Chief Financial Officer - Denver - Community Economic Defense Project

Description

About the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP):
Our Mission
We partner with low-income and working people to build economic and racial equity. We do this by confronting economic abuse and investing in community wealth. We use an ever-evolving set of legal, economic and advocacy tools to challenge and dismantle unjust systems, building quickly towards a world where all people have what they need to live and thrive.
Our Organization
The Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP) is a Colorado-based nonprofit. Launched in 2020 as the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project, our organization was formed to keep our neighbors housed during the pandemic. Working with clients, we built a deeply integrative approach to eviction, foreclosure, and homelessness prevention that centers the legal and financial needs of housing-insecure families and uses a variety of tools to keep them housed.
Our team now serves more than 1,000 people per month, bringing together housing lawyers, economists, data analysts, policy experts, organizers, and technologists to serve our clients. We have served more than 60,000 low-income Coloradans across 58 counties, distributing over $230 million in emergency assistance. We have also contributed to the passage of major legislation to prevent eviction, stop economic abuse, and make credit and life-saving medication cheaper. CEDP's model has been cited as a best practice by The White House, HUD, the Urban Institute, and in the media.
Building on our work to stop evictions, CEDP has further expanded its integrated services model to include disaster response, predatory towing, debt collection, benefit access & navigation, long-term rental assistance, and homelessness response. Similar to CEDP's work on rental housing, these efforts offer a continuum of care that includes navigation and advisory services, targeted payments, legal support, and the ability to participate in advocacy.
More about the role:
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will serve as a core member of CEDP's executive team, responsible for securing the organization's financial sustainability, instilling operational excellence, and informing program strategy. The CFO will play a central role in steering CEDP through a volatile funding and budget environment while still pursuing targeted opportunities for growth. The ideal candidate will be both a strategist and an operator-someone who can establish a long-term financial strategy, clearly communicate it and galvanize a team around it. This pivotal leadership role is ideal for a nonprofit executive who thrives in complex, fast-paced, mission-driven environments, and has experience navigating complex public funding, audits, and compliance landscapes.
Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership
  • Lead the development of a proactive long-term financial strategy to promote organizational sustainability and resilience
  • Translate complex financial data into accessible and actionable insights for executives, funders, and board members
• Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
  • Develop and manage annual budgets and multi-year financial plans aligned with programmatic goals and funding expectations
  • Build and institutionalize financial forecasting, variance analysis, and cash flow management tools
  • Proactively identify and mitigate financial risks, providing timely financial guidance to the management team
• Accounting, Grants, and Compliance
  • Oversee all grant accounting and reporting, maintaining strict compliance with specific government grant requirements
  • Ensure timely and accurate billing across 20+ public and private grants in close collaboration with program leadership
  • Lead comprehensive interim and year-end financial audits in conjunction with external auditors, ensuring clean audits with no findings and no concerns
• Operational Execution
  • Develop standardized, repeatable processes for operational activities across accounting, reporting, and forecasting
  • Adhere to a timely and accurate month-end close process and management reporting cadence
  • Pursue opportunities for continuous improvement, process streamlining, and operating cost reductions
• Relationship Management
  • Partner closely with the rest of CEDP's executive team, including the Co-Founders and Chief Program Officer, to infuse financial guidance into strategic decision-making
  • Communicate the organization's financial status and insights to the rest of the organization, the Board of Directors, funders, and other stakeholders
  • Own relationships with external audits, banks, and government agencies
• People Leadership and Development
  • Lead, manage, and develop a team of experienced financial professionals, ensuring clarity of roles and effective delegation of responsibilities
  • Institute a culture of ownership, accuracy, accountability, and continuous improvement within the Finance department

Position Requirements:

• 10+ years of progressive finance leadership and 3+ years in a CFO or executive role in a nonprofit or mission-oriented organization
• Proven ability to recruit strong talent, lead high-performing teams, develop capable leaders, and manage low performers
• Exceptional communication skills; demonstrated ability to distill complex financial information into actionable insights for diverse audiences
• Extensive experience managing publicly funded programs, multi-grant billing, and complex reporting requirements
• Experience with external auditors, compliance management, and regulatory oversight; knowledge of federal audit standards and GAAP accounting is required
• Expertise in strategic planning, budgeting & forecasting, financial analysis, and risk management
• Advanced proficiency with Excel / Google Sheets, QuickBooks, and other analytics and reporting softwares

Preferred Qualifications:

• A Bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year university or equivalent professional experience
• Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation
• Knowledge of the affordable housing landscape including regulatory environment, compliance, leading organizations, and major funders
• Experience raising loan capital and/or writing grants and proposals is a strong plus

Why Us?

• We are a social enterprise with a sustainable business model focused on one of the most important issues in society - keeping people in their homes and maintaining access to affordable housing
• Opportunity for local involvement while making a statewide and even a national impact
• Our co-founders have collaborated for 5+ years and are committed to building a company where everyone loves to work
• Unlimited growth potential within the organization
• The opportunity to step into a new organization five years after its founding and play a substantial role in its growth

Additional Details:

• Candidates must reside in Colorado, ideally within the greater Denver Metro area. The position includes competitive pay, flexible time off, a benefits package (including medical, dental, vision), and 401k.
• A competitive $150,000-$192,000, plus a $1,000 per year hybrid employee salary adjustment]
• Employees who utilize two languages or more at work are eligible for a $2,000 salary differential per year added to the salary grade listed above. For qualified roles, language assessment will be conducted by the organization as a requirement to receive the differential
• All employees are eligible for a technology stipend of $720 per year. Alternatively, they may opt out of the stipend and receive an organization-issued cell phone instead.
• Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, but must be received by March 1, 2026
• The estimated time to complete the recruitment process will be by Mar 15, 2026
• As in-person work is sometimes required, all employees at CEDP & CED Law are expected to maintain current vaccination status in keeping with CDC recommendations.
• CEDP is an equal opportunity employer, committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.