Vista Del Mar Child & Family Services

(Los Angeles, CA)

Title: Chief Financial Officer

View Position Brochure Here

THE ORGANIZATION:

Mission

Vista Del Mar provides a trauma-responsive continuum of services to empower children, youth, and families in Southern California to lead fulfilling lives.

Vision

Visa Del Mar envisions a community where all children and families are equipped and prepared to live productive, fulfilling lives.

About

Vista Del Mar serves the changing needs of all children and families in our community by offering high-quality treatment programs for children with significant emotional, social, learning, and developmental disabilities. In a safe and nurturing environment, Vista Del Mar provides a range of exceptional programs in education, autism, adoption, residential care, prevention, and early intervention.

Founded in 1908 as The Jewish Orphan’s Home of Southern California, Vista Del Mar originally provided homes to children whose parents were unable to care for them because of illness, poverty, or death.  Over the last century, Vista has evolved into a preeminent, non-sectarian agency serving the needs of children and families by offering a broad array of high-quality treatment programs for youth with mental health, emotional, and behavioral problems, as well as those with developmental difficulties.

Each year, Visa Del Mar serves more than 5,000 families in need, and the demand for services continues to grow. Services include therapeutic residential treatment for emotionally disturbed youth; a non-public, special needs school for emotionally disturbed youth and children with autism (K-12); domestic and international adoption services; a network of mental health and case management services for children at risk of out-of-home placement; mental health services for students in schools throughout Los Angeles; diagnostic and therapeutic services for children with autism; individual and group counseling for children and families; educational assessment and treatment; child abuse prevention services; and early childhood care and provider training.

Residential and school clients are referred to Vista Del Mar by the County Departments of Children & Family Services, Mental Health, and Probation, and various School Districts in Southern California.  Outpatient and community-based programs include referrals from a variety of public and private agencies, as well as self-referred clients.  The ethnicities of Vista Del Mar’s clients are 41 percent Latino; 26 percent Caucasian; 22 percent African American; 3 percent Asian/Pacific Islanders; 0.5 percent Native Americans; and 7.5 percent Multi-ethnic/Other.  78 percent are under age 18 and 22 percent are older.  Across all programs, approximately 80 percent of clients come from low-income backgrounds. Vista Del Mar’s current annual operating budget is approximately $40 million with a dedicated staff of nearly 500 full-time employees.

For more information, please visit www.vistadelmar.org.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Vista Del Mar (VDM) is well-positioned to benefit from an innovative, strategic, and collaborative finance professional. Reporting to President & CEO, Lena Wilson, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) provides executive-level leadership and planning to ensure the financial and operational success of the organization’s strategic goals.  The CFO heads process improvement initiatives to ensure accurate reporting; maximizes revenues within each contract; and ensures optimal utilization of resources.

The CFO leads successful growth and change related to all areas of agency administration, including Operations and Finance, such that VDM earns the distinction of being an “employer of choice” in the nonprofit community and continues to be recognized for excellence in nonprofit administrative management.  In coordination with the Chief Program Officer, the CFO oversees quality assurance and quality improvement, and ensures continuing adherence to the standards of the Joint Commission.

The CFO directs all of the organization’s financial and risk management including overall financial functions, systems, and reporting; budgeting, audit, internal controls, and regulatory compliance; cash management and investments; financial/strategic planning; credit financing capital needs, debt structure and service; insurance programs and contracts management.  The CFO staffs the Finance, Audit and Investment committees of the Board of Directors.

