Thinking About Managing Your Finances Better … You’re Not Alone

It’s that time of year when we are all thinking about getting our finances in order.  Whether you are patiently waiting on your W2 to arrive in the mail or rushing to make updates to your organization’s payroll software – the new year often prompts a review of both personal and professional finances and systems.

If you are considering upgrading  or changing the finance and accounting software you use at your organization, you are not alone.  According to a recent study by Campbell Rinker, 49% of the organizations surveyed are considering upgrading their current on premise accounting solution while 10% are considering changing to a different solution entirely.  Of the organizations using an Internet based solution 12% plan to change to something different.

There are many reasons to change or upgrade the finance and accounting software you use at your organization. Most nonprofits change or upgrade because they have outgrown using a small business accounting package and instead need a true nonprofit fund accounting package.  The top 3 reasons we hear from our customers and prospects as to why they want to upgrade or change their finance and accounting software are:

1. They have an accounting package, but they are still using spreadsheets to manually manipulate data and perform calculations for reporting. It’s time consuming and tedious.
2. Multiple staff members spend a couple of days or more at the end of each month closing transactions and developing reports.  The whole process takes too many hours away from the delivering mission critical services. 
3. Despite best efforts to keep detailed records of every transaction, the organization’s finances are close to impossible to audit. Making fraud difficult to detect and putting the organization at risk.

If your organization is experiencing any of the growing pains above, then it is time to change the tools you use.  Below are some independent, reviews and resources regarding nonprofit finance and accounting software tools.

2011 Campbell Rinker Survey & Recommended Products

2010 CPA Practice Advisor Review of Not-for-Profit Accounting Systems

A Few Good Accounting Packages, 2011 article by TechSoup

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Get Ready For The Big Money: Your Questions Answered

Editors Note: It was our great pleasure to have Betsy Baker, founder of Your Grant Authority educate us on preparing your organization for the grant application process.  The hour flew by and we ran out of time to answer every question.  However, Betsy graciously agreed to respond to some of the outstanding inquiries on this blog – thank you Betsy!  If you missed the webcast, you can still listen to a recording of it here.  Now for her answers below.

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A short time ago, it was my pleasure to present The Six Must-Do’s to Get Your Nonprofit Ready for the Big Money training webinar for Sage Nonprofit Solutions.  This webinar was presented because, of course, all nonprofits want grants but some aren’t quite sure what to do in preparing to make sure they receive a grant.

The training was intended to prepare organizations in making themselves more “grant ready,” and, therefore, more attractive to funders.  While I tried to cover all of the basics in this one-hour webinar, inevitably, the more information I provided prompted more questions.  One participant said it was like a fire hydrant of information!

So, in an effort to respond to important questions that weren’t specifically covered on the call, and to bring you, my dear reader, up to speed on some useful information, I present to you now:

Questions and Answers That We Didn’t Have Time for Me to Cover in a Webinar But That I Think You Need to Know About Because They’re Important: (Yes, I know that you love my clever titles.  Maybe one day I’ll share my secret with you in how I come up with such dazzlers but that’s a blog post for another day.)

Question: Our organization is often confused with another nonprofit in what we do.  As a result, when we ask for financial support from certain grant funders, we’re told that they are already supporting what it is we do.  How do we distinguish ourselves from others?

I get it!  It’s like if you have the word “cancer” in your name, they automatically assume that since they gave to the American Cancer Society that year that they’re covered.  My advice on this is to come out with both barrels drawn.  In your nonprofit’s description, be sure to distinguish yourselves with “Often we’re confused with XYZ Nonprofit that raises money to (fill in the blank.)  While we respect the work of XYZ Nonprofit, here’s specifically what we provide (fill in the blank.)  Don’t assume that grant funders know the differences between organizations.

Question: How do you address all of these six “must do’s” you mention when you are a new nonprofit to get grant money?

To be fair, let’s first review the six-step approach that declares a nonprofit grant ready:

• Proof that your services are needed in the community
• A thorough description of the clients you serve and why they need your help
• Qualified and experienced
• Your program’s benefits to the community are clear
• You’re a sound investment
• Proof that you’re a good funding partner

Okay, time for some tough love.  A brand new nonprofit, in my opinion and based on past experience, is NOT grant ready.  In raising funds for a new nonprofit, first look at other avenues of fund raising such as an individual giving program and major gifts from a select group of donors that are interested in your cause.

Question: Is it key to sort through grants for different purposes -capital campaign as opposed to operational?

