Steve Sweet

Who:  I am a Chartered Accountant, based in the UK and working globally, with private, public and non-profit sector experience over 15+ years.  I previously worked for large professional services companies before pivoting to environment (and socially-) focused Non-Profits working both within organisation Finance teams and more recently as a consultant. 

What: Budgets, forecasting, business plans, organisational financial planning - are all areas I can help. See more below.

Why: I really enjoy working with clients - accountants and non-accountants alike - to understand thoroughly business models, incomes, costs and obligations, and helping more insight to be gained.  I also enjoy/have a knack for training people to run analyses themselves going forward - I like to upskill the team. 

Ethos: I believe that if Non-Profit leaders and managers can understand their overall finances (and financial gaps) better they can both a) make better decisions on how to use their (finite) resources to best effect - eg hiring, staff raises, training, investing in systems or hardware - and also have more productive conversations in winning funding. Visibility, clarity and transparency all help!

Examples of previous work:

• Unpicking Free Reserves (vs cash) for a South American environmental/legal charity to give them confidence of how much money there is to invest vs keep in reserve for future.
• Similarly, developing Reserves Strategies and Policies for NGOs in Japan, the US, and other parts of South America.
• Multi-year Financial Planning, linked to operation and resource needs for successfully delivering strategy, for growing NGOs in the Environmental space (US/Europe), written as a 'Business Plan' designed to engage funders.
• Reorganising financial reporting to more clearly show the amount of/need for Indirect Cost (aka Overhead) spending for an Asian climate/business NGO to facilitate more transparent and successful fundraising for these costs.
• Developing and producing full-organisation Annual Budgets/Forecasts for several mid-sized UK and European Non-Profits, working across departments, geographies and facilitating the senior management team/Board process. 
• Scenario planing, risk management and financial modelling cuts across several of the above!

Past experience includes Climate Bonds Initiative (in-house for 3 years), Anthropecene Fixed Income Institute, Polluter Pays Project, FIMA Chile, Fair 4 All Finance (UK), INETTT and Corporate Action Japan.

Training and previous careers

I worked in Big 4 Professional Services (Deloitte in London) where I qualified as an ACA Accountant and managed audits of large companies in natural resources and property, amongst others.  I am now a Fellow of the UK Chartered Accounting Institute (the ICAEW).  I then moved within Deloitte to do environmental risk consulting for private and public clients, which I continued in the Investment Banking world.  I decided Non-Profit sector was best fit in 2016 and haven't looked back!

I have an MA in Natural Sciences and Management Studies from the University of Cambridge and a MSc (Distinction) in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London.  I believe this background enbles me to have good understanding of environmental charities in particular, in addition to the Finances.