What Nonprofit Leaders Need to Know About Financial Oversight in 2026

Nonprofit leaders are carrying more right now than most sectors recognize. Rising operating costs, unpredictable funding, and a volatile political environment aren't abstract challenges - they show up in real decisions about staffing, space, and sustainability, often all at once.

At BoardCon 2026, Kiwi Partners' CFO Consultant, Rosina Barba joined the panel Financial & Real Estate Essentials for Staff and Board to address something that comes up again and again in her work with nonprofits: the financial blind spots that aren't the result of poor leadership, but of systems and tools that were not designed for the complexity nonprofits are navigating today.

When budgeting, facility planning, and board oversight are treated as one connected system — not three separate tasks — organizations become meaningfully more resilient. Here's what stood out.

1. Rent Is Just the Starting Point

"For many nonprofits, rent is the starting point when budgeting for space; and increasingly, organizations are working to understand the full cost of occupancy." - Rosina Barba, CFO Consultant, Kiwi Partners

Across the sector, Rosina sees a significant opportunity for nonprofits to uncover the true cost of real estate — and the strategic clarity that comes with it. Space is typically the second-largest expense after staffing, but the budget often reflects only rent. The real cost includes utilities, maintenance, repairs, insurance, IT infrastructure, security, cleaning, and long-term lease obligations — costs that are easy to miss when finance capacity is stretched thin.

What to do: Build a true-cost-of-space model and integrate it into your annual budget and long-range planning. This one shift improves cash flow visibility and reduces the variances that can catch leadership and boards off guard at the worst moments.

2. Your Budget Should Be a Strategic Tool — Use It Like One

For many small and midsize nonprofits, the budget gets built quickly - often by a small team juggling multiple priorities - and primarily to meet a deadline. That's not a failure of intention. It's a capacity reality.

But when budgeting becomes a compliance exercise rather than a planning process, organizations lose one of their most valuable strategic tools. A budget built with intention - even an imperfect one - gives leadership a roadmap to adjust from and gives boards the context they need to provide meaningful oversight.

What to do: Where possible, shift from "build a budget to submit it" to "use the budget to think." Define your assumptions - headcount, utilization, funding timing - then model the consequences. An imperfect plan you can adjust is far more useful than no plan at all.

3. Start Facility Planning 18 Months Before You Need To

One of Rosina's most practical insights came from real client work. She described a nonprofit that began lease scenario planning 18 months before renewal. Because they had already worked through growth, contraction, subleasing, and hybrid scenarios, they had the data and flexibility to pivot when everything changed. The result: they negotiated terms that let them right-size their space, sublease what they didn't need, and ultimately secure a building they could afford long-term.

The lesson isn't that the plan worked perfectly — it didn't. The lesson is that the thinking they'd done gave them options when they needed them most.

What to do: If a lease renewal is anywhere on your horizon, start the conversation now. Model one-time costs (buildout, moving, IT) alongside ongoing monthly costs. Give your board multiple scenarios so they understand the range of what's possible and what commitments are at stake.

4. Scenario Planning Is How You Stay Agile When Funding Shifts

The next 12 - 24 months will continue to bring uncertainty - federal funding changes, shifting grant landscapes, and rising operational costs. The organizations that navigate it well won't necessarily have predicted what happened. They'll have thought through enough scenarios to know how to respond.

What to do: Build three scenarios into your annual planning cycle:

• Baseline - your best current projection

• Upside - what growth or new funding would require

• Constrained - what you'd do if a major revenue source fell short

  
  

For each scenario, define the trigger: When do you pause hiring? When do you draw on reserves? When do you adjust programs? The goal isn't prediction - it's having a plan ready before you need it.

5. Is This Governance or Management? Ask the Question.

Role overlap between boards and staff leadership is one of the most common sources of friction in nonprofits — and it's rarely anyone's fault. It usually happens gradually, in the absence of written clarity, with good intentions on all sides.

The panel offered a practical reset: put board responsibilities in writing, and when the lines start to blur, ask openly — Is this governance or management? Governance belongs to the board. Management belongs to the ED and leadership team. Naming it out loud, without blame, tends to move things in the right direction.

What to do: Review your board committee charters and written responsibilities. Build a brief governance orientation into onboarding and revisit it annually. Having it documented means you have something to point to, which makes difficult conversations easier for everyone.

6. Your Board Is One of Your Greatest Financial Assets

A strong board provides oversight and actively strengthens your organization's financial resilience.

Boards with diverse skills and backgrounds, active engagement, and financial literacy ask better questions, surface blind spots before they become crises, and give leadership the confidence to make bolder decisions. The more intentional you are about board composition, the more value everyone gets from the table.

What to do: Assess your board composition annually - not to evaluate individuals, but to identify where the collective could be stronger. Look for gaps in financial literacy, audit readiness, and real estate knowledge. Recruit with your next two to three years in mind, not just today's needs.

The Bottom Line for 2026

Nonprofit financial stability is built before the numbers are final. It's built in the planning conversations, the scenario modeling, the early facility discussions, and the governance clarity that lets boards and leadership work well together.

None of this requires a large finance team. It requires intention - and the right support when capacity is the constraint.

If you're not sure where to start, the Kiwi Partners team work with nonprofits every day on exactly these challenges - from fractional CFO support to budgeting strategy and lease planning.

Ready to think more strategically about your finances? Contact us to connect with a Kiwi Partners CFO consultant.