This interview series with our #Nonprofit Service Provider Classifieds advertisers aims to unveil the stories and motivations behind those who specialise in uplifting and guiding the nonprofit community.

In this interview, we talk with Brenda Coetzee, CEO of Ziyo, Accountants with Heart.

Tell me about yourself and your company/ consulting services

I’m Brenda Coetzee, CEO of Ziyo. I grew up in Durban, where I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1998. I have been working full time in the non-profit sector for about 20 years.

My company Ziyo supports anything related to non-profit organisation financial management, including training, accounting, tax advisory and compliance, preparation of annual financial statements, independent reviews, payroll services - all except external audits. Our clients are small non-profit organisations all the way through to international funders.

What inspired you to focus your career on the nonprofit sector?

While my peers were making the big money in banking in the UK just before the year 2000, I found myself working as an internal auditor at the Peabody Trust, an organisation in London providing social housing. When they asked me in the interview whether I was an “out of the box thinker,” I actually said no! This is when I first realised that there was such a thing as a non-profit sector and grew to appreciate its role in society. It was extremely exciting to stumble upon my passion and I couldn’t wait to find a role in an organisation in South Africa. It took 5 years after completing that contract to get to my role as a regional finance manager for Habitat for Humanity SA, a route I took via Deloitte in Cape Town. Fortunately, Deloitte provided not only an experience in excellence in risk management consulting and internal audit, but also my husband!

What I wanted by working in the sector was to help build our country by using the skills that I had learned as a CA.

 What do you find most rewarding about working with nonprofits?

It is unfortunate that many organisations cannot access good financial skills due to money. We try to be sensitive to these budgetary constraints, providing expensive skills in small quantities.

It is very rewarding to be able to associate ourselves with some of the key difference makers in Southern Africa. All of us at Ziyo believe that our daily support for civil society in Southern Africa has made our world a better place. In addition, we often meet the very committed people who work tirelessly in these organisations. Plus the objectives of the organisations that we work with can be so wide-ranging - from generating employment opportunities through to investigative journalism, helping victims of violence, and building education – that telling their stories through numbers is always interesting.

What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in this sector? How have you overcome them?

Budget is always a key issue with non-profit organisations, especially those who are working at grassroots level.  It is unfortunate that many organisations cannot access good financial skills due to money. We try to be sensitive to these budgetary constraints, providing expensive skills in small quantities.

Many goodhearted people start non-profit organisations without any knowledge of compliance matters, and sometimes this later requires big historical issues to be unravelled. The tax ones can be the worst, as some people are not aware that an entity of any type has to register with SARS and submit income tax returns. We try to help where we are requested to do so – unfortunately, this can be a costly exercise for an organisation.

There are also so many non-profit start-ups. Of course, this could be geographical factor, helping people in a particular area. But if only there was a way of coordinating efforts to avoid diluting the funding and sharing overhead costs.  More start-ups are beneficial for us and our fellow service providers, but ultimately leads to budget sensitivity and the organisation may not have the scale to achieve the objectives that it intends.

How do you help nonprofit clients accomplish their missions more effectively?

It is critical for any organisation to track its financial health and performance, so that is something that we facilitate. Without money and the good management of it, a mission cannot be accomplished.

It is key for non-profits to demonstrate accountability to stakeholders, such as potential and current funders, and there we assist in providing special financial reports or annual financial statements. Once again, having the right partners or funders can be linked to good accountability demonstrated in these reports and statements, and therefore to effective achievement of mission objectives.

By performing skilled and routine tasks, we help organisations to keep the focus on their programmatic work.

How do you see the nonprofit sector evolving in the next 5-10 years? How are you preparing for those changes?

Income generation has been a hot topic for non-profit organisations for some time, and it is likely that in the face of greater competition for funding with increasing non-profits, that organisations will try more and more to find ways to generate income that is not donations. We support this with education and advice wherever we can, especially in the area of tax advice, as this can appear daunting.

