rest pretty calmly as, as, as well. If, if, if, if you find yourself in a situation where you're getting to the point where you're relying on your bank loan for 6 months and you don't have good prospects for paying that back, there's probably some other underlying financial stress that you should be dealing with as an organization. Yeah. So 6 to 12 months, somewhere between 6 and 12 months would be a smart rule of thumb.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, okay. I had posited a month, so that's totally inadequate. Well, that shows that I'm not, you know, I'm not a professional banker with 30 years of experience. Um, okay, 6 to 12 months. And, and, um, interest rates? I mean, are there— should we expect a fixed interest rate on our line of credit or variable? How does that work?

Keith Mestrich
Usually, usually lines of credit are variable rates, um, because it's, it's, it's, it's available at any point in time, and the bank can't necessarily lock in a fixed rate because they don't know when you're going going to draw on the loan. So usually that rate would be set at some sort of spread over prime rate, a couple of points over prime rate. And prime rate is something that's published, you know, every day. You can go search online and, and say, what's the prime rate? And it'll, it'll, it'll tell you. And, um, some banks might have a little bit different prime rate, but it's going to be right, right, right around that.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, so, so it's fair for it to be pegged on the prime rate plus, plus a couple of points? That's a—

Keith Mestrich
Plus a couple of points.

Tony Martignetti
That would be a

Keith Mestrich
fair

Tony Martignetti
That's a decent deal we'd be getting on our line of credit.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah. And now there are some ways that you can actually try and pay, um, buy down the interest rate, if you will. So if you have sometimes, uh, I know you're going to get to endowment in a minute, but if you did have an endowment and you don't want to draw on it, it is possible to use endowed funds to quote unquote guarantee that that loan will be repaid and becomes a sort of money sure kind of option for the bank. And so that's the kind of thing that might get you a line of credit at a more preferential rate. So if you If you can't touch your endowment or don't want to touch your endowment to, to, to, to bridge your financial stress points, and you might want to tap a line of credit instead, sometimes guaranteeing the payback of the loan by that— those endowed funds, um, is, is a way to buy down the rate. Now, you have to make sure your endowment allows that and a whole bunch of other things, um, and your banker, a good banker, will work with you to help make sure that you understand that.

Tony Martignetti
That's awesome. Oh, I love that. So yeah, You're using that as a guarantee. And you probably need a board resolution that's going to approve that.

Keith Mestrich
Everybody's going to need something different depending on what the bylaws say. But the bank is going to want some evidence that some person just didn't decide to do this on their own, but they have the backing of the organization to do that. And that usually is a form of some sort of board resolution or signed treasurer statement or something to that effect.

Tony Martignetti
You hit on something earlier.

Keith Mestrich
The bank will look at your bylaws and they will tell you what they need is evidence that you're doing a transaction that is properly approved by your organization.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, because they want to guarantee that you actually can tap the endowment if you need to because you're having trouble paying back your loan, which gets to something you mentioned earlier. I wanted to pull a little thread on. Um, if you're, if you're over-relying on your line of credit, like, how long should it take you before you can pay off the line of credit? I mean, is that a, is that a measure, or how do we know we're relying too much on our credit line, we're basically overextended?

Keith Mestrich
The answer on that is probably it depends. Um, and it depends on the reasons. So if, if you are an organization that that for many, many years has received certain grant funding or has written grant pledges of grant funding that's going to come in, but you know, it might not come in for 6 months. If that is rock-solid finance, you know, funding that's going to be coming in, and that's a judgment call on the part of every organization to do that, you can go a little bit longer on a line of credit because you know you're gonna be able to repay it when those funds come in. If you're, if you're living hand to mouth, Tony, and we all know that sometimes nonprofits live hand to mouth or get in trouble, or that's just the ethos of, of, of how they operate, um, uh, you probably don't want to extend yourself too far out, um, because you're gonna get in trouble and you're going to really put your organization at risk of defaulting on a loan. Um, and, and you really never want to do that because, um, that's the kind of thing that makes it very, very difficult for your organization to ever borrow again or even potentially get access to other kinds of financing. Yeah. Financial services. So, so you really, again, if you, if you know you've got funding that's coming in to be able to cover it, um, because you, you have a government contract, because you have, um, very, very regular annual donors, um, who give their gift every December, and we all know there's organizations that do that. If you've got grant pledges or multi-year grant pledges that you can rely on to do that, you can go out a little farther on, on tapping a line. But if you don't have those kinds of things, you, you wanna, you wanna be really careful and sort of revert to living within your means. And at that point, if you're, if you are living like that, you probably have to look at the expense side of your income statement and start to think about, okay, what can I be redoing, right, to reduce the cash needs that I have? Do you, do you move into a smaller space if you can do that? Nobody ever likes to do this, but do you have to think about staffing reductions? Those kinds of things to reduce your expense profile. Yeah. is probably the way you'd look rather than continuing to extend yourself credit.