Essential duties and responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Provides executive-level leadership and planning to ensure the financial and operational success of the organization’s strategic goals.
• Directs the financial resources of the agency, including accounting, finance and treasury following generally accepted accounting principles, contract requirements and internal policies and procedures.
• Manages the development and monitoring of budgets; develops financial business plans and forecasts.  Directs the development and utilization of activity-based financial analyses to provide insight into the organization’s operations and business plans.
• Directs the development of key Metric Indicators and dashboards to highlight the financial status of program earnings.  Serves as a member of the executive team to lead the agency-wide long and short-term planning process and participate in the overall strategic leadership of the organization.
• Provides direction and leadership to the overall planning, utilization and operation of the property and operations functions and other administrative functions of the organization.
• Directs special projects related to Finance, including capital projects and financing. Manages long-term financial planning and projections.
• Evaluates the organization’s compliance function and recommend and implement changes designed to address any gaps between requirements and actual outcomes, including process optimization.
• Directs the relationship between programs and Finance for budgeting.  Analyzes and improves the budgeting process by clarifying workflow and mandating the active engagement of departments in financial responsibility.
• Engages the committees of the Board of Directors as needed to develop short-, medium-, and long-term financial plans and projections, including audit review and investment management.
• Directs the finance department to ensure proper maintenance of all accounting systems and functions, maintenance of appropriate internal controls and financial procedures.
• Ensures timeliness, accuracy, and usefulness of financial and management reporting for federal and state funders, foundations, and the Board of Directors.  Oversees the preparation and communication of monthly, quarterly and annual financial statements, coordinates audits and timely filing of tax returns.
• Serves as an active and vital member of the Performance Quality Improvement Committee, identifying and communicating needed improvement plans throughout the departments and programs of VDM.  Works closely with the PQI Coordinator to assess and communicate progress on improvement plans to all staff and the Board of Directors.
• Maintains working knowledge of current management practices in the nonprofit sector through reading, participation in seminars and other educational opportunities and personal contacts and memberships in the field.

TRAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS DESIRED:

The CFO should be a strategic thinker with strong conceptual and analytical skills, and the ability to analyze problems, measure performance, evaluate results and identify alternative solutions to arrive at mission-appropriate solutions. The CFO creates trust and confidence that financial information is reliable, accurate, timely and transparent and can clearly articulate the meaning and import of the data. With experience to provide leadership at an institutional level, the successful candidate should be a problem-solver with the ability to be responsive to short-term concerns while developing long-range strategies. The CFO should also be goal-oriented, well-disciplined and a hands-on administrator who can create systems and procedures and be able to implement them effectively. 

The successful candidate will have outstanding interpersonal skills and be an effective and persuasive communicator, both verbally and in writing. Strong presentation skills and the ability to communicate detailed information and data across all functions and levels of the organization are expected. The CFO must operate with a collaborative work model; therefore, the successful candidate must be diplomatic yet decisive, exhibiting solid listening skills and considering input from various constituencies before making decisions. As the CFO will be responsible for leading and directing staff, fostering teamwork, and effectively collaborating with other stakeholders, the ideal candidate will be an enthusiastic and persuasive leader who inspires trust and can quickly command respect and support, both internally and externally. The CFO will be accessible and possess the ability to adapt and respond effectively to change while continuing to lead and mentor staff. The person in this position should have high ethical standards and be a model of integrity and fairness, operating transparently. A sincere dedication to the mission of Vista Del Mar and the organization’s core values of empowerment, equity, and excellence is essential.

CAREER TRACK LEADING TO THIS POSITION:

Competitive candidates will have a track record of proven financial leadership experience gained through increasingly responsible positions ideally within a complex social services organization with diverse program areas and multiple funding sources. Experience as a CFO or senior financial manager in a dynamic nonprofit organization funded through disparate contracting arrangements with a wide variety of governmental agencies is strongly preferred. 

Experience overseeing accounting, budgeting, controls, and reporting is essential and expected. The CFO will bring a keen understanding of budgeting and accounting principles, organizational policies, procedures, systems, and objectives, as well as knowledge of fiscal management. The ability to research and prepare comprehensive statistical and narrative accounting reports and to analyze and interpret complex data is also important. Experience working with volunteer Board members is important. Proven successful team leadership is also required and successful candidates must demonstrate a clearly articulated collaborative and flexible management style that supports a positive team culture, well-being of staff, regular feedback, high performance, and employee retention. The ability to develop and maintain effective professional working relationships at all levels of the organization is imperative.  

EDUCATION:

A Bachelor’s degree is required; an MBA and/or CPA or related advanced degree is preferred.

COMPENSATION & ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

The annual salary range for this position will be $220,000 to $260,000 based on experience. A comprehensive benefits package will be provided. This is a full-time exempt position with the expectation of regular in-person work at Vista Del Mar’s West Los Angeles campus; a hybrid remote work schedule with a maximum of one to two days of telecommuting per week will be considered after six months of employment.

Vista Del Mar is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. Therefore, all qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information. Vista Del Mar will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations as part of this commitment.