2. How Long Have You Been in Your Present Position? in Nashville Cares?

1. Name, position. Mr. Robert Adams. Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Adams is a balding man of medium height. As we walked into the office, Adams was seated behind his desk wearing a brightly colored striped shirt. He spoke with a strong voice and seemed confident in all of his answers, despite the fact that he hadn’t seen the questions before hand. 2. How long have you been in your present position? In Nashville Cares? Since 1992. Came right away as a CFO of the organization. Came when the organization had 7 employees and no business and finance connected positions with a $700,000 budget. Knew the former CEO, convinced her they needed a separate position in order to grow and keep accounting in order (used to be accounting in a shoe-box – literally). Has been with the organization for 19 years. 3. Where did you go to school? What did you study? Robert Adams attended Tennessee Tech. Has an undergraduate degree in Biology and a graduate MBA degree. Worked at the United Way for about 15 months after graduate school and then joined Nashville Cares. 4. Briefly describe your leadership role. What are your responsibilities and how are you involved? How did you get involved? Responsible for all financial processes and financial documentation. As the organization doesn’t have chief operations officer, Mr. Adams is responsible for all internal finance-related processes, including payrolls for the human resources. He is also on the Executive Leadership Strategy team. Adams also takes care of some HR-related issues. He prepares the financial statements and communicates with the board often. 5. What motivates you to keep working in this area? What discourages you as you work on this issue? Constant challenge is something that keeps Mr. Adams in this position for so long. As soon as he seems to be getting bored, new things start happening at Nashville Cares: change of offices, expansion of services, growth of grants and budget. He really found it difficult to come up with anything that really discouraged him throughout all these years. He seems really connected with the mission of the organization – has been interested in the HIV/AIDS topic since undergraduate years when some of his friends from fraternity were tested HIV positive, wanted to work on the subject. He was also interested from a biology perspective, as he majored in biology as an undergraduate. Still keeps the interest, eyes glint brightly when he talks about it. Very enthusiastic. 6. Define the public “need” or public “problem” this nonprofit seeks to address. “The ‘need’ is tremendous” – direct quote from Mr. Adams. He named the following issues being resolved with the help of Nashville Cares – housing needs, transportation needs, nutrition, psychological needs. He mentioned that they definitely don’t cover all the needs with the current capacity simply because it is literally impossible to do this. Also due to a number of restrictions from the government, who is the primary funder (e.g. medical and dental assistance would be given to clients only if their insurance covers less than $1500, but sometimes clients have insurance that cover more than that, but they are still in great need of help, however Nashville Cares cannot provide it). Feels that the organization can never meet the entire need of the cause, but they try to do their best within their means. 7. What are the primary resources used to serve the customer? What are you main sources of funding? Has that changed overtime? Is your organization experiencing (or not) the shift away from direct grants to nonprofit organizations and toward providing aid to individuals in the form of voucher- type subsidies? The primary funder is federal government. Insurance/Medical assistance grants go from federal to state and then the state authorities give the money to United Way and the latter provides the funding to Nashville Cares. The main source of funding hasn’t changed much overtime – government grants are still the predominant funding sources. The organization however isn’t particularly worried to be as reliable on this type of funding as the topic of HIV/AIDS has been an increasingly pressing issue with the government and the funding hasn’t been decreased in this area. Thus in order to fulfill their mission, Mr. Adams believes the organization will be getting enough money in the upcoming years. They have to bid for grants, however with a multi-year experience in this sphere they have always won the grants. Some of the grants are 3-year grants, others ate 5-year. The bids are competitive, which means the organization is bidding against other organizations for the money. Adams feels Nashville CARES receives the money not only because of their excellent services, but also because of their longevity and experience within the field. Small amounts of money from the state, primarily federally funded. Money comes for different reasons—care, prevention. They could receive more money if they add more diseases (syphilis) to their testing regiment. 8. Is there a link with the board on financial matters? How much power does the board have? Advising? Supervising? The board constantly supervises financials. Financial committee of the organization meets to review financial statements, then the documents are presented to the board and the board has to agree with the budget for upcoming year. The board generally takes an active position and participates in the organization’s everyday activities. They meet regularly and have their say in both strategic initiatives and day-to-day operations. 