Tony Martignetti
What kind of help could we expect from a bank? That in itself is a generalization, so the answer may be it depends on the bank, but I'll ask anyway. In the wake of earlier this year, the USAID and State Department cuts that nonprofits were definitely counting on, and they had They had gotten these grants, you know, for years in lots of cases. And then come the new president, things got cut off. What kind of— I don't know, what kind of sympathy can we expect from a bank? Or what kind of help can we expect from a bank in a situation like that where it was perfectly legitimate for us to expect the revenue because we had gotten it over so many years and then it just abruptly got cut?

Keith Mestrich
So let's think about sort of 3 ways banks would approach that. The really bad way they would do it, and there's some that would do this, they're going to almost immediately expect you to repay that loan. They're going to determine that you're a bad credit risk now and they're not going to work with you. They're going to only have the interests of the bank at heart. Those are the kinds of people you want to avoid at all costs if you can. Okay. Smaller community banks oftentimes are going to think about, all right, this nonprofit is actually really important to our community. How can we recognize that they're under a certain amount of financial stress? How can we not avoid a default on our loan? Right? Because no bank ever wants to default on a loan. And they're going to work with— they're going to work with their customers to think about maybe restructuring a loan so that the loan might be paid off over a longer period of time, or recognizing that maybe— Right. You're going to pay only interest payments. You're not going to have to pay down on the principal so that you can reduce that payment, you know, for a short period of time while you get through that period of stress. They're going to try and understand, do you have the likelihood for replacing, you know, funding sources to be able to do that? But what you really want is to find someone who's going to then not just call your loan immediately. And most banks won't do that, but there's some that will. But you're going to want somebody who's going to work with you to give you the time, right, to restructure so that you can— Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
I love that though. Most banks won't do that, but some will.

Keith Mestrich
But some will. But, you know, a lot of people, they don't want to take a full write-off, and they will and should work with you to think about it. Like, how can I make it so that the immediate payments are less? How can I maybe spread the payments out over time? They might work with you sometimes to think about, okay, We can't pay this now, but work with us because we've had a donor who might step in to guarantee all or part of a loan that might give them the sense of being able to do that. Sometimes banks will even work to help identify those kinds of things because in smaller communities it's very interconnected and they'll know those people. So a good banker is going to Uh, look a nonprofit executive in the eye who's very panicked and not knowing what they want to do and say, okay, let's calm down a little bit here. Um, this isn't the end of the world. We know you have funding troubles. Let's think about how we get through this, and let's think about how we do this together. And that's why those bankers who really understand the nonprofit world and what that looks like can just be your, your, your absolute best friend.

Tony Martignetti
Okay, I like the third one. I could live with the second one. I like the third one, like the banker with a heart.

Keith Mestrich
Banker with a heart.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. You're right. They recognize the importance in the community. All right. Let's talk about the reserves. I think of endowment because I do planned giving fundraising when I'm not podcasting. I've been doing that since 1997. So the first thing I think of is endowment, but are there other types of reserves that that, that, uh, that, that exist before we get to the, the classical endowment?

Keith Mestrich
Yeah, I think before you get to an endowment, which is, you know, a big pot of money that you're ultimately hoping to invest and use the income off of to be able to support your organization, I think you do want to think about operating reserves. And those are the kinds of things that, uh, uh, exactly what we've been talking about. Can I get through a couple of months where I might have a funding, a funding lapse? And so that doesn't create a true just line of income coming in off of an endowment. But that's your savings account. That's the money that you have in the piggy bank to get you through the ups and downs. That's the money that you have for when the roof caves in and you need to come up with the money for your insurance deductible or something like that. And so I think about having operating reserves, and that's where I think that 6 to 12 months of being able to sustain yourself. Yeah. Is a good rule of thumb, and then the endowment, I think, is for other purposes.

Tony Martignetti
Right. Part of the endowment could very well be restricted to only certain programs and activities. So if the roof caves in, that restricted portion of your endowment isn't eligible to be spent on the first payment to the roofer.

Keith Mestrich
100%. That endowment might be restricted only for. a particular kind of program, or to underwrite the expenses, the capital expenses for a building that you might have on your site, or, or, or could just be— could go into the annual income from an organization, right? That the endowment just throws off, throws off income, and you can take, you know, up to 5% of that income, or maybe a little more depending on your endowment policy, and just use it for general operating purposes. But the corpus sits there. The corpus sits there as a long-term financial protection for the organization. And And the intent is that it generates income that the organization can use. It's a little bit different than operating reserves.

