Board and governance support
CFO support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporation boards
We provide CFO-level support to corporation boards: board-ready financial reporting, governance and funding oversight, and turnaround work, without the cost of a full-time chief financial officer.
The gap this fills
A lot of corporations sit in an awkward middle. They are too large to run on bookkeeping and an annual report alone, with several funding streams, staff and real decisions to make, but nowhere near large enough to employ a chief financial officer.
The usual result is that the CEO carries the financial load on top of everything else, and the board sees the position once a year, after it is too late to change it. This service is the middle option.
What a board actually gets
- Reporting a non-financial director can read. Most corporation boards include members without an accounting background. Reporting they cannot interpret is not reporting — it is paper.
- Someone who can answer a funder’s question. Funders ask hard, specific questions about how their money was spent. Having a straight answer ready is the difference between a routine acquittal and a problem.
- Problems surfaced a quarter early. Cash shortfalls, over-committed programmes and funding that will not roll over are all visible months ahead if somebody is looking.
- Continuity through a change of CEO. Corporations are unusually exposed when a CEO leaves, because the financial knowledge often leaves with them.
Governance, not just numbers
Directors of a corporation registered under the CATSI Act carry real duties, and most directors are volunteers giving their time to their community. They deserve support that takes those duties seriously and assumes no prior familiarity.
That means being clear about what the board is responsible for, what it has to report and when, and what the conditions attached to the corporation’s funding actually require. Where a decision has a governance dimension as well as a financial one, we will say so.
Who you are actually getting
This work is led by Alison Vidal, a Registered Public Accountant (MIPA) who founded this practice in 2013 to provide governance and business advisory services to Aboriginal community controlled organisations, went on to found ABC Foundation Ltd, and has served as independent adviser to a corporation registered under the CATSI Act through a governance and operational recovery. She holds an MBA, a Master of Professional Accounting and the GAICD.
That recovery experience is the part that matters here. A good deal of CFO work in this sector is not steady-state reporting. It is a board that needs to know how bad things are and what can still be done about it. The other specialism worth naming is grant acquittals and grant conditions, which is where corporations most often come unstuck.
The full detail is on our who-we-are page, with links you can check.
When corporations call us
These are the situations we most often come into. None of them is a failure. They are points where a corporation has outgrown the arrangement it had.
- A new CEO has started and wants to know what they have inherited.
- The audit came back qualified and the board wants it not to happen again.
- A funder has asked a question nobody can readily answer.
- The corporation has grown faster than its systems.
- The corporation is in difficulty and the board wants a clear-eyed view of it.
If the corporation is in difficulty
Boards facing a compliance notice, a qualified audit, or the possibility of special administration need a clear-eyed view of the position before they need anything else. See special administration support, including what a board can do well before it gets there.
One firm, two arms
Vital Consult is the CFO and advisory arm of the practice and Vital Money is the registered tax agent arm. For a corporation that means the CFO support, the bookkeeping and the annual reporting come from the same team rather than three suppliers who have to be introduced to each other. You can see the wider practice at vitalconsult.com.au.
Frequently asked questions
What does a part-time CFO actually do for a corporation?
Three things, mostly: turns the accounts into something a board can act on, watches the position between reporting dates so problems surface early, and answers the questions funders and auditors ask. It is the layer between bookkeeping, which records what happened, and the board, which has to decide what to do about it.
How is this different from just having a good bookkeeper?
A bookkeeper keeps the record accurate. A CFO reads it. If your corporation is asking whether it can afford to take on a programme, whether a funding shortfall is coming, or what a qualified audit means for next year, that is a CFO question — and it is not fair to expect a bookkeeper to answer it.
Do we need this if our corporation is small?
Often not. Many small corporations are well served by bookkeeping and annual reporting alone. This tends to matter once there are multiple funding sources with different conditions, staff, or a board that needs to make real decisions between meetings.
Can you attend board meetings?
Yes, in person or by video. Directors frequently need someone in the room who can explain what the numbers mean and answer questions on the spot — particularly where the board includes members without a financial background, which is the norm rather than the exception.