Always pay attention to what the grant funder is interested in supporting.  It’s absolutely lovely when a grant funder’s mission and the nonprofit’s mission is a perfect match.  Even if you have the same interest in supporting the same cause, your methods of how you want to accomplish this may be quite different.  So you certainly wouldn’t want to ask for operational support if they are strictly interested in building you a new building.

Betsy Baker
Author, Trainer, Coach
President of www.YourGrantAuthority.com.

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The Big Squeeze: Reduced Government Funding

Current economic conditions have made it difficult for nonprofit and local governments to maintain and provide the same level of service to their constituents. With unemployment up and wages down, many people find it difficult to contribute to nonprofits, while taxpayers are calling for less government spending not more.  These two factors are squeezing the budgets of many organizations and leaving them scrambling to reduce operating costs or increase revenues.

The biggest impact by far is the reduction in federal government funding.  Long ago the federal government realized that local organizations, whether they are government entities or nonprofits, are more in tune with the needs of their communities. Over the years, the federal government has outsourced many human and social services through contracts and grants.  Now those funds are being cut, impacting a web of state and local government entities as well as nonprofits.

According to a recent Forbes article, “In a 2010 survey of social service nonprofits by the Urban Institute, 68% of respondents said government’s failure to pay what it cost to deliver services was a problem.”  The article continues to cite that as of November 2011, 90 percent of groups that relied on such funding feared that they would soon experience even more significant cuts.

Such a reality calls for a new way of operating.  Reductions in government spending are increasing the competition for funding like never before. Nonprofits need to be smart about their spending, tracking their costs, providing clear and transparent financials and clearly demonstrating the effectiveness of their programs.

It’s time to get your accounting and financial systems in order. If you want to track where every dollar is spent by program, grant and impact, then check out Sage’s Fund Accounting, Fundraising, and Grant Management solutions.

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Things I Have Learned From Our Nonprofit Customers That You Can Use!

We just hosted our first Customer Success Tour.  The idea, which seems like a no brainer now, had never been done before.   We wanted to bring our customers together.  Share where we are going and see where they are and want us to be.  Simple!

The event was an amazing success.  Here are a few of the top lessons I learned from our customers that you can use for your donors:

1. Communicate- Your donors want to know more.  Email is not enough.   We need to share what we are doing multiple times, and we need to share it in multiple channels.

2. Share- Your donors want to know how the organization is impacting others and what others are doing in the organization.   One of the primary benefits of the success tour was being able to share the success The Jazz Foundation is having with Sage Fundraising Online.   It was a win/win for everyone in the room.  We were able to share the success of  great product, and our customers were able to learn a great deal about online fundraising.  You can do that in your organizations too.(Thanks Petr!)

3. Give them what they want– I have said this a million times and heard it a billion, but it bears repeating.  If you are sharing information about dog rescue with a cat person the message will not be heard.  Target your audience based on what they want to hear and what they care about.

4. Timing- New York in December is beautiful, but it is also hard to navigate and a very busy.   Sadly we inconvenienced our customers by bringing them into the city during the Holidays.   A great lesson for us and you.   Is the timing of your events suited for your schedule or the schedule of your donors?   Make sure they both jive.

5. Answer the questions– A great learning for me was that we need to have a more succinct resource for supporting our customers, so we put together  a customer resources page to help answer their questions.  Time and again, I stumble upon nonprofit pages that don’t answer the basic questions of donors.

1. Who are you?
2. Why should I give you my money?
3. Are you accountable for the money you have gotten before?

These are must have’s for all nonprofit websites, and it was a great reminder for me.

Take-away:  All in all, I learned more from those four short hours than I have in my five years with Sage.  When was the last time you got your donors together and asked them how you were doing?  Maybe it’s time!!!

Bridget Brandt
Marketing Director
Sage Nonprofit

 

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My Thoughts On Blackbaud & Convio

Krista K. Endsley
SVP and GM, Nonprofit Solutions
Sage Business Solutions

Like many of you in the nonprofit industry, I heard about Blackbaud’s acquisition of Convio in much the same way, on my Blackberry in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday.   Since then I have received a ton of questions from our partners, employees and friends.  Many of you want to know, what I think about the acquisition.  How will the merger of our top two competitors impact Sage Nonprofit? And, how will the integration of two really big nonprofit tech companies impact the nonprofit sector?  My initial thoughts:

Only time will tell as these two companies work together to create a common vision for two very distinct cultures and merge two very different platforms.  I am sure there are many complex strategic, technology, people and process issues to address.

