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Case Study | Clean Technology

How Scrubbed Helped Common Sense Growth Invest In A Brighter Future 

Common Sense
Common Sense Growth, a for-profit investment fund with a social impact mission to support education and children’s mental health initiatives, faced a common challenge for young organizations: managing increasingly complex finances with a limited team. While affiliated with the established nonprofit Common Sense Media, Common Sense Growth operated as a separate entity with its own financial needs.

Scaling the Struggle

Their mission-driven passion fueled rapid growth but managing complex finances with a lean  team threatened to impede their progress. The organization was juggling multiple financial needs. They needed to generate accurate and timely investor reports to maintain trust and attract new investments. Additionally, the board required clear financial insights to make informed strategic decisions. Supporting their portfolio companies with financial guidance was also crucial. Anticipating significant funding increases, scalability became a top priority. Their current system wouldn’t be able to handle the additional financial complexity, but building a dedicated accounting team wasn’t an option due to cost constraints.

The Scrubbed Solution

Instead of a traditional in-house approach, Common Sense Growth discovered a smarter solution in Scrubbed’s fractional accounting and finance services offer.

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Ben Kornell
Managing Partner, Common Sense Growth
“I have my go-to point of contact, and that’s for all the basic needs like expenses and reporting, and then we also have a leadership contact who’s really thinking about across our financial portfolio.”

Scrubbed Services Provided

Some of the services Scrubbed has provided include:

Incubator Support

Scrubbed helped Common Sense Growth launch new incubator companies by setting up separate P&Ls and cost segmentation. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Streamlined Reporting

Scrubbed handles all Common Sense Growth’s nonprofit and for-profit financial reporting and accounting needs, including generating reports for investors, the board, and portfolio companies. 

Audit Trail Management

Scrubbed ensures a clean and auditable financial trail, which is crucial for mid-year and annual audits. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Scrubbed essentially acts as a fractional CFO for Common Sense Growth, providing them with the expertise they need without the cost of hiring a full-time employee.

“The flexibility and agility of Scrubbed has been mind-blowing. We started our fund with $5 million total, and today, we’re up to $40 million, and the team has grown almost like an accordion. They started out with a certain set of deliverables and activities, like expenses and basic reporting, and now we have sophisticated monthly financial reporting and workflows,” says Ben. “And when we compare it to the cost of running it ourselves, it’s a fraction of the cost.”

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5M to 40M

Dual Expertise, Double Advantage

Common Sense Growth operates with a hybrid model encompassing nonprofit and for-profit entities. Scrubbed’s experience with both structures proved invaluable. “They understand nonprofit and for-profit accounting,” Ben explains. “Very few organizations can do both, so we rely on the Scrubbed team.”

Global Collaboration, Local Focus

Despite the physical distance between Common Sense Growth in San Francisco, CA, and Scrubbed’s team in the Philippines, clear communication was never a hurdle. “I actually find that the time difference works in our favor a lot of the time,” says Ben. “I will submit a question or request in the day, and I wake up the next morning and it’s been totally completed. It’s been really, really successful.”

By partnering with Scrubbed, Common Sense Growth gained a reliable and scalable financial foundation. This freed their team to focus on making strategic investments that support positive change and the financial health of their portfolio companies.

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At the end of the day, I would say the team that we have in-house is far more focused on the things that really move the needle for our business because we have the leverage of the Scrubbed team making sure all of our I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed on the financial reporting” says Ben. “So really, while it might seem like an investment in finance, it’s actually an investment in your team and helping them focus on what’s most important for your organization.
Ben Kornell - Managing Partner, Common Sense Growth
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