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When the CEO of the American Cancer Society (ACS) first reached out to Kael Reicin about becoming its CFO, he was a bit bewildered.
Naturally, the ACS is a big name. It’s a storied, 113-year-old nonprofit that supports millionsof cancer patients and their families a year with lodging, transportation, and support groups, and researchers it has funded have received 50 Nobel Prizes for their work. ACS-supported scientists helped develop the first effective chemotherapy treatments and determined that smoking was linked to lung cancer.
But Reicin wasn’t convinced he was the right person for the job. “I have no healthcare experience, no nonprofit experience,” Reicin, who was CFO of Bloomberg’s financial products division at the time, remembers thinking. “I thought it was going to be 15 minutes, and maybe they'll ask me for money at the end of it.”
The quick call, though, turned into a 90-minute conversation as the CEO explained more about ACS and how it could use someone with Reicin’s expertise to help it grow. With the encouragement of his wife, Reicin accepted the role.
That was five years ago. Since then, he’s shepherded the organization through the pandemic and inflation, and is prepared to keep it resilient in the face of economic volatility. He spoke with CFO Brew about the striking similarities between the for-profit and not-for-profit CFO’s role, balancing mission with financial need, and what employers can be doing in the fight against cancer.
Surviving the pandemic: Reicin started as CFO of the ACS on March 2, 2020. In short order the pandemic hit, and the organization, which relied heavily on in-person events, lost 40% of its revenue within two weeks. “I went from ‘how do we grow this organization?’ to ‘how do we make sure that ACS survives?’,” Reicin recalls.
ACS had to go through a “complete organizational change,” Reicin said. He focused on diversifying its revenue streams. Though it preserved its signature events, such as fundraising walks, and continued to solicit donations through direct mail and social media, it also added fancier events like galas and golf outings. It placed more emphasis on philanthropic giving and corporate partnerships, both of which “have tripled since that point,” Reicin said.
Since Reicin’s already seen ACS through hard times, the prospect of a recession doesn’t faze him. He’ll concentrate on the same fundamentals that saw the organization through the pandemic, he said. “The value that we deliver doesn’t change because of economic times,” he said, nor do the needs that ACS meets.
The KPIs of an NFP: In many ways, Reicin said, being CFO of a nonprofit is not all that different from being a CFO of a for-profit entity. “This is a company, at the end of the day,” he said. “We have employees, we have revenue, we have a product, we have expenses, we have a diversified portfolio.”
That “product” Reicin mentions is the organization’s impact, which it evaluates in terms of people affected. “We measure in lives touched,” Reicin said. “How many people can we support? How many people have gotten coverage as a result of a change in policy? How many people have we given a ride to? How many people have gotten lodging as a result of the work we do?” The other KPIs that ACS tracks are its “long arc” data, Reicin said, such as cancer mortality and incidence, which it publishes in its widely-cited annual Cancer Statistics report and its more accessible Cancer Facts and Figures report.
But in certain vital ways, ACS is not like a business at all. Sometimes, Reicin said, he has to make decisions that would be counterintuitive from a pure business perspective. He and his colleagues may choose to keep supporting a program that’s actively losing money because “it’s the thing we have to do, because no one else is going to do it, and it’s going to matter at the end of the day.”
How employers can help the cause: Reicin encourages companies to promote cancer screenings. More adults in their prime working years are getting cancer, he pointed out. A BMJ Oncology study found that cancer rates in people under 50 rose 79% worldwide between 1990 and 2019. Catching cancer early raises survivability, Reicin noted.
But there’s a business case for increased screening, too, if you need one: lowering your company’s medical costs. “Destaging,” or detecting cancer at an earlier stage, can save about $63,000 per year per stage, Reicin said.
Moving forward: Reicin has ambitious goals for ACS. He believes the organization could potentially double in size. But for now, he’s focused on honing quality, and fostering a “continuous improvement ethos” that would make ACS “not just the biggest, but the best” across different categories. As finance chief, of course, he’s thinking about the money as well, and exploring ways to “unlock different types of revenue and capital for us to be able to put against our mission,” he said.