Just this year, more compliance measures relating to SA’s grey-listing have been instituted for non-profit organisations, relating to disclosure of beneficial ownership information as well as reduction of money-laundering and tax evasion possibilities via s18A tax deductible receipt returns. This has been cumbersome, but it is hopeful that the processes will increase in efficiency going forward. There is also an indication that government entities are working to reduce the need to register with different government bodies. We are hoping therefore that the benefits of greater transparency will be apparent (less organisations associated with money-laundering and corruption), and that compliance efficiency will increase.

The latest topic of the day always seems to be Artificial Intelligence. If this can make certain tasks for non-profits more efficient and effective, such as helping with the writing of proposals or reports, or research, then this is a good thing. I don’t believe that AI can completely replace accountants, at least for the immediate future, because accounting is both a science and an art.  But we continuously evolve by trying to automate more mundane tasks and also by supporting our clients with applications that replace manual processes, such as approvals of purchase orders. In the future, automated options should force more preventative control of risks, rather than detecting risks after they have occurred.

We try to prepare ourselves for change by staying up to date with educational webinars and connecting with other service providers. We strongly believe that we are no longer alive if we stop learning.

Can you share an example of a nonprofit client you are especially proud to have worked with and why?

It is always an exciting feeling to have prominent clients appearing in the media with articles that expose corruption or others commenting on high profile current events. However, we know what the more low-key organisations are up to as well, and we are equally proud of what they are achieving.

The Ziyo team

 What do you wish more people understood about working with nonprofits?

We see mainly the financial side, so we see how they grapple with so many different funder reporting formats and have to deal with tracking donor funds in their accounting systems. I wish that funders thought more about the consequences of what they are requesting the organisations to do in terms of reporting (for example, one cannot report on a financial period not yet complete, or report effectively within a few days of a finished period). Also, the detail required. Simple is always best! Financial reporting should be secondary to programmatic progress because the finances are the support for the programmatic goals rather than the goals themselves.

Sometimes there is a focus primarily on cost structures rather than impact, because it is easier to measure. Fortunately, there seems in recent years to be a greater awareness that core costs (also known as overhead costs or administration costs) are critical to the ability of an organisation to achieve its mission. I would wish for all non-profits that their donors and funders understand this and wholeheartedly support it.

Every non-profit needs a cash-flow buffer at least, or a sustainability reserve at best. It would be helpful if unrestricted donations were made available for this purpose or if organisations were able to make their own decisions relating to the use of funds – whether for immediate use or saving.

I wish that funders thought more about the consequences of what they are requesting the organisations to do in terms of reporting -- Sometmes there is a focus primarily on cost structures rather than impact, because it is easier to measure.The nonprofit space is a challenging one to work in, whether you are nonprofit staff or a service provider. What do you do to take care of yourself?

Personally, I don’t find the nonprofit space challenging in the sense that I enjoy it and am familiar with the ways of working. Leading an accounting and consulting practice can be challenging though. I take out any stress by smashing tennis balls on the court.

What do you think sets your company or your services apart in the nonprofit services sector? In other words, why should nonprofits work with you?

We are familiar with the requirements of the sector, which Ziyo has been involved with for 30 years. Ziyo was previously known as CMDS, but we changed our name in 2020. Our name is derived from the Zulu word “inhliziyo”, which means heart, and that is meant to communicate that we believe in good relationships with our clients, but also that our clients are driven by a purpose that is not the bottom line. We view accounting services through a lens of relationship and not commodity, so constant communication with the organisations that we work with is important.

We work as a supportive team both inside Ziyo and outside with service providers to the sector, often with the NPO Service Providers Network but also others. As a result, we don’t try to do everything ourselves, as we recognise that there are areas of focus for others that enable them to become experts, such as with regard to PBO registration.

• Find out more about Ziyo in our #Classifieds
  
  

• Visit the Ziyo website