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If your board treasurer is the one reconciling accounts every month, you’re not alone.
A lot of small nonprofits run this way. It feels practical. It’s free. It seems to work.
Until it doesn’t.
The problem isn’t that your treasurer is bad at what they do. It’s that you’re asking one person to do two jobs that aren’t supposed to overlap. Its recordkeeping and oversight. And even though they were volunt-told to perform the job as part of their treasurer duties, Accounting might not be their specialty!
What the Board Treasurer Role Is Actually For
The treasurer’s job is oversight.
They’re there to ask the hard questions. To make sure leadership is managing finances responsibly. To represent the board’s fiduciary responsibility to donors, funders, and the public.
That means reviewing financial reports. Flagging things that look off. Helping the board understand what the numbers mean and whether the organization is on solid ground.
It is not a data-entry role. It’s not a reconciliation role. And it’s definitely not a “close the books every month” role.
Oversight and recordkeeping are two separate things. When one person does both, the whole point of having a treasurer, which is having an independent review — disappears.
What Happens When One Person Does Both
When the treasurer is also doing the accounting, you also lose something important: separation of duties.
Separation of duties means the person doing the financial work isn’t the same person overseeing it. That check exists for a reason. It catches mistakes and it deters fraud. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because the structure doesn’t give any single person unchecked access to both sides of the ledger.
When one person handles both side, that check is gone.
There’s also an operational risk. If the treasurer steps down, retires, or just gets too busy — the institutional knowledge walks out the door with them. You’re left trying to reconstruct months of work with no handoff and no documentation.
It’s a fragile setup that most organizations don’t realize how until they’re in the middle of it.
What Auditors and Funders See
Auditors look for this. They have a term for it: a material weakness in internal controls.
When they find it, it shows up in the management letter — the document that goes to your board. It’s not a small thing – and it signals that your financial oversight structure has a gap.
Grant funders are paying attention too. More of them are asking about financial infrastructure before they award. “Who does your books?” and “Who oversees the books?” should have two different answers.
What the Fix Looks Like
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. But the goal is simple: separate the two functions.
Get someone handling the monthly accounting — whether that’s an outsourced accounting firm or an in-house hire — who reports to leadership. Then let your treasurer do their actual job: ask questions, review reports, and provide the financial oversight your board is supposed to provide.
This kind of structure protects your organization. It also protects your treasurer from a role they probably shouldn’t be filling in the first place.
The accounting function needs someone accountable for the work on a consistent, monthly basis. The treasurer function needs someone who can look at the output of that work with fresh eyes and ask good questions. Those are different skill sets, and they work better when they’re held by different people.
How to Have the Conversation
Sometimes this can feel awkward to bring up. Nobody wants to tell a loyal board member that you’re restructuring their role.
But here’s what usually happens: most treasurers are relieved.
They signed up to provide financial oversight — not to spend three hours a month in QuickBooks. When you frame it that way, it lands well. You’re not taking something away from them. You’re giving them their job back.
A good opening question: “Is the accounting work really the best use of your time as a board member?”
The answer is almost always no.
Not Sure Where Your Setup Stands?
If you’re not sure whether your current arrangement creates risk, let’s talk through it.
A 30-minute call is usually enough to give you a clear picture — what’s working, what’s not, and what a better structure would look like for your organization. No obligation.