Some are estimating the combination of Blackbaud and Convio, equates to 10% of the market for online fundraising and many nonprofits are concerned with higher costs due to less competition.  The fact is there are many fundraising solutions in the marketplace, so nonprofits have plenty of choices; Sage Nonprofit is one of them.

There are over 32,000 nonprofits using Sage for fund accounting, donor and fundraising management, grant management, online donations, e-marketing, human resources and even payroll processing.  We offer a complete and integrated set of tools to raise more money and track where every dollar is spent.

Convio is located just down the road from us and we have many shared partners and customers.  My heart goes out to the people: employees, partners and customers who are affected by this change. I want them to know we are here for them.  There are incredibly talented people that work with both Convio and Blackbaud who may be looking for different options. If that’s the case, then join us. Sage will welcome you with open arms.

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Taking A Stance On SOPA

Normally we stay away from politics, but there is something going on in the US government that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.

You may have noticed today’s Internet blackouts and protests?  Thousands of websites, including Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit, are all protesting the SOPA and PIPA legislation before Congress.

Lots of people are tweeting, talking, blogging and sharing information about SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act and it’s sister bill PIPA  – Protect IP Act.  But, do you understand what the bills are proposing ?  Below is a curated list of resources on SOPA/PIPA, please add your own by commenting below.

Against SOPA/PIPA

Fight for the Future created a video that explains SOPA in their words.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

One of our favorite nonprofit tech bloggers, Beth Kanter has this protest page up.

Google has a page of their own up here and there is a link to a protest form for you to sign.

* Update – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg formally voiced his concern with SOPA and PIPA today, calling them “poorly thought out laws.”  in this post.  The company’s official stand can be found here.

There’s only one page up at Wikipedia to protest SOPA, click here to see it.  Otherwise Wikki readers were treated to this page view.

A recent article on the Huffington Post explains how SOPA could affect the nonprofit world.

SOPA/PIPA Supporters

On the other side of the debate is the Wall Street Journal and a many other organizations click here .  For a different perspective, read “Brake the Internet Pirates” an article that appeared in the editorial section today.   However, you need to be subscriber for access.  Prior to today’s editorial The Wall Street Journal published their guide to understanding SOPA here.

Find out where your member of Congress stands on SOPA here, courtesy of ProPublica. 

Share your links by commenting below.  Thanks for reading!

Patricia Tynan
Sage Nonprofit
Social Media & Community

 

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What Are The 3 “Be” Lessons In Leadership?

Sage Nonprofit Solutions’ own Grant Howe is penning a series of posts for The TechSoup Blog.  His first in the series, Tag, You’re IT! An Introduction for Technical Managers, is posted now on TechSoup’s blog.

Grant’s series will focus on educating technical managers on soft management skills and is written  from one Geekbyte to another “geek”.   In this first post Grant share’s his philosophy “Technology Is About People” and offers up 3 “Be” leadership lessons:

• Be Genuine
• Be Accessible
• Be There

The post is sure to ring true with many techies,  go read it out here.

We are thrilled Grant will be writing for TechSoup.  TechSoup, is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits and public libraries get the technology resources they need.  Once qualified, organizations can access almost 450 products and services, including high-quality refurbished hardware and software from 45 donor partners like us here at Sage Nonprofit.

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Helpful Tech: Picture Viewing Made Easy

We all have little things that help us get through the day: coffee, donuts, Facebook or picture viewing software! Yup, bet that’s at the top of your list. Eventually we end up having to look at co-workers baby pictures and say “Aw, how cute” even if the kid looks like a shriveled alien lizard.

The default picture viewing software that comes with windows can really…wait…I’m not supposed to speak ill of the master…so let me rephrase…there are more efficient ways of zipping through large numbers of pictures than what ships with the basis of civilization as we know it. Particularly if your computer is old enough to vote.

IrFanview is a cute little image viewing program (actually the icon somewhat resembles your co-workers baby).  You can get Irfanview from a number of download sites including http://www.irfanview.com  It’s a small download, only 1.33mb, it could even fit on a floppy disk for nostalgia purposes.

Installation is everything that your procedures manual isn’t. It’s fast, light and easy to use.  Just don’t blow through the installation or you’ll end up with another attack of the Yahoo toolbar.

The best part is the price, it’s free, and there is no spam, updates, pestering, cripplewear or advertisements.

During the install process by default, it will associate itself to all the standard types of picture files faster than a presidential candidate learns to love corn in Iowa. After, you can just double click the image and have it pop up. Once up and running it has a minimal interface, which like the file size dates back to an era when songs about mediocrity were all the rage.