Tony Martignetti
And I hope listeners are acquainted with what the rules are around endowment management in your state. There's a uniform law that the uniform— UPMIFA, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which is not enacted the same in every state. It was sort of a model code for states to then modify, meaning your state legislature to modify. So you need to be aware of what the rules are governing endowment management in your state. Did I state that right?

Keith Mestrich
That's right. And then your organization is probably also going to have an endowment policy that you've adopted that's going to put your own rules in terms of that, things. And then of course, Some donors, right, may have restrictions in terms of how an endowment might be set up. So you got to know the rules, Tony, in terms of what you can do and what you can't do. And, and, and if you don't follow those rules, you can get in trouble either with the attorney general in your state, with the IRS, or just even with your own board of directors or donors. And you just don't want to do that.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, just because your donors for not following their restriction. Right, right. Yeah. So there are multiple levels. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. In terms of spending rate, do you still see like 3% to 5% typical spend rate for endowments each year?

Keith Mestrich
Yep. Yeah, I think that's, that's what we see, 3% to 5%. So exactly the 4% is kind of the sweet spot in terms of what you would draw down. That allows you to continue to allow your endowment to grow and hopefully be able to, to throw off more income. Um, UFMA, I think, limits you to 8%, if I'm not mistaken. Something around that in most states. Um, and, but most organizations don't want to do that because, you know, the anticipated rate of return for an endowment is usually going to be between 5% and 7%. And, um, and you don't want the— usually don't want the endowment to shrink. You want it to continue to, to, to grow, to, if nothing else, keep up with inflation, but just allow you to throw off more income every year. And, and so that's, that's usually the anticipated draw that I've, I've, I've

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. I was scrolling through way old calendars going back, and there was, there was a reference to Sam Leibowitz on this old calendar, and that got me thinking. Remember, the show started in 2010. in Sam Leibovitz's illegal studio. Get to that in a sec. Uh, it was on West 72nd Street between Broadway and Columbus. You had to walk up, it was a second floor walk-up. The guests— so I would always get there early, of course. Oh, and all right, so wait, wait, I got a lot of things. So why was it illegal? Because he was doing it in an apartment. So he was running a business in an apartment, which is illegal in New York City. You can't do that. But he He rented it as an individual, and then he ran the studio out of it. And we— there were probably— I probably had 6 or 8 shows per week that he was doing out of there. And then his wife— we'll get to her in a sec— uh, his wife was running a therapy practice out of there also when he was not using it as a studio. So, but it was illegal. It was legal for both of them. Yeah. Illegal because those are both businesses and this was a residential apartment. But he was cheating and I no, you know, I didn't turn him in. If I could have got some money for it, I probably would have turned him in. But but I nobody ever offered me any cash. So to be a to be a what's that called? To flip, to flip, to be to be a CI confidential informant on Sam Liebowitz. Nobody ever offered me anything, so I didn't do it. And he was there for probably two three years. So that would have been like 2010. That's July of 2010, of course. When the show started, we were there for 2 or 3 years after that. And when I would get there early, like 15 minutes early, there was always— there was the divorce attorney. And you'd have to be listening to the long— to the show for a long time to remember this. So there aren't too many folks who may remember this, but his name was Larry Bloom, and he ran a show called The Divorce Hour. Oh, yeah. With Larry Bloom. And so I would always walk in and he'd be talking, but he rarely had guests. Rarely. Usually it was him. And see, the thing, he was going through his own divorce at the time that he was— that he— and he had been a divorce attorney for decades. He had like 20 or 25 years of experience as a divorce attorney, and now he's going through his own divorce. Wow. And the show— and Sam and I used to talk about this too after Larry left the studio— the show was kind of cathartic, I think, for Larry Bloom because he would just read his notes. He had handwritten notes, many, many pages of handwritten notes because he's got an hour show like I did. So you can imagine how much you got to write to read for an hour. And he was talking about his own divorce and the bad treatment that his wife was giving, and he was bringing his kids into the thing. And Of course, I only caught 15 minutes, roughly 15, 20 minutes every hour. He was an interesting guy. That was the show before me, and then I'd come. So then I was at 1 o'clock every Friday. Friday, 1 to 2 was my slot, and then I would start my weekend. 2 o'clock, show's done, weekend begins. Sometimes I'd go downstairs. There was a Chinese restaurant. Might have some lunch, maybe a glass of wine. But in any case, I would start my weekend after this show was over. And the guests who were coming, they couldn't buzz. You couldn't buzz to get into the apartment/studio because the buzzer— you could hear the buzzer on the mic. So my guests would be coming not as early as me, but they would be coming like 5 minutes early. So Larry would get annoyed if one of my guests buzzed because he's still on mic. Right. He's still on the air. So we tried to avoid that annoyance, and people would just text me, and then we would buzz them in. Yeah, Larry Bloom. He was a little bit of a character. And then I mentioned Sam's wife. She ran the therapy practice when he wasn't using it as a studio. So she was Chinese, and her name was Hong, H-O-N-G. So I used to think— I always thought of a stand-up bit for this, but I never performed this, but I had something written that New York New York City is the only place you're going to find a woman named Hong Leibowitz. Classic Chinese and classic Jewish name, Hong Leibowitz. You're not going to find it anywhere else. So I was reminiscing. That's it. You know, that's— those are the reminiscences of the early years of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio in Sam Leibowitz's studio. Oh, and he had the crystals. He was, um, he was like a holistic practitioner too, and He had crystals on, on the studio desk, and they were supposed to emit some kind of power or orb or something. I, I don't know. I didn't believe in the crystals, but a couple of my guests through the years would say, whoa, you know, can I hold the crystal while I'm talking to Tony? Sure. You know, I'd rather hold that than something else. Sure. You want to hold your crystal? Go ahead. Or hold Sam's crystal. Uh, sounds a little— sounds, uh, sounds a little, sounds a little, uh— Risqué to me. Hold on to Sam's crystal. But, you know, if you want to hold that, if it gives you comfort, if it emits something valuable for you, by all means, you can hold it, you can hug it all you like while you're, while you're with me. So that was Sam Leibowitz's studio on West 72nd Street in New York City. Loved it first couple of years. And that's Tony's Take Two. Kate?

