Earlier this year, Jeanette Hanna of Ankeny decided it was time to make a change. She had spent 25 years of her life working in the corporate sector in accounting, banking and benefits administration, and she was ready for something else. What it was, she wasn’t sure, so she took some time to figure it out.

In January, Hanna left her employer of the past 18 years to start on the next chapter of her life. After some reflection, she started doing volunteer work with a local organization, Children and Families Urban Ministries.

“Volunteering is something that I had always wanted to do, and I really just hadn’t taken time out of my work life to do it, so this year I did,” Hanna said.

Her volunteer work with CFUM’s “Awesome Summer Days” program led her to launch her own company this fall, Business of the Heart, which provides consulting services to non-profit organizations. Through her company, Hanna intends to use the skills she learned in the corporate sector to help non-profit organizations build sustainable infrastructures.

“I spent this past summer volunteering for Children and Families Urban Ministries, and while I was there, I observed the organization and saw that it had some needs,” Hanna said. “After the summer program was done, I met with the executive director, Carmen (Lampe Zeitler), and I shared with her what I would do in a for-profit situation, some of the business tools I would utilize, and how she might be able to use those tools to help meet her goals.

From talking with Lampe Zeitler, Hanna learned that other small to medium-sized non-profit organizations faced challenges similar to CFUM, such as obtaining resources and operating as efficiently as possible. Hanna saw an opportunity to use the business skills she had honed in her career to help these “heartfelt organizations with their humanitarian causes.”

“I didn’t have a lot of concerns about starting something, but more excitement to do something different with the skills that I have been using all my life,” Hanna said. “It’s using the same skill sets I used in my career and just applying them in a different area by working with organizations that focus so heavily on improving individuals’ living conditions.”

Hanna, a native of Bancroft, studied accounting and business at Iowa State University before starting her career in public accounting. She worked in accounting for two years, internal auditing for four years and benefits administration for 18 years. She is a certified project manager, which gives her skills that were useful in creating a project plan to start Business of the Heart.

Her business and auditing background also prepared her to develop a systematic approach to assess how non-profits could use her assistance. She has created a needs analysis tool to identify whether non-profit organizations have certain procedures or processes in place, and if so, whether they are working.

Because non-profit organizations generally operate on tight budgets, Hanna will offer fund raising and grant writing as part of her services as a way to obtain money that could pay for her services.

“I guess I’m probably at the point of my life where I spent a number of years working in a for-profit setting and had lots of opportunities, and I’m ready to give some of that back to the community,” Hanna said.