The mission grew.
Your systems didn't.

Novum Partners is a strategic management firm that integrates strategy, finance, and people for nonprofits under one accountable team that operates from Month 1 of Stewardship, rather than the six-to-twelve months an internal team typically requires to reach steady state. Novum delivers fractional COO, CFO, CHRO, and CTO leadership, fund accounting and monthly close, grant compliance and restricted-fund tracking, audit readiness and Form 990 preparation support, outsourced HR and multi-state payroll, board development and governance, donor development strategy, executive director coaching and succession planning, and the operating cadence that holds the whole organization together. Most engagements include weekly time with the executive director and monthly time with the board chair or governance committee. Novum is built specifically for the mid-market nonprofit that has outgrown a bookkeeper but is too lean for a full back office.

Restricted fund accounting is one of the most common failure points in mid-market nonprofits, and it shows up first in audits, then in donor confidence, then in IRS notices. Novum Partners builds restricted-fund tracking inside the general ledger (not on a side spreadsheet), reconciles every restricted balance every month, drafts the grant compliance schedule that ties each grant to its outcomes and reporting calendar, and produces the restricted-fund roll-forward that auditors and major donors actually ask to see. Novum also coaches development teams on what to accept and what to decline at the gift agreement stage. A poorly written restriction can lock a nonprofit out of its own money for years. Prevention is cheaper than cleanup.

Novum Partners' core engagement size for nonprofits is $5M to $50M annual revenue. The sweet spot is the nonprofit that has outgrown a part-time bookkeeper and a generalist HR consultant but is still too lean for a CFO, CHRO, and COO on the payroll. Novum is intentionally not the right fit for very small nonprofits where the work is bigger than the budget, or large nonprofits with full internal C-suites and finance teams who need internal hires rather than a firm. Inside the $5M to $50M range, Novum serves direct-service nonprofits, faith-based ministries, Christian schools, community foundations, faith-driven think tanks, donor-advised fund sponsors, and missions organizations operating across the United States and internationally.

Yes. Novum Partners treats audit readiness as a year-round discipline, not a Q1 fire drill. Novum maintains board-approved policies, restricted-fund reconciliations, fixed-asset schedules, payroll tax filings, contribution acknowledgment letters, related-party disclosures, and grant compliance documentation inside a live audit binder that updates every month. When the auditor arrives, the prepared-by-client list is already done and most fieldwork can be remote. For Form 990, Novum prepares Schedules A through R, drafts Schedule O narratives that tell the mission story, and reviews the return before it ships. Novum does not file the 990 itself, which stays with the CPA or auditor, but delivers a clean package that typically reduces audit fees and turnaround time materially.

Strong nonprofit governance starts with clarity on what the board is actually for: fiduciary oversight, strategic direction, executive accountability, and (usually) major-donor relationships. Novum Partners runs board health assessments, drafts or refreshes board policies (conflict of interest, whistleblower, document retention, executive compensation, gift acceptance, reserves), designs the board calendar and committee structure, builds the board dashboard that replaces 80-slide reports with one page of decision-grade information, and trains chairs on how to run meetings that produce decisions. For nonprofits transitioning a founder, Novum runs the founder-to-board handoff explicitly. For nonprofits with a passive board, Novum redesigns it. Novum does not recruit board members itself, but coaches the nominating committee through the process.

Yes. Novum Partners advises on donor development as a strategic management discipline, not a fundraising sales tactic. Novum builds the major-donor pipeline (identification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship), designs the gift-acceptance and naming-rights policies, drafts the case for support tied to the strategic plan, partners with the executive director and board chair on top-of-house gift conversations, and designs the development team org chart and compensation philosophy. Novum does not personally ask donors for money, which stays with the executive director, board, and development team. Novum makes sure the infrastructure, the strategy, and the storytelling that those conversations require are in place. For capital campaigns, Novum also models the financial impact and designs the post-campaign operating plan.

The fear inside every nonprofit professionalization conversation is that operational rigor will hollow out the mission. Novum Partners is built to prevent that. Every engagement begins with the Soul layer of the 4-S Framework: mission clarity, values alignment, leadership conviction, before Novum touches strategy, structure, or systems. Novum does not import a corporate operating model and impose it on a mission organization. Novum designs the operating model around the mission, hires and coaches against the mission, and builds dashboards that measure mission outcomes alongside financial outcomes. The result is a nonprofit that runs with Fortune-500-grade discipline without losing what makes it worth running. Operational excellence is an act of stewardship, not a threat to mission.

Yes. Novum Partners serves nonprofits operating internationally, including United States-headquartered nonprofits with international program operations, missions and humanitarian organizations working across multiple countries, and global nonprofits with multi-currency financials and international staff. The legal employer remains the client; Novum advises on international payroll partners, multi-currency accounting structure in QuickBooks Online Advanced or Sage Intacct, US reporting for foreign grants and expenditures (including Schedule F of Form 990), international audit coordination, and the operational infrastructure for short-term and long-term international staff deployment. Novum does not establish foreign entities or provide foreign tax advice, which stays with international counsel and local accounting partners. Novum is also a natural fit for nonprofits serving the Jewish community internationally, alongside the broad ecumenical and interfaith service across the nonprofit practice.