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I have worked with many CFO’s in my career and Carla Brandt has exceeded in both skill and competence anyone I had worked with.   When Carla Brandt opted to transition into her own business after being with The Arthritis Foundation for almost 12 years and working with her personally, almost 9 of those years, was a devastating day for me and our organization.  She ran our financial department with such diligence and understanding to ensure all the staff understood their responsibility to our donors and constituents.  I had complete trust and faith in her ability and her dedication to ensure we operated at a high level.

Carla, with Brandt Financial Services, saved our agency.  I learned about Carla from a dear friend.  I had just become CEO of a nonprofit (first job as a CEO) and our Director of Finance walked out after two weeks of me being there.  I called Carla and she came to the rescue.  The organization was straddling two different financial soft wares, Quickbooks and Blackbaud’s Financial Edge.

Carla was able to help us get all our finances into  Financial Edge.  She taught us to allocate the overhead, helped me with payroll, helped me create a budget, designed a template for all staff expenses (that we still use today), helped connect Raisers Edge (donation software) with Financial Edge, helped me hire a new Director of Finance, coached them through the first 3 months of their job, presented at Finance and Board meetings, met with our auditors, and worked with me for almost a year to bring best practices to our  accounting department .

I would highly recommend Brandt Financial Services to any organization that requires a true, experienced expert, a patient and dedicated professional and an all-around sweet and generous person.

You rock!

Carla Brandt has a remarkable broad intelligence.  She has taken intuitive understanding of the business world, FIT liability, managing assets, cash flow, how personal actions that produce losses and taxable income affect the bottom line and turned my companies around.  Her analysis and expertise of managing a business enables her clients to maximize income and she provides full confidence in her decision making.

Carla has prepared our tax returns for the past 10 years.  Her attentiveness to our questions and concerns when preparing our tax filings offers us the security and confidence that everything is being done correctly and according to the IRS code.  She also provided essential tax advice when I was launching my new business.  I recommend Carla Brandt to everyone I know that is searching for honest, reputable accounting services.

Carla’s ongoing knowledge of an ever-evolving and very complex tax code along with her thorough and diligent skills have saved me thousands of dollars of overpayment to the I.R.S.  Her representation of me in an audit back in 1998 actually resulted in the I.R.S. owing me money.  This is all thanks to her amazing ability.

I have served as the Chair of the Budget and Finance Committee and latterly as Chair of the Audit Committee during my five years with The Arthritis Foundation, South Central Region Inc and have worked very closely with Carla Brandt during that period while she served as CFO/COO of the Foundation.  She is a self-starter, loyal, responsible, diligent, versatile and competent.  She is very experienced with all elements of managing a not-for-profit entity.