Kate Martignetti
Sounds like you could Do your show and then go to therapy right after. Guilty.

Tony Martignetti
I could have if my, my, my— if my therapist had been Hong Liebowitz, I could have knocked off 2, uh, 2 at one time. But I was ready to start the weekend. 2 o'clock, I was exhausted because the show was a performance and we were live. Oh, I didn't even mention that we were live streaming. We were live streaming on Facebook. So occasionally, very occasionally, we would get, uh, questions through the, through the comments on Facebook, but that was very rare. But yeah, we were live. I forgot all the shows were live streamed. So Larry Bloom was live, and then there would be a commercial for, for Sam's studio, Talking Alternative Network, and then my show would come. Yeah, we were, we were live streaming, and then it was also, of course, recorded for podcast purposes.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup buttloads more time. Here's the rest of Managing Money and Your Banking Relationship with Keith Mestrich.

Tony Martignetti
Anything more about, uh, like reserves between the operating reserves, the endowment? Anything more you want to say that I didn't ask you about or we didn't talk about?

Keith Mestrich
You know, again, make sure you have them. Don't be afraid of debt. If you manage it smartly, it can be a tool. It can be a tool in your toolbox, and everybody in the for-profit world, you know, uses it. Just make sure you're getting good advice both internally from your your auditors who can give you good advice on this oftentimes as well. And hopefully you have at least one person on your board of directors who has a financial background and can help you think through this. And I know not every executive director comes to the job having been trained in organizational finance. No, tell me that's the case. Yeah, a lot of people get promoted because they're the best program person and then they wake up one day, they're the executive director and they're expected to be a mega administrator on So that's where you really want to look to the trusted people on your board, your treasurer, your board treasurer, and why it really is important that 1 or 2 people on your board can really be on your finance committee, provide that right level of oversight to make sure you're not overextending yourself, but have some experience and background that can be your advisor and really help you, help you do that. Really important on smaller nonprofits who might not be able to hire the, the top level of sort of financial staff, um, or are going to be reliant on third-party bookkeepers who are trying to divide their time and attention amongst multiple organizations. Those advisors on your staff can be really valuable, um, uh, uh, resources, um, for, for, for you.

Tony Martignetti
So at, uh, I mean, you're, you're a senior advisor to a company called Crescent Cares. So I'm going to give you the benevolent label of banker with a heart. How did you come around to that? What is it in your background that you became CEO of Amalgamated Bank instead of JP Morgan or Chase?

Keith Mestrich
Yeah. Well, I spent most of my career, Tony, working in the labor movement and working with trade unions around the country, a particular kind of nonprofit. And there were a bunch of unions in the 1920s who actually established banks. And there's a couple of them that exist today, and one of them is the Amalgamated Bank. And the union I worked for owned that bank, and I ended up doing a lot of work with that and one day found myself going to work for the bank and ultimately becoming the CEO of the bank. And it was a bank that really focused exclusively on the nonprofit community, both our traditional bases as unions, as nonprofit businesses, but then doing lots of other nonprofit organizations as well. Wow. Well, I retired from there in 2021 and met up with the team at Crescent who's been trying to take some of the tools that they built for small and medium-sized businesses and really say, you know, we could develop a really great platform for nonprofits as well to really bring good technology to the table in terms of integrating with nonprofit accounting systems and other tools that are out there. Thinking about a lot of times nonprofits are really taken advantage of, of, of by banks. Because the one thing that nonprofits have that banks like is deposits. And because— and this isn't meant to, to, to, to, to, to, to speak negatively about nonprofits at all— but sometimes nonprofits don't ask for as much money in terms of the interest that they might earn on their, on their, on the deposits that they're putting in a bank. It's a deposit— banks love it because it's a low-cost of funds that they can ultimately lend out. And so trying to think about how can you work with nonprofits to know that they can actually maximize the return that they get on all of the funding that they, that they have in a bank, and then really trying to keep the fee structure low, right? Because if you can pay a lot of interest, if you can keep fees really low, that's as good as another source of income for a lot of nonprofits. And that's, that's, that's how smart bankers should be thinking about relating to nonprofits. How can I maximize the income going into the nonprofit so they can turn that into Yeah, more programmatic activity or another staff person or something like that, and not leaving money on the table, if you will.

