Jessica Dauchy
Jess Dauchy is a multifaceted professional known for her leadership and comprehensive expertise in nonprofit financial and operational management. With a heart for nonprofits and education, she is passionate about bringing transparency, financial prowess, and meaningful context to nonprofit endeavors.
Jess started her professional journey as a high school educator. However, when the school encountered tremendous financial challenges, she left teaching to pursue an MBA. She was, and still is, determined to ensure that the business of nonprofits is driven by vision, expertise, and sound business operations.
For the past 15 years, Jess has served as CFO, COO, and similar roles with a variety of nonprofit organizations that have ranged in size and complexity. She has deep experience in all facets of financial operations and strategy as well as leading core business functions such as human resources and benefits management, fundraising, legal compliance, technology, and CRM system implementation and oversight. She is also extremely adept at building collaborative relationships with internal staff and leadership as well as board finance and executive committees and is known for asking the right generative question at the right time.
Jess’s experience spans the entire organizational journey, encompassing market research, strategic planning, budgeting, financial performance analysis, cash flow management and forward-looking organizational projections. One of her professional experiences includes growing a Denver 6th-8th school into a 6th-12th program, adding an additional school in Colorado, then developing the plan to replicate the model in California. Other key experiences have included joining a nonprofit that was struggling financially. Jess quickly identified that the organization had 15 days of non-restricted cash, and, over the next three years, she led the budget and operational redesign to build the organization’s reserve to 120 days, while also growing revenue by 65% and increasing staff by 30%.
Beyond her administrative roles, Jess combines her love of education with her professional expertise and serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Denver where she teaches Nonprofit Financial Health to graduate students in the Nonprofit Leadership graduate program. Outside of work, Jess is an adventurer at heart. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she is often outside skiing, climbing, hiking with her two pups, or learning how to ride her new mountain bike.
