Dollars and cents (sense?)

The Finance Committee of Foodshare's Board of Directors met this morning.  One key to building a strong organization is certainly knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and building to organization around that, to ensure that in areas the leader is weak, the organization is still strong.

Yes, you guessed it, I don't consider the financial aspect of our work to be my strong point, so it has been important to me to have a very strong Finance Committee of the Board.

Today's meeting proved to me that they are a solid and strong committee.  Because it is prudent financial management for an organization to have a "rainy day fund," Foodshare does have a reserve fund.  Of course, we all want those savings to be invested as wisely as possible, but that's challenging in today's environment.

The Foodshare Finance Committee is in the midst of a review and selection process for an investment advisor and the committee has done a great job on this project.  They send out about twenty requests for proposals to investment advisors, from which they received 13 proposals.  The committee narrowed this down to five, with whom Foodshare's CFO conducted phone interviews focused on fees charged, customer service, and investment returns.  And now the full committee of volunteers and management will meet in person with four of the possible advisors.

The process was thoughtful and thorough and with the top-notch people on the committee, I am confident of a good end result.  Thank you to all involved!

Gloria