Tony Martignetti
And then ultimately, you know, if we can do those things, you know, that additional staff person might be a fundraiser so that our deposits are rising.

Keith Mestrich
100%. Or even a fractional fundraiser, right? If it's not a lot of things that you could plow into doing those kinds of things. And yeah, increase the top line of your organization to just be able to do more.

Tony Martignetti
Now, you mentioned something just in passing, but it caught me. The interest rate you can ask for, like, is the interest rate negotiable on savings?

Keith Mestrich
Sure, it's all negotiable. And because ultimately you have— there's no law that sets what the interest rate is. It's really an individual decision in terms of what the bank wants to pay. And if you are willing to leave your financial institution and go to another one that might pay you a little bit more interest, it's the same as being able to negotiate anything else. A lot of nonprofits, they don't do that. They just think, I've got this bank, I have to be there, I have to leave it there forever.

Tony Martignetti
They have a posted rate. They pay 1.05% on savings. So that's what I'm going to get,

Keith Mestrich
1.05%. That's what I'm going to get. But if you're— let's take an organization that's done a good job of having some reserves and might have a small endowment that needs to be managed, but they don't want to necessarily go out to a big money manager. I mean, there's lots of nonprofits that have $1 million of operating reserves. That's a really, really good account for a bank. Most bankers don't want to lose that. And most branch bankers really don't want to lose that because They're being evaluated on how many deposits are in their bank and a number of other things. And, uh, and, uh, uh, but they're not gonna— they're not gonna offer it to you. But if you say, you know what, I've only been sitting here and I've only been getting, you know, 0.35% on my, um, on my savings account here, and, um, I've talked to the bank down the street and I said, I'm willing to move my relationship over here, what will you pay me? And they told me they pay you know, 1.5% or 2% or 3%, um, I'd go right back to the bank and I'd sort of say, well, what can you do for me? And, and, and do that. And people should not be afraid to— people should not be afraid to, to, to, to leverage that relationship to a certain extent. And I think it's just one thing that you said it to me, just like, well, here's the rack rate, I'm just going to take it. I don't, I don't have an ability to do that. That's just not true. Um, now if you have a balance $5,000 in the bank, you probably don't have a lot of leverage in things. So you have to play it appropriately. But that's not the case with a lot of nonprofits. A lot of nonprofits have a good amount of reserves, and those are valuable to the bank, and they should be working for you. Well, you know, we also were in that period where there was no interest for a long time. Remember, after the financial crisis in 2008, we were in a zero interest rate environment. So a lot of people just got lazy. They didn't think there was anything else out there to do. But there's, there's, you know, CDs on the marketplace right now that pay 4%. 10-year Treasury bond pays 4%. That's kind of a peg for banks, and people should be pushing, right, to get those kinds of rates. 4%, $1 million, $40,000, you know, annualized. And that's, to your point, that's a part-time fundraiser. That's a, that's a part-time clerk that can help out on something else. That's, that's That could

Tony Martignetti
be our— that's our endowment spend.

Keith Mestrich
That might be your endowment spend.

Tony Martignetti
If we have $1 million, now we've just like doubled our endowment income.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah. Now, now here's the tricky thing, I think, sometimes for executive directors, because when they say something like that, they might hear right from their, from their, their staff, oh my gosh, do you know how much trouble it's going to be to, um, you know, to, to switch to a different bank? I'm gonna have to change all my bill pays. I'm gonna have to—

Tony Martignetti
it's gonna be a lot of work for somebody. I hate the naysayers. Please. Yeah. Oh, like I whine when I channel the naysayer. Oh, it's gonna be terrible.

Keith Mestrich
So, so here's the other thing. Push your banker, push your banking partner. How are you gonna help make it easy for me? And, and, and they can do it because what a good banker— again, banker with a heart, I love that— can do is they can come and really work with your team to help do the transition from one account to another and, and really do the things like set up who has permission to be in this account, who's in these, in these flows. And a smart banker is going to say to you, I can help you make this transition really easy for you. And because it is work for— it is work for somebody. And it is, you know, we do have finance staff that oftentimes are understaffed and we put a lot of pressure on them. But again, if the relationship is valuable to the bank, you know, the financial partner will help you move over.

