Massachusetts nonprofit accounting for organizations that cannot let compliance pull focus from the mission.
Marifran McKindsey, CPA helps nonprofit leaders strengthen financial records, prepare for reporting requirements, improve internal controls, and protect the organization behind the mission.
What is your organization facing?
Most engagements begin with one pressing situation. Choose the one closest to yours and see what the work actually involves.
An audit or review is approaching
Records, reconciliations and schedules assembled before the external auditor arrives — so fieldwork is a confirmation, not a discovery process.
- Record readiness and pre-audit review
- Reconciliations and supporting schedules
- Internal control documentation
- Preparation of requested-document lists
- Communication with the external auditor
Strong stewardship gives the mission room to move.
Nonprofit leadership means holding several obligations at once: delivering programs, honoring funding restrictions, answering to the public, informing a volunteer board, and meeting reporting requirements that arrive on someone else's calendar — usually with a finance team smaller than the work requires.
Nonprofit accounting is not business accounting applied to a charitable organization. Restriction, fund accounting, functional expense allocation, grant compliance and public disclosure change what the record has to prove and who it has to satisfy.
Marifran has spent her career in that specific environment — first examining nonprofit records as an auditor, now building the records that hold up when someone else examines them.
One practice, six areas of work.
Every engagement is scoped and defined at the start. Services are consolidated into a single hub rather than scattered across dozens of thin pages.
Accounting & Financial Reporting
The financial record is the foundation everything else rests on. Work begins with a complete review of what the organization already has.
- · Financial-record reviews
- · Reconciliations of complex accounting information
- · Financial-statement preparation
- · Accounting cleanup
Compliance & Tax Reporting
Federal and Massachusetts reporting obligations, prepared with attention to the questions that are most often answered incorrectly.
- · Nonprofit tax-return preparation
- · Federal and state reporting
- · Massachusetts Form PC support
- · Assistance involving federal and state taxing authorities
Audit Readiness
Preparation informed by fifteen years of directing nonprofit and governmental audits from the other side of the request list.
- · Pre-audit record reviews
- · Requested-document preparation
- · Schedule and reconciliation support
- · Financial-statement readiness
Internal Controls & Risk
Controls designed for the organization that exists — not for a finance department it does not have.
- · Segregation-of-duties reviews
- · Compensating-control design
- · Financial policies and procedures
- · Risk assessment
Grants & Restricted Funding
Restricted funding carries obligations well beyond the award letter. Documentation is built as the money is spent, not reconstructed later.
- · Grant application support
- · Grant monitoring
- · Grant reporting
- · Restricted-fund accounting
Planning & Board Support
Financial information shaped for the people responsible for governing the organization.
- · Future-goal planning
- · Strategic-plan implementation
- · Board financial education
- · Financial-policy reviews
Confirm before publicationEvery service listed is drawn from Marifran's published work history and must be confirmed by her before publication.
Records, controls, reporting, clarity — in that order.
A working sequence, not a sales process. Subject to Marifran's approval before it is presented as a named methodology.
Records → controls → reporting → board clarity. Each stage produces something the next one depends on.
Eight questions. A list of things worth discussing.
An educational tool for orientation only. It does not determine whether your organization is compliant, and it is not legal or accounting advice.
What type of organization is this?
Experience from both sides of the audit request list.
For fifteen years Marifran directed nonprofit and governmental audits — Yellow Book, single audit, HUD — performing the final review of every financial statement issued and building the quality-control systems behind a fifty-client audit practice. Since 2015 she has worked on the other side of that request list, helping nonprofit organizations build records that hold up when someone else examines them.
- Certified Public Accountant
- B.S. Accounting, Spring Arbor University
- AICPA member
- Massachusetts Society of CPAs member
- Yellow Book, single audit & HUD audit experience
- Quality-control system development
- Internal control & risk policy
- Federal and state submission experience
- 1980 – 2000Controller & senior accountant
Controller roles at privately held companies and senior accountant positions at certified public accounting firms — the operational grounding behind everything that followed.
- 2001 – 2015Senior auditor, contracted auditor — Osterville, MA
Directed audits for not-for-profit organizations (Yellow Book, single audit, HUD) and for-profit entities. Performed final review of all financial statements issued, created and oversaw the firm's quality-control systems, and implemented a paperless quality-control and workpaper system across a fifty-client audit practice. Handled online submissions to HUD REAC, MHFA, USDA and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts OSD, and reported internal control findings to management with recommendations to mitigate the associated risks.
- 2015 – PresentNonprofit consultant — Cotuit, MA
Complete reviews of financial records, reconciliation of complex accounting information, definition of financial, internal control and risk policies, compilation of financial information and preparation of tax returns, future-goal planning and strategic-plan implementation, and assistance with federal and state taxing authorities — using audit experience to benefit organizations that are themselves subject to audit.
Organizations where the record has to answer to someone.
Retain only the sectors Marifran confirms she currently serves.
Public charities
Massachusetts organizations carrying Form PC and Form 990 obligations alongside program delivery.
Community & human-service organizations
Multi-program agencies balancing restricted funding, contracts and lean administrative capacity.
Housing organizations
Entities reporting into HUD, MassHousing and comparable regulatory environments.
Educational & cultural nonprofits
Institutions where endowment, restricted gifts and program revenue meet in one ledger.
Grant-funded programs
Organizations whose reporting calendar is set by funders rather than by fiscal year alone.
Recipients of government funding
Federal, state and municipal awards with their own documentation and audit expectations.
Small nonprofits with limited segregation of duties
Teams where one or two people touch nearly every transaction and compensating controls matter.
Organizations preparing for review or audit
Boards and finance staff who want fieldwork to confirm the record rather than rebuild it.
Boards seeking stronger oversight
Treasurers and finance committees who need reporting they can genuinely govern with.
Marifran's writing, organized and re-verified.
Original articles from the firm's blog, restructured by topic. Outdated thresholds have been corrected against current guidance and every entry is date-stamped.
What must accompany a Massachusetts Form PC filing
Many Massachusetts organizations work with accountants who are not familiar with everything the annual Form PC filing must carry with it. Here is what the filing package generally includes — and where the financial-statement thresholds now sit.
ReadSegregation of duties when the team is too small for it
Four responsibilities should not sit with one person. When staffing makes that impossible, compensating controls are the answer — not resignation.
ReadEthical compliance is a control environment, not a statement
Unethical behavior is a persistent problem in nonprofits and for-profits alike. Addressing it means examining what actually influences conduct inside the organization.
Read
Protect the financial structure carrying the mission forward.
Talk with Marifran about the reporting requirement, control concern, grant obligation, or upcoming audit your organization needs to address.