9. What are principal mechanisms by which Nashville Cares is held accountable? Auditing? (there are auditing documents available on givingmatters) Descriptive reporting? Who holds you accountable and who do you report to? What is the procedure? Who is the chief executive accountable to? The organization is held accountable in numerous ways. The executive leadership strategy team holds leadership team accountable, the board holds the executive leadership team accountable. Moreover, due to predominantly government funding, the non-profit undergoes numerous auditing procedures. They have fiscal and formal visits quarterly. And they are being audited by Craft CPA regularly (the auditing company has lots of experience in auditing this type of organizations, they do audits for United Way). Audit documents are available for public view. When asked about the auditing affecting the operation of the business, Adams was quick to respond that, no, the auditing did not hamper their organization. Instead, he felt that the auditing was a boon, keeping the organization accountable and focused on ways to get things done. 10. How does the organization manage to sustain financial stability? How does it maintain autonomy? (Mission?) They just keep faithful to their mission. And Mr. Adams mentioned that such accountability and transparency actually helps the organization to maintain and keep to the mission as they constantly keep track of where they are investing the money and what is the most effective way to do it. 11. Is there a distinct strategic plan that Nashville Cares have? How’s the annual budget put together? Why in 2011 Gov’t funding was subdivided into govnt grants and govnt/insurance assistance compared to last year? Nashville Cares has a distinct strategic plan that is put together every 3 years. This fall is actually when the new strategic plan is going to be developed for the next 3-year period. The budget is put together by the CFO, reviewed by the financial committee, and then goes to the CEO and the board for review and approval. The two budgets differ in separation of government funding due to the fact that they want to be more transparent and show what part of the grant goes into programming and what into medical assistance. Mr. Adams said that there is a big difference in the type of spending. The smaller part of the grant is actually spent on people they see, who come to the organization personally either for testing, educational activities, psychological support, etc. The larger part of the grant is spent through medical institutions throughout the state to help with health and dental assistance. They don’t necessarily see the clients whom they serve. Adams actually mentioned that the strategic plan is a little behind schedule, but he did not seem overly concerned about it. He believes they will hash it out soon. 12. Has the structure of costs changed? In what ways? Why? The structure hasn’t changed much. The main portion of spending is still on dental/insurance assistance. There has been a slight increase in preventive education and case management services, as they implement Nashville Cares- based testing. 13. How is strategic planning linked to implementation? Strategic goals and objectives are constantly reviewed and the organization has a willingness to make changes when necessary, when they are needed. Mr. Adams gave an example, how the chief development officer was changed due to the fact that the development department just wasn’t doing very well and changed had to be made. A new person was taken to fill the position. One of the ways the organization maintains such a strong commitment to the cause is by being willing to make changes when necessary. Restructuring is always done with a purpose. The organization seems proactive and unwilling to accept failure or laziness. 14. Any partnerships or formal/informal collaborations you’re aware of? Many partnerships and informal collaborations in the community, numerous medical institutions with which Nashville Cares works (Vanderbilt Care Center for example), but no formal collaborations are now seen as necessary. Mr. Adams repeated numerous times that they are willing to collaborate unless it will require them to have a contractor status. 15. How do you demonstrate both effectiveness and efficiency in your job? “I just come to work and do things. I don’t approach it in a scientific way or I would have been lost in this process. By simply doing I keep my effectiveness and efficiency for many years, I guess. And I plan to keep doing things”. 16. How do you retain employees? What is your motivation strategy? Firstly, the approach to management. There is always room for recognition and achievement. There is executive leadership strategy team (CEO, CFO, Chief development officer, chief programming officer), who are more of big- picture people, they look at the strategy, they consolidate paper-work. However, they are not the ones who manage day-to-day operations, they are not in charge of the process itself. They don’t want to know how testing of HIV will be implemented, who will be in charge of cleaning restrooms, who will be meeting clients and what kinds of welcome packets they will receive. Nashville Cares has a leadership team for this. The latter managers feel responsibility for the processes to run smoothly, they have people who they are in charge of and they feel they are actually in leadership positions. Secondly, Nashville Cares tries to keep the compensations up-to-date. Mr. Adams mentioned that there is realization that many of the current workers would have stayed in any case due to their profound attachment to the mission of this organization, however, the executive management tries not to abuse this attachment and combine it with comfortable work conditions and relatively high salaries (compared to other non-profits). There are also bonuses. (He gave some numbers – over the years the annual salary of a social worker has been increased from $24,000 to $30,000).