Seeking an experienced financial advisor or accountant to complete a lightweight audit of our finances, and to assist us in long term financial planning. We are seeking answers to the question, "how viable is our organization in the mid-to-long term, and what are our major risks and opportunities?" Essentially, we need an expert opinion to give us a report card on our financial picture to date and to help us craft the right set of tools and resources going forward.

Our organization has run entirely on volunteer labor until two months ago, with the addition of a part time operations/fundraising role. With your help, we will be able to create a path to sustainable growth.You'd be working with our founder and Executive Director every step of the way, plus our Operations Director. Consider us your research team and assistants on the project, providing you with the organizational history and knowledge of the Chicago market, plus the latest and greatest thinking on our strategic goals.

Frankly, your role will be to help create the rudder for our growth in the next year to three years. We are at a critical growth point in our organization where we are renegotiating our contract with our community library space in Chicago and looking to solidify partnership agreements, fundraising strategies, and more based on what is possible. We want to grow intelligently, not for growth's sake.As mentioned previously, we have hired an Operations team member to solicit requests like these to ensure that we are engaging with best practices, doing our due diligence and asking for help where needed. We have a list of areas where we'd like your guidance and assistance, mainly:

- Assessing our current budget and cash reserve and advising on a conservative approach for spending and saving
- Giving us input on our chart of accounts and letting us know where we may be overlooking or overcomplicating our financial picture
- Ensuring that we are implementing accounting best practices
- Setting us up for success to file tax returns by the end of this FY

Many of these processes are already in motion, but we realized that we need the help of an experienced professional to polish, trim and hone these details. We utilize Quickbooks, Gusto bank with Chase, and have several payment platforms (e.g., Paypal, Whirl) that you may need to reference at any given time.