Most of the program is about viewing your images. If you look up to the top of the menu bar the business end is pretty clear.

There are arrow buttons on the toolbar or you can use the arrows on your keyboard to flip through images as fast as you can punch them. There is also a counter that tells you how many more pictures you have to endure before getting back to your TPS reports.

If you wish to zoom in there is a magnifying glass, the +/- keys or many options under the View>Display Options menu to fit it to your desktop.

The program has limited image processing ability to do common tasks like Rotating and resizing. Most options are under the Image menu.

Why use it?

It is fast, free and does not gobble up resources. I keep a copy on my memory stick so that I can easily install it on someone else’s computer so I don’t have to suffer the default picture viewer. You can quickly crop and resize images, which is what most people need to do instead of strangling someone’s inbox with 200 megabytes worth of cell phone pictures. Sure it’s kind of dated, but its small, has over a decade of stability and free. Not many apps can say that.

Tom Tweedle
Sr. Customer Support Analyst
Sage Nonprofit

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Sweating It Out For Charity

The opportunities to participate in a charitable race  in Austin, Texas are limitless. I am a huge fan of our local Turkey Trot. It’s a wonderful annual event for my whole family and I like the extra exercise to make up for the pumpkin pie.  I am also a regular triathlon supporter, cheering my daughter on or donating on her behalf. I am proud of her she recently came in third for her age division and she just started competing three years ago.

As a participant and supporter of numerous race days, I am surprised by how few of the local races incorporate a peer-to-peer fundraising element into their event. I guess the organizers think it’s too complicated costs too much or will raise very little?

However, a peer-to-peer fundraising tool can transform a runner, cyclist, swimmer or walker into an individual fundraiser multiplying their $30 race day fee into $120 and so on. Since participants appeal to their friends for funds through Facebook or Twitter, your organization can easily grow awareness of the event, increase registrants and potentially appeal to a completely new set of donors or participants who will sweat it out for your charity.

Don’t take my word for it.  Check out the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council website at www.runwalkride.com there are a number of case studies and articles about peer-to-peer a.k.a. individual a.k.a. participant fundraising.

Even better, register for their upcoming conference taking place March 6th and 7th in Atlanta.   The presentations are terrific and you get to see and meet all the world-class athletes on hand.  I will be attending this year and would love to tell you more about Sage Fundraising Online; it’s our tool for powering peer-to-peer fundraising.

The early bird deadline is January 17^th  for the Run Walk Ride conference, so sign up today!  Be sure and save $100 on registration by using the promotional code S100 when registering here.

Let me know if you’re attending below or come by and see me at our Sage booth.

Heidi Kelley
Solution Consultant, Sage Nonprofit Solutions
Sage Business Solutions

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Is Your Organization Grant Ready?

This guest blog post is courtesy of Betsy Baker, President of www.YourGrantAuthority.com. Betsy is an author, trainer/coach, public speaker and grant writing consultant.  You can find her on her writing and sharing her expertise on her blog here.

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As a grant writing consultant, I naturally have many nonprofits asking me how to access grant money. While their passion and the good things they’re trying to do for the community always inspire me to want to help them, the plain truth is that there’s not much I can do if they’re not yet “grant ready.”

So, what exactly does one have to do to be deemed grant ready? It’s actually a combination of factors. First, it always helps to start with the basics. This would include already having a 501 (c) (3) designation, a Board of Directors composed of community representatives, an annual budget with a variety of income sources and detailed financial statements. The inclusion of correct and forthright financial information cannot be underestimated.

Grant funders also look at the uniqueness of the organization. Are they providing a service no one else in the community is offering? And, more importantly, is the service needed? Evidence of that need should be documented and shared with the grant funder. They want to know that they’re investing in a project that’s benefiting the community as a whole and having a positive impact.

Speaking of community impact, it’s not exactly about how many people the organization is assisting but it is necessary that there’s enough of a need to warrant an expensive project. And, is there proof of the difference that the project is making? This takes a strong evaluation component in the grant proposal and a competent staff to administer it.

While in my blogging you will often see me repeat the mantra that writing grants isn’t rocket science, it does take more than just piecing an application together. The organization itself is responsible for the legwork that goes into getting the grant funded. Becoming grant ready is well worth the effort and the organization stands to profit greatly from that effort.

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To learn more from Betsy about getting your organization grant ready, attend her educational webcast next Thursday, January 12^th at 1 PM Eastern.   Click here to register.

Sage Nonprofit

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