Raj Thakkar founded Charter School Business Management Inc. (CSBM) in March of 2006. In the four years prior to launching CSBM, Mr. Thakkar worked as the Chief Financial Officer of Explore Charter School in Brooklyn, NY. During his time at Explore, he gained first-hand experience managing a school’s intricate fiscal and operational responsibilities. While Explore was flourishing, Mr. Thakkar encountered a number of school leaders feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by the operational and financial tasks they faced. He saw a need, and created CSBM to meet it. Since then, CSBM has worked with over 100 existing and proposed charter schools and school support organizations in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and Newark to ensure the implementation of sound fiscal and operational practices. In 2006, Mr. Thakkar served as CSBM’s only employee. The explosive demand for the company’s services necessitated a staff expansion – three members joined in 2007, five in 2008, and five in 2009. Currently, CSBM employs over 30 team members, with Mr. Thakkar at the helm as Founder & CEO. CSBM’s mission aims to prevent the mismanagement of finance and operations and save charter schools from closure. We believe that school leaders should remain focused on student achievement, but also make sure to meet their financial and operational responsibilities by assigning experts to do the job. In this way, CSBM provides a comfort and confidence level to new and existing school leaders who are working so tirelessly to achieve amazing things. Thus far, more than 100 charter schools have been supported by CSBM, preventing and remedying countless financial disasters. CSBM takes great pride in delivering prompt, accurate and comprehensive responses to client inquiries. Our policy is to provide responses within 24 hours. However, the majority of our responses are provided within minutes if not within the hour of receiving emails and/or calls. Tremendous emphasis is placed on providing accurate and comprehensive responses. For this reason, more challenging problems and questions are answered only when a full solution or answer is determined. Although CSBM services schools in several regions of the country, we strive to ensure that abundant, timely and targeted information is dispersed to our clients regardless of location, thus empowering them to make long-term and sustainable financial decisions.