All Posts By

Dawn Westerberg

Nov 11
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Software Simplifies Grant Reporting

By | Grant Management | No Comments

Africian American Woman on White Seamless with laptopAbila Software simplifies grant reporting so that you can position your nonprofit to be more successful in being awarded government and foundation grants. The right technology can reduce your administrative workload and help to improve your relationship with valued contributors.

Tracking reporting deadlines: Create a master calendar with the deadline dates for interim and final reports for each grant you receive. Grant Management software will help you coordinate your workload and know what special tasks are coming up in the months ahead. You can also create internal deadlines to give your staff advance notice of the components they are responsible for. Most of all, you don’t want your funders to have to remind you that a report is due. Worse yet, you don’t want to be told that you’re holding up their audit because you didn’t submit a report on time.

Producing financial reports: Most grant reports will require both narrative and financial sections. They update a grant maker on the progress you made with the deliverables you proposed and provide a budget to confirm that funds were spent as projected. With the right software, you’ll have all the information at your fingertips already categorized by the budget line items you need instead of being caught scrambling at the last minute.

Improving donor relations: Your relationship with your donors is one of your most important assets. Technology makes it easier to stay in touch and demonstrate your excellence. That increases the chances of renewed support. Plus, grant makers often ask each other for feedback and recommendations so you’ll be generating good word of mouth.

Welter Consulting optimizes software solutions like grant management and fund accounting, so you can get back to your mission. Contact us to learn more about our financial, administrative and support resources that can deliver the results that nonprofits need.

Nov 09
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Build a Successful Major Donor Fundraising Program

By | Fundraising | No Comments

iStock_000007489713XSmallCelebrate the New Year by resolving to build a successful major donor fundraising program. Focusing on your largest givers is the quickest way for any nonprofit to bring in more funds and create a stable revenue stream. The right fundraising software can help you at every stage in the process.

The Pareto Principle holds true for fundraising. The top 20% of your donors will provide about 80% of your total income. An integrated donor management system allows you to pull together data from multiple sources in order to identify and serve these valuable constituents. You will be able to analyze giving patterns in terms of amount and frequency, and whether people are interested in general support or specific programs like scholarships or a new building. You may even find potential donors in unexpected places such as your volunteers or event attendees. Once you identify them, you can also use your system to track contact history and develop reliable data for designing renewal and upgrading strategies.

Detailed reports give you a clearer picture of your potential and performance. You’ll see if your major donor base is growing or declining. You’ll also be able to map out a gift pyramid showing you how many donors you need at each giving level to meet your objectives.

Of course, major donor fundraising is time and labor intensive. Technology allows you to target your resources for where they will have the most impact. It helps you to be more responsive to your donor’s individuals needs and communicate with them regularly and effectively. Most of all you’ll become a good steward of the contributions you receive. You’ll avoid missed opportunities by connecting with people who are dedicated to your cause and using the appropriate cultivation and solicitation strategies.

Contact us to learn more about effective nonprofit software solutions. We can help you build the financial and administrative infrastructure you need to enable you to advance your mission.

Nov 07
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Get Your Donor Management in Place before the End-of-Year Rush

By | Fundraising | No Comments

Happy New Year 2014 replace 2013 concept on the sea beachMost people think of the week between Christmas and New Year’s as a great week to take vacation. Families fill planes, trains and automobiles to get together across the country, snowbound New Englanders head for the Caribbean, groups of friends shop the after-Christmas sales, and in general most people aren’t thinking about work.

But if you work in the nonprofit industry, you know that someone has to be in the office during that critical week between Christmas and New Year’s, because that’s when lots of donors make last-minute donation decisions. If there’s no one in the office to handle the nonprofit’s side of the donation transaction (especially with regard to a donation of stocks, or property), the nonprofit might lose out. Then there are all the checks arriving by mail during the week as well; someone has to process those donations and get the checks to the bank.

Regardless of who is designated to handle these end-of-year donations, your entire team can benefit from a robust donor management system when it comes to efficiently processing the end-of-year rush. Capably getting the hard copy checks to the bank is pretty straightforward—but if you don’t have a donor management system in place, your team might be playing “catch up” in January in order to get annual donor letters out the door in time.

You also never know if someone is going to walk in the door and announce that they want to donate a parcel of property down the street, or call to arrange a gift of some of the stocks they inherited from grandma 6 months ago. Without a powerful software system that is tailored to the particular needs of nonprofits, these donations can be pretty difficult to handle appropriately in a short period of time.

If your accounting and fundraising teams are not completely in sync, you might find yourself mandating work days at the end of December—when you could be letting a software program do the bulk of the work. Yes, someone will need to mind the office during the last week in December, but if you have appropriate donor management software in place, when staff returns to work in January, they will be able to easily pick up their piece of the process and seamlessly generate thank you notes, financial reports and management updates with ease. So prepare now for the end-of-year giving rush, and implement an updated donor management program today.

Nov 03
0

Why Every Nonprofit Needs Appropriate Fund Accounting Software

By | Nonprofit | No Comments

iStock_000023610470XSmallMost nonprofits start small. Someone has a dream or vision for how they can bring hope or help to their small corner of the globe. Over time, they get the word out and others get on board. Donations flow in, the money gets deposited in the bank, and thank you notes are sent out. As an impact is made, an organization grows out of someone’s home office or garage. Eventually, someone decides that it’s time for the organization to “grow up,” to set up a Board, file for 501(c)(3) status and “do things right.”

It’s usually at this point that someone on the brand-new Board asks about the financial records. Usually—although not always—founders are more interested in getting out their message, and getting on with their mission, than they are in making sure each penny is accounted for. This tends to mean that financial records have not been a priority—not through any intentional negligence, but through having other, higher priorities on which to spend limited time. Whether jotted down in a notebook, random scraps of paper, or in a simple Excel spreadsheet, chances are that the basic information is there, but that it’s not going to stand up to any sort of auditing process.

This is why the use of appropriate fund accounting software is crucial to the growth and success of any fledgling nonprofit. While setting up an accounting system may seem like a daunting task, professionals are available who can help convert those Excel spreadsheets and notebook entries into an accounting system that’s geared specifically for nonprofits. Systems such as this will actually improve organizational productivity, including:

  • Knowing how much money you have in each fund at any given time, so you know how much you have to spend
  • Making the monthly bank reconciliation process easy and painless
  • Generating meaningful and useful reports for the Board
  • Automatically producing donor information and even thank you notes, rather than relying on a separate manual process

These are just a few of the reasons why any growing nonprofit should move to professionally-designed nonprofit fund software. To learn more ways fund accounting can help your nonprofit grow, contact us today.