Chief Accounting Officer (CAO) — Volunteer

About Mentor A Promise

Mentor A Promise (MAP) is a New York City–based nonprofit supporting children and youth ages 5–18 experiencing housing instability through mentorship, education, literacy, social-emotional learning, creative expression, career development, and community-centered opportunity. As MAP grows, strong financial stewardship is essential to protecting the organization, maintaining public trust, supporting responsible decision-making, and ensuring that resources entrusted to MAP ultimately advance its mission.

About PromiseFinance

PromiseFinance is MAP's financial management and stewardship division. The division supports the organization through accounting, financial reporting, budgeting and financial analysis, internal controls, compliance coordination, revenue and expense accounting, financial systems, audit readiness, and responsible stewardship of organizational resources. PromiseFinance should do more than record what happened. It should help MAP understand What happened? Is it accurate? Is it properly supported? Are our controls working? What does it mean? What requires attention next?

Role Overview

Mentor A Promise is seeking an experienced and highly principled Chief Accounting Officer (CAO) to lead MAP's accounting function and strengthen the financial infrastructure required for a growing nonprofit organization. The CAO is MAP's senior accounting executive responsible for the integrity of the organization's books and records, accounting policies and procedures, financial close, financial reporting, internal accounting controls, audit readiness, and accounting-team development.

The CAO must build an accounting function capable of producing reliable financial information, identifying problems early, maintaining appropriate documentation, strengthening controls, and giving leadership confidence that MAP's financial records accurately reflect the organization's activities. The central question is Can MAP trust its numbers—and can we demonstrate why those numbers should be trusted?

Key Responsibilities

Accounting Leadership

• Lead MAP's organization-wide accounting function.
• Establish clear accounting responsibilities, workflows, standards, and review processes.
• Develop accounting policies and procedures appropriate for MAP's size, complexity, and growth.
• Provide technical accounting guidance to the accounting team.
• Review significant or unusual accounting matters.
• Strengthen the quality, timeliness, consistency, and documentation of accounting work.
• Build an accounting culture centered on accuracy, accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement.

General Ledger & Financial Close

• Oversee the integrity of MAP's general ledger and financial close process, including appropriate review of:
  • Cash and bank activity
  • Revenue and contributions
  • Grants
  • Accounts payable
  • Accounts receivable, where applicable
  • Expenses
  • Prepaid expenses
  • Accruals
  • Fixed assets
  • Donated goods and services
  • Restricted and unrestricted activity
  • Payroll or personnel-related accounting, where applicable
  • Earned revenue and other organizational activities
  • Journal entries
  • Account reconciliations
  • Supporting schedules
• Develop a disciplined monthly and year-end close process with clear responsibilities, deadlines, supporting documentation, review, and resolution of outstanding items.

Financial Reporting

• Oversee preparation and review of accurate and timely financial reports.
• Ensure financial information reconciles to underlying accounting records.
• Develop appropriate management reporting for executive leadership.
• Help leadership understand significant variances, trends, unusual transactions, and accounting issues.
• Support financial reporting to the Board and appropriate committees.
• Ensure reports distinguish appropriately among accounting results, budgets, forecasts, and management estimates.
• Improve reporting as MAP's operations become more complex.

Nonprofit Accounting

• Provide leadership regarding accounting matters specific to nonprofit organizations, including:
  • Contribution revenue
  • Conditional and unconditional contributions
  • Donor restrictions
  • Net assets with and without donor restrictions
  • Grant accounting
  • Donated goods and services
  • Functional expense classification
  • Program, management/general, and fundraising expenses
  • Restricted funds and releases from restriction
  • In-kind contributions
  • Special events and fundraising activities
  • Earned-income activities
  • Appropriate documentation and substantiation
• The CAO should ensure that the accounting treatment reflects the actual substance of MAP's activities rather than simply the easiest way to record a transaction.