Tony Martignetti
That's outstanding.

Keith Mestrich
And you're probably—

Tony Martignetti
I keep trying to say it's outstanding and then you pile on more outstanding info. Go ahead.

Keith Mestrich
Now with technology, Tony, there's so many great tools out there to make things like payments so much faster, so much easier. Any nonprofit that still has a checkbook and is writing checks, get into the 21st century because everything should be done electronically. It's easier, it's faster, it's safer. Checks are an incredibly dangerous way to lose your money as an organization. They get stolen. They get, they get, they get what's called washed, and then people come up with counterfeit checks. That's how people are getting ripped off, and people need to be moving to more advanced payment systems these days as well.

Tony Martignetti
All right. All right. Since you opened the subject tech, I was, I was going to get there after board reporting and some KPIs. But let's talk about use of technology. All right. So checkbooks, we— I mean, I guess you should have one just for emergencies or something.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah, I have an emergency, you know, The system breaks down, you know, somebody, somebody can't take an electronic payment. You have a volunteer that doesn't— can't get paid any other way, you know, that, that kind of thing. But yeah, as a general rule, don't do those anymore.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. All right. What else technology-wise should we be leveraging in this banking relationship?

Keith Mestrich
Yep. So cards, right, are a great way to be able to do things, issuing your staff Either debit cards if you're comfortable with it, credit cards if you like. But good banks now can— there's ways to very, very quickly be able to issue every one of your employees with a card that has all kinds of restrictions on it. You can cap the amount of money that's on it. You can limit it to only being able to be spent at certain kinds of things. You can issue a card. And by the way, it's not even a card anymore. It's just a virtual card that's a number, but that could be just for grant expenses for a thing that really makes sense. Yeah. Making sure that only monies coming out of this account that might be restricted are going just for those grant purposes. And then at the end of the year, it's gonna be a lot easier to do your end-of-the-year reporting back to that foundation that gave it because all your transactions are in one place.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah.

Keith Mestrich
And really easy to do your 990 at the end of the year as well. So people have been afraid of cards, right? Because they think people will abuse them or other things. But now the ability to manage cards and prevent that is really terrific.

Tony Martignetti
Keith, let me just say, do we still call them cards even though it's a virtual, I mean, it's a digital card? What do we call it?

Keith Mestrich
It's really a digital wallet. It's really a digital wallet kind of thing or sort of digital payment kind of thing, or it's just a number that you use to make a payment. But yeah, I guess they still call them cards. I mean, even if you think about when you download a card into your iPhone now, right, and stuff, it's still It still looks like a card and all those guys. We still call them cards.

Tony Martignetti
So you can restrict who has access to the specific account that comes from this grant fund?

Keith Mestrich
Yeah. Yeah. So let's say I'm gonna— I've got a grant to do— to provide food assistance in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And, you know, so Tony and Keith are the staff people that work on it. They're the only ones that have access to that card. The only money that's available on that card is the money that we got for that grant. There's no other monies that are available on that card. It can, it can only be used to make purchases at supermarkets or whoever else you might be, you know, farmers markets, wherever you might be getting, getting food from. No other purposes can be, you know, used for that. And the The spending on this cannot exceed X amount. You can set it up to that level of specificity. And the smartest tools now, literally a good bookkeeper can be sitting at their computer and just set this up in minutes. It's really slick. It's really cool. And it takes away all the things that— I never met a nonprofit staffer, by the way, who liked to do expense reporting. Yeah. It's usually one of the things that is hated for lots of good reasons. Well, now the card's going to do a lot of that because you're going to know that this was spent for this and it's going to track right into your chart of accounts as an accountant for an organization. It's just, it's faster, it's more accurate, it's safer and more secure. And again, you know, I don't mean to keep going back to what I really love is you're a banker with a heart. But your bank with a heart is going to teach you how to do this and get you set up in the right way and demystify a lot of these things that everybody's out there. I heard that this exists out there, but I'm really afraid about putting it into my organization because I'm afraid I'm going to screw it up. And, you know—

Tony Martignetti
Or we're going to be taken advantage of. It's not— somebody's going to use, spend more than they're allowed, or, you know, but you're saying there are all these levels of control.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah. All right. And smart financial partners can teach you how to do that.

Tony Martignetti
All right. So we need to overcome our longstanding fears of credit card abuse. Yep. All right.

Keith Mestrich
And technology, right? And I think one, if I could leave your listeners with one thing, there's a lot of people who think that electronic payments are—

Tony Martignetti
You're not leaving yet. This is not the wrap-up yet. We got other subjects.

