21Light StreetFinance

The Three Certainties Quiz

Would your books survive a funder audit tomorrow?

Ten scored questions test whether grant reimbursements are current, allocations hold up, and your books are ready for an audit. See your biggest gap and what to fix first.

Free. Three minutes. Your score appears instantly.

01

The problem nobody names

Every grant you win makes your books harder to keep.

Every funder brings different billing rules, documentation, deadlines, and disallowed costs. Soon your team is rebuilding the same report five ways, invoicing late, and preparing for the audit from memory.

Success is what breaks the spreadsheet. We build the finance operation that lets the mission grow without taking over your nights.

02

How it works

Review. Build. Then run it with your team.

We establish what is true, build the budgets and controls, and run the monthly cycle alongside your team until the system holds.

01

Review

We identify the financial risks, cash pressure, and priorities—then give you a plain-English findings letter.

Required first stage · $3,500 · about 2 weeks

02

Build

We create the budgets, grant Rulebooks, allocation rules, and monthly routines your team needs.

Scoped after the Review · about 30 days

03

Operate

We run the installed system with your bookkeeper until the monthly work can hold without us.

Scoped after the Review · 60–90 days

03

What we build

The work leaves something your team can use.

The budgets, Rulebooks, and monthly reports live in your accounts and belong to your organization. Your team can use them, your board can understand them, and an auditor can follow them.

The sample Rulebook shows the standard: one page, plain language, and every decision tied back to the grant agreement.

Organizational budgetOne plan for the whole organization
Salary matrixHow every position is funded
Grant RulebooksOne page per funder
Monthly finance pictureThe same decision-ready view every month
04

Experience behind the work

Fifteen years inside nonprofit finance.

Joshua Gonzales has worked alongside nonprofit leaders through restricted grants, reimbursement contracts, shared staff, board reporting, and audit preparation.

The system comes from solving those problems in the field. Modern tools help with the reading and repetition. The financial judgment still comes from the work.

15 yearsinside nonprofit finance
Experience across

Arts and culture · Economic development · Community development

Portrait of Joshua Gonzales
05

Fit

Built for a specific organization.

This is for you if

  • Nonprofit, roughly $250K–$1M budget
  • Three or more funding streams, and growing
  • Finance is run by the ED at night, a part-time bookkeeper, or a board treasurer
  • You can't say whether staff are allocated across grants the best way
  • You don't know if any grant is at risk of an audit finding today

Not for

  • Organizations with a full-time finance director they're happily paying $120K+
  • Organizations that aren't growing — shrinking budgets or winding down
  • First-grant startups — start with the free Rulebook

The guarantee

100% satisfaction — and you can cancel anytime.

If a month of service doesn't meet the standard we agreed to — written into your engagement letter, not left to interpretation — you don't pay for it. No long contracts, no lock-in — and if you leave, everything we built goes with you. It's your infrastructure, in your accounts.

06

Start here

Know where the pressure is. Fix the right thing first.

Take the Three Certainties Quiz for an instant score, or write to me with a line or two about your organization and its funders. I reply personally within two business days.