Internal Controls

• Build and continuously improve MAP's financial-control environment. This may include controls surrounding:
  • Cash receipts and disbursements
  • Bank access
  • Purchasing
  • Expense approvals
  • Reimbursements
  • Vendor setup
  • Payment authorization
  • Credit/debit card activity
  • Journal entries
  • Account reconciliations
  • Revenue recognition
  • Contributions and grants
  • Restricted funds
  • Financial-system access
  • Documentation retention
  • Month-end close
  • Financial reporting
• Where complete segregation of duties is difficult because of MAP's volunteer structure or organizational size, the CAO should identify the risk and establish appropriate compensating controls and independent review.

Accounting Policies & Documentation

• Develop and maintain appropriate accounting documentation, including:
  • Accounting policies and procedures
  • Chart-of-accounts standards
  • Month-end close procedures
  • Reconciliation standards
  • Journal-entry procedures
  • Revenue-recognition guidance
  • Expense-classification guidance
  • Documentation requirements
  • Approval matrices
  • Accounting calendars
  • Year-end procedures
  • Financial record-retention practices
  • Accounting-team SOPs
• MAP's accounting knowledge should belong to the organization—not exist solely in one person's memory.

QuickBooks & Financial Systems

• Maintain an appropriate chart of accounts.
• Improve accounting-system configuration.
• Establish user roles and access.
• Review bank-feed activity.
• Maintain appropriate classifications.
• Strengthen reconciliation processes.
• Improve supporting documentation.
• Identify duplicate, incorrect, stale, or unusual transactions.
• Establish reliable financial workflows.
• Coordinate integrations with other systems where appropriate.
• Work with PromiseShield, PromiseStack, and other appropriate leaders regarding financial-system access, cybersecurity, privacy, and data governance.

Revenue & Earned-Income Accounting

• As MAP develops publishing, merchandise, creative products, licensing, e-commerce, royalties, sponsorships, and other potential revenue streams, provide accounting leadership regarding how these activities are recorded and reported.
• Work with MAP's legal, tax, finance, and executive leadership as appropriate on matters involving:
  • Sales and earned revenue
  • Royalties
  • Licensing
  • Cost of goods
  • Inventory
  • Sales tax
  • Unrelated business income considerations
  • Sponsorships
  • Contributions versus exchange transactions
  • Refunds and returns
  • Payment-processing activity
  • Revenue-sharing arrangements
• The CAO provides accounting leadership but should not independently make legal or tax determinations requiring qualified legal or tax counsel.

Grants & Restricted Funding

• Partner with PromiseGiving and program leadership to strengthen grant financial management. Responsibilities may include:
  • Reviewing financial terms of grants
  • Establishing appropriate accounting treatment
  • Tracking restricted funding
  • Supporting grant budgets
  • Monitoring expenditures against restrictions
  • Reconciling grant activity
  • Supporting financial grant reporting
  • Maintaining appropriate supporting documentation
  • Identifying potential compliance issues early
• Fundraising records, accounting records, grant records, and program records should tell a consistent financial story.

Audit & Year-End Readiness

• Build MAP so that audit and year-end preparation become ongoing disciplines rather than annual emergencies. Responsibilities include:
  • Maintaining organized supporting schedules
  • Preparing reconciliations
  • Supporting confirmations and documentation requests
  • Coordinating accounting components of external audits or financial reviews
  • Maintaining audit-ready records
  • Tracking accounting findings and recommendations
  • Developing corrective-action plans where necessary
  • Following through on remediation
  • Supporting preparation of information required for tax and regulatory filings
• Work appropriately with independent auditors, accountants, tax professionals, legal counsel, and organizational leadership while respecting auditor independence and professional boundaries.

Tax & Regulatory Coordination

• Support MAP's compliance with applicable financial reporting and tax obligations in coordination with qualified professionals. Potential areas include:
  • Form 990 preparation support
  • State charitable filings
  • Payroll-related reporting
  • Sales-tax matters
  • Unrelated business taxable income
  • Contractor reporting
  • Contribution reporting
  • Financial information required for regulatory filings
• The CAO should recognize the boundary between accounting leadership and legal/tax advice and escalate specialized matters when appropriate.

Build & Lead the Accounting Team

• The Chief Accounting Officer is expected to build a strong accounting function rather than