Hi. I am the treasurer for an active, but small community theater organization in the suburbs of Denver, CO. I am also a (sic) professional lighting and set designer. I am one of the primary technical wizards for our company, its resident lighting designer, occasional set designer and also direct on occasion. I say all of this to give you a sense that I do a lot more than simply manage the books for our company.

I write all checks for the organization, manage our bank account(s), create budgets for each of our productions, which are then approved by our Board of Directors before said productions go into production, oversee, but do not manage our box office, oversee, but do not manage our publicity efforts, and track all expenditures for each production to assure the Board that such expenditures are being controlled, and compile financial data and projections for our fundraising efforts. I prepare a monthly written financial report for the Board which presents bank balances, production results and budget tracking reports, create financial summaries and projections, and try to identify both positive and negative trends that I assume will be of interest to the Board in those reports. I handle relations with our insurance company, our landlord, and other businesses with which we have financial relationships. I also handle the filing of our tax returns, tax reporting of payments to individuals we do business with, and handle all State reporting requirements for our status as a non-profit organization. I probably spend an average of about six to ten hours per week handling all of these responsibilities.

I am not aware of published guidelines for the Treasurer function for a non-profit. We are a hands-on organization, and members of our Board are typically more than willing to jump in whenever there is a need to get something accomplished. I inherited the role from a predecessor, who took the time to teach me how she handled the responsibilities. I have started doing a few different things, which reflect my analytical background, but the basic accounting tasks are essential, and set in stone. We use very basic accounting software. I think I would prefer to convert us to a general ledger system, but it is not something that will make much of a difference to anyone but me.