Keith Mestrich
But please say it. There's lots of people who think that like electronic payments I'm going to get ripped off. My numbers are out there in cyberspace and all these kind of things. The most dangerous transaction you can do today is sending a check through the mail. That is the most dangerous, most open to fraud kind of transaction that you can do. Electronic payments are much, much— they're much, much safer. They're traceable, they're trackable. You can retrieve funds. And it's a much smarter way to run an organization.

Tony Martignetti
All right. Is there another technology you want to share? I mean, that's valuable to know. I mean, especially it helps with the accounting and the accountability back to the foundation, the reporting. Is there other tech that— financial tech we should know about?

Keith Mestrich
I think online invoicing and online bill payment is really something that's really good to do. You can track your bills, you can manage your payables in a way that allows you to pay When, when you want, um, and, and do that. And I— and again, you can do things like for recurring payments, you could set up a lot of templates and things that really, uh, the old-fashioned ways you have to write a check to your landlord every month. The newfangled ways you set up that payment once, once at the, at the beginning of a lease, you make it an automatic payment. You never think about it again. You just, you just approve it when it's going to happen, but you don't have to go through all the mechanisms, the machinations of making those payments. And there's, there's lots of technology like that that can just make It's both more efficient and it's more accurate. And I think that's the other thing, right? It's really easy to transpose numbers. It's really easy to do things. Technology can make things a lot, a lot more accurate and a lot easier to reconcile at year end for people.

Tony Martignetti
You forgot to sign the check.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Right.

Keith Mestrich
And then the other thing I'd sort of say is from a fundraising perspective, right, on the other end, And there's a lot of people who don't want to send you a check anymore. They want to pay by card. And increasingly making sure that you have good tools to be able to take credit card and debit card payments and other forms of payment and be able to bring those in and do it in a way that a merchant, what's called a merchant processor, that company that is processing those payments for you, isn't taking, you know, 3 or 4 or 5% of your pay. And working with somebody who's going to make sure that payment that you make To process that payment isn't gonna be a, isn't gonna be a ripoff. But you wanna set up the ability to have people pay you by, by electronic means and to be able to access all that small-dollar fundraising that is out there. You wanna make it simple. Make it simple for people. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people nowadays that are like, I might be willing to give this organization, but don't make me write a check, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, send it in the mail. Oh. But if all I gotta do is be on your website and put my card in, And, you know, I'll do that. No, by the way, I might just click that button that says, do you want to make this a recurring payment as well? And, and can be hugely valuable for organizations.

Tony Martignetti
I think you're talking about everybody under 35 years old. You know, everybody writing a check, requiring a check is now a barrier for, I think, anybody 35 and under. I gotta write a check, forget about it. I mean, they will, but I'll take the card. option, and maybe I will make it recurring, and now I don't have to think about it.

Keith Mestrich
Yeah, yeah. But by the way, I, I have 3 kids in that, in that thing. I bet I could go to them right now, I bet not one of them has a dollar cash on them. Yeah, so they're just paying everything by card. They're paying everything by card. Yeah, so we have to, we have to, we have to be able to adapt and be able to take those kinds of payments. Otherwise, we're not going to get that donation.

Tony Martignetti
Let's shift over to board reporting. What numbers should a board be looking at? Let's say board meets quarterly, without being too much in the weeds, but, you know, what are like, I guess, KPIs? Because in a minute I want to ask you about KPIs for the CEO. Like, what should we be looking at week to week even? But KPIs for the board that meets quarterly.

Keith Mestrich
Yep. So, we've talked about some of them, right? I think some of it is, do we have cash reserves and how many months could we operate if we had a real, a real problem. Um, I, I think that budget to actual report is a really, really important report that boards should be looking at and looking at carefully every month and making sure that they really understand that, right? We said we were going to spend this much money. Where are we? And are we, are we tracking appropriately? Now, don't be a slave to the, to the, to the number that you set, you know, in January when you've gotten to September, because things change. Just make sure you understand why it changed, right? But I think, I think under understanding that and doing that is important. We talked about that cash flow report. I mean, a board should be able to understand that we're going to have cash to be able to make our payments for the next several months, if not for the next year, looking out and looking forward. Those reports you don't often, you don't often get. Most organizations get the balance sheet. Okay, great. You know, I mean, we have this much in our bank account and our building's worth this much and we have cars that are worth this much. That tells you up a little something, but it's really that day-to-day management. Is, is, is, is the management of the organization on top of how much money we're going to need? And if we get in a bind, are we going to be able to survive for a while? I, I think those are the most important things that the, the non-finance people on the board in particular should, should, should be asking and should know.

Tony Martignetti
It sounds like you ticked off 3 things. I think cash on hand, like cash reserves, budget versus actual, Expenses, and then—

Keith Mestrich
and monthly cash flow. Do we understand what our monthly cash flow needs are? And do I have confidence that the organization is going to be in a position to meet those cash needs?

