Ops Backbone · Led by Mandy Edison
Ops Backbone: operations and admin support in Cape Town
A senior person, not a rotating virtual assistant. Mandy takes over the day-to-day operational work directly: diary, admin, bookkeeping, board support and staff admin. Mostly from your office in Cape Town.
This is not a virtual assistant service.
General admin support in South Africa runs R100 to R250 an hour, and it's priced that way because it's built for task execution, not judgement. It's easy to find and hard to trust with decisions.
Ops Backbone is different work. It's Executive Director-level experience: someone who has run a team, owned a set of books, and sat through the governance decisions a board has to make. Priced and delivered accordingly.
How Ops Backbone works
The four domains Mandy owns
Not a task list you manage. Four areas she takes over completely, so they stop reaching your desk at all.
01
Day to day
Diary management, office administration, client-facing work and the constant small things that quietly eat a founder's week.
02
Money
Bookkeeping, creditor payments and cash flow, in Sage Evolution and Xero. Books that are current, not three months behind.
03
Governance
Board packs, agendas and minutes that actually get used. Committee support and the paperwork a board needs to make real decisions.
04
People
Staff administration, HR support and the stakeholder admin that keeps relationships from going cold.
On location
Mandy works from your office in Cape Town by default, because a lot of this work is easier when you're in the room. Hybrid or remote is available locally where it makes sense. For international clients, it's remote from the start.
Is This You?
Right for you if…
- Your admin, books or governance work has outgrown whoever's doing it now.
- You're spending half your week on work that shouldn't need you.
- You don't need a strategy, you need the work done, every week.
- You've been burned by junior admin support that needed managing.
- You're a non-profit that needs Executive Director capability without the full-time cost.
If the real problem is that your systems have stopped scaling, that's VibeOps with Daryn instead.
Non-profits
If you can't afford a full-time Executive Director
Small non-profits often need governance, finance and reporting done properly without the budget for a full-time senior hire. It's a role Mandy has held, not one she's guessing at.
There's a community arrangement for organisations in that position. It's built for non-profit budgets, and it still pays properly for senior-level work.
How It Starts
It starts with an opening block of work.
Two to four weeks on your actual backlog, billed as normal. Real work, cleared properly, so you both find out how this goes on something that matters rather than on a call.
After that it moves to a monthly retainer at the number of days a week that fits, or it doesn't. Either way the work is done and paid for.
Start Here
Let's talk about what's piling up.
A free 60-minute Discovery Session with Mandy. You walk her through what's piling up, she tells you what she'd take off your desk first. If Ops Backbone isn't the right fit, she'll say so.
Email us at hello@meridianimpact.co.za.
- Free, and about 60 minutes.
- You talk to Daryn or Mandy directly, not a salesperson.
- No lock-in, and you can stop after any step.
Ops Backbone: Operations & Admin Partner
Email Mandy to book
or call Mandy on +27 83 269 7873, or message on WhatsApp.