Help a First-Year Nonprofit Stop Running Blind Financially

Legacy Paws Rescue is a veteran-owned 501(c)(3) dog rescue and sanctuary in Catawba, NC. We have been open for a year and a half and have saved 17 dogs. We are also a nurse and veteran-founded organization run entirely by one person who is far more comfortable in an emergency than in a spreadsheet.

Our financial systems are minimal. We track what comes in and what goes out, but we do not have a real budget, a chart of accounts, a financial reporting structure, or a clear picture of what it actually costs us to operate. This makes grant applications harder, board recruitment harder, and long-term planning nearly impossible.

We need a finance or accounting professional to help us set up basic nonprofit financial systems — a working budget, simple bookkeeping structure, and a financial summary we can show funders and future board members. We are not complicated. We just need a foundation.

We cannot apply for grants without financial documentation. We cannot recruit board members without showing them a clear financial picture. We cannot plan for the future without knowing what the present actually costs. Sound financial systems are not separate from saving dogs — they are what makes it possible to keep saving them.

I will pull together everything I have — receipts, bank statements, donation records, expense history — and lay it all out honestly. I will not pretend we are more organized than we are. I will learn whatever system you recommend and commit to maintaining it going forward. Clean financials are something I want badly and have not known how to build. I am ready.