Tony Martignetti
Cool. All right. How about for the CEO who's probably looking like weekly? Or, you know, if let's say it's a CEO that does not have a CFO, maybe they have— if they have a— let's say they don't even have a fractional CEO. Which that would be, that's kind of rough. But

Keith Mestrich
yeah,

Tony Martignetti
we like, we have a bookkeeper, you know, and it's a staff of 5 or 6 and we don't have a chief financial officer. What should the CEO be looking at week to week?

Keith Mestrich
So those same things are important for a CEO as well. Obviously, you're going to want to know that. I think the other important thing is Money in is obviously super important. And do you understand what your pipeline of money in is coming in? Because in this world, we live on fundraising, right? And so while there are nonprofits that certainly have nice sources of earned revenue because they have ticket sales or they have, you know, guests who visit a museum or they have whatever, you need to understand, you really need to understand your money in and what is your degree of confidence on it. And can you look out 6 months, 12 months in advance and sort of know what your funding sources are, are in at any given time, have some reliability on those? So if you are reliant on earned revenue, are your earned revenue projections meeting— are your earned revenue actuals meeting your projections? And if they're not, you got to be on that right away. A lot of organizations let it go too long, and you sort of say, we thought we were going to have, you know, $10,000 in ticket sales this week. We only had $6,000, and that's happened 2 weeks in a row, right? You need to be making adjustments right away. Either you either need to adjust prices, you need to think about expenses or whatever. But if those things aren't coming in, you got to be on it. You got to be on it right away. If you've had expectations, a certain amount of grants, and some of those grants, you know, get off-kilter, you need to do that. If major donate, you know, major donors aren't coming in, you need to know that. Now, I I think early warning systems on anticipated income need to be acted on very, very, very quickly. And I think a lot of people let it go way too long. Financial reporting is always a looking backward exercise. So you don't want to be— too many people are reliant on my monthly report that might come out 3 weeks into the month afterwards. Yeah. And by that, if all you're doing then at that point is trying to think about that, that's too late oftentimes to make corrections. So you really need to be on those, on those on those, on those incoming kinds of things very, very early. And then on the expense side too, right? You got to make sure expenses are tracking right. And that's— I always find that to be a little easier because those are things that are much more under an executive's control, right? You can control how many people you have. You can— you can't always control things like the unexpected rise of health insurance expenses, which just happened. So you have to have some ability to do that. Right. But, but, you know, I think it's much more important to make sure that you know what your sources of revenue are looking like and are they coming in as, as anticipated.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. All valuable. Thank you. Yeah. So Crescent Cares, I guess Crescent Cares doesn't offer any of the products or services that we just talked about. You know, you're not, you're not Bankers with a Heart at all. You don't offer anything that we, anything we just talked about for 50 minutes. It's not, it's not on your table, right? It's not.

Keith Mestrich
We, we offer all the things. We offered all the things I just talked about, right? And did that. And a lot of what Crescent Cares is doing is a lot of the things from a technology standpoint that I would have loved to do when I was at Amalgamated. Banks are stuck with a lot of old technology, and there's a lot of the new— they sometimes are called fintechs or other companies that are doing things online. They're partnering with banks, but they're doing a technological interface that is just superior to the old technology that a lot of banks are stuck with. And that's one of the things that Crescent Cares has done, which is to, to really bring modern technology to the, to the fore. Um, there's lots of fintechs out there doing it. Most of them are doing it for the for-profit sector, uh, going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, because that's where they think the bread will be buttered. Yeah. Um, organizations like Crescent Cares are saying, say, the nonprofit sector is huge. Why, why aren't there, why aren't there more banks that sort of say, hey, we could actually, you know, build the same products and services but have the mentality and the temperament to support the nonprofit sector. Sometimes people need a little more help and assistance to thinking about how to transform to those new technologies or just need a little bit of a bigger helping hand to get through financial tough times.

Tony Martignetti
All right. Thank you, Keith. Really valuable. You'll find Keith on LinkedIn. I sent you a I sent you a connection request. I hope you'll accept. And, and you'll find the company at crescentcares.com. Keith, thank you for the banking insight, you know, the relationship that we can expect, the fact that we can talk about interest rates and have a negotiation around interest rates. All very eye-opening. Thank you very much for all that.

Keith Mestrich
Great, Tony. I enjoyed it.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, bookkeeping red flags and your board's oversight.

Tony Martignetti
Notice, notice there's 2 financial management shows in a row. This week, money management, banking. Next week, bookkeeping. These, these things don't just happen. This is very all intentionally planned out. I got lucky.

Kate Martignetti
If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at TonyMartinetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit. Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great. Thank you.