Consider running a nonprofit organization such as a museum; what are its operational needs, including what resources should it employ regarding staff? A volunteer database, contact directory, and appraiser list could all be essential depending on its size, as is an HR professional with their own employee portal and payroll system to efficiently onboard new employees while keeping insurance current, maintaining incentives programs, or offering other employee perks as needed - this can all become tedious with limited staff available.
An ERP can meet these business requirements more efficiently than museums would by having multiple programs run independently, without interoperability issues between programs and employees. Utilizing all resources available and employees efficiently will result in more significant results than trying to manage data manually.
Following Are Its Benefits For Nonprofit Organizations:
Funds Management: Grants, Fundraising
Manage Multiple funds in one application: The ability to manage several funds within a single program can be a blessing for smaller organizations. ERP software helps nonprofits manage their funds and ensure they follow reporting guidelines. A nonprofit can also use an ERP to create several funds dedicated to different projects and campaigns. With the cloud, board members or employees can access these reports from any mobile device. Automated fund management reduces human errors in budgeting.
Grant Management: A grant management feature will also be essential as it increases productivity and can save the organization money by not having to hire dedicated grant writers or managers if budgets are tight. A program already implemented will reduce costs over time, increase productivity and improve the chances of receiving more funding. The software would help with reports, transactions, and the daily management of accounts.
Fundraising: Can assist in fundraising by providing an ERP to nonprofits. This will help them build relationships with their donors, as they can understand how and what they give over time.
Member Tracking
Some organizations provide rolling memberships. This means membership payments continue for one year after the payment date; tracking this membership type can be challenging. However, an ERP can generate reports to inform membership coordinators when members are due and how funds from patrons paying dues would have been generated more efficiently.
Contact Donors, Volunteers, and Other Relations
Volunteerism is often essential to small nonprofits. A nonprofit ERP could save time by keeping track of volunteers within one system containing member and fundraiser data; additionally, this report could show your board any needed data about membership, fundraisers, and volunteers.
Management of Collections and Artifacts
Library and museum staff must keep track of many objects and buildings to catalog for tax reasons; exhibits from different venues must also be cataloged; artifact donors often need gift-in-kind certificates from nonprofits that donated artifacts or books as tax deductions, so an ERP allows nonprofits to easily search items by donor name, donation date and amount donated - which makes applying for funds or insurance easy too.
Reporting Capabilities
As this article progressed, reporting was touched upon repeatedly. Reporting allows nonprofits to demonstrate their value to donors, funders, and others who support the nonprofit. Still, reporting can often prove complex and take weeks of work for complete comprehension by either their board or public audience members. A nonprofit that utilizes ERP software would benefit significantly by making this feature easily accessible via PCs, tablets, or mobile devices - this alone would justify purchasing such an ERP product.
Employee Portal and Human Resources
Human Resources professionals will all tell you the employee onboarding process can be difficult. Imagine that a small nonprofit has one person responsible for onboarding. This person would also be in charge of tracking employee schedules, PTO, benefits, and payroll. Imagine that this person can manage all of these processes in one location with an ERP. This means an HR professional will spend less time in programs and more time with people.
Project, Event, and Marketing Management
Donations are at the foundation of nonprofits; museums may charge admission charges to events and tours as well. Small organizations tend to entrust marketing functions, project management, and event planning responsibilities to everyone.
Managing events, projects, and marketing tasks like email and social media messaging can save them hours of manual labor each week. A well-integrated ERP can aid an organization by keeping an accurate tally of event funds raised versus spent, person-hours required for successful event outcomes, etc.
These examples demonstrate why it can be advantageous for nonprofit organizations to select an ERP that helps reduce costs and save time, with companies like SAP, Unit4, Sage, and Unit4 offering programs at discounted rates for small nonprofits looking for software or ERP implementation. Do you use ERPs at your organization?
Most Important ERP Features For Nonprofits
Finance and Procurement
Any organization needs an effective financial management system in place to be successful. At the same time, nonprofits have additional challenges managing budgets, tracking manual processes, and providing services with limited resources. Therefore, nonprofits should prioritize platforms with flexible features that offer secure, accurate, reliable data sources with access.
Financial and procurement tools available to nonprofits include budgeting, account payable/receivable management, budget administration, and general ledger systems. Using such tools enables staff members to make sounder decisions while decreasing errors/duplications/risks.
Human Resource Management
Inefficient human resources can pose a severe challenge to nonprofits. HR management can be time-consuming. Over time, reliance on paper-based processes and manual records-keeping may lead to disconnected processes, which frustrate and confuse managers and employees and raise compliance risks. An ERP system is an excellent investment. They can help organizations centralize staff management and provide employees with self-service capabilities.
Payroll Administration
Nonprofits require a payroll solution to automate processes, reduce complex calculations, ensure everyone gets paid, optimize allocations, etc. With the correct ERP solution, a nonprofit can combine its financial, human resources, and schedule data to detect potential mistakes and streamline payroll processes.
Time Entry and Scheduling
Human services and education nonprofits must manage large distributed teams with changing schedules. While this would be challenging for any business, managing nonprofits with limited resources or outdated technology is incredibly daunting. An ERP SaaS solution may provide transparency while automating complicated workflows and eliminating guesswork by tracking costs precisely and monitoring expenses accurately.
Prioritize time-clocking and scheduling management by including seniority lists, overtime warnings, input for time entry approvals, payroll integration, and shift offers as part of time-clocking management.
What You Need to Know About Why Your Nonprofit Should Consider an ERP System
Multitasking is essential when running a nonprofit. There's always plenty to be done, from managing members to accounting, communication, and events - not to mention professional tools you regularly use, such as an email client for email notifications and website management; another may even handle event planning.
Tools used to manage a nonprofit need to be integrated, making management even more complicated and leading to decreased efficiency. But don't despair just yet: ERP ("Enterprise Resource Planning") software offers hope; as an integrated management system, it gives all the tools required for the smooth running of any nonprofit every day.
Centralizing Data
Your nonprofit maintains much data, from membership records to accounting files. However, this data may be spread among various tools - even when you know its location exactly, and you can only easily link some of this information together automatically.
Arguing that adding or forgetting information twice is another standard error makes all-in-one programs ideal. They store all your information in one centralized place and can connect seamlessly to other tools.
Let's consider what Tom can bring to the organization as they enter and how an ERP system can assist:
- Registering: Tom enters his details to be a member of your ERP software. The software saves this information and uses it automatically for the next steps.
- Bill: Based on what Tom provided, an automatic invoice will be generated with details about his payment and the correct amount.
- Email: A welcome email to Tom and a thank you for his membership is sent automatically. A personalized invoice for Tom will be included. You will have personalized this email.
- Follow up on Payment: Tracks the number of membership fees automatically and allows for reminders to be sent via email or check, as well as updates if you pay online.
- CRM: Tom's data is saved automatically in the customer relationship management for relationship management of their nonprofit for future communications. In the database, you can view his membership history.
Save Time with Management
If you use different tools for managing the needs of your nonprofit, then you will be doing the same thing multiple times. Imagine that you are launching a campaign for donations to help support your project and only want to reach out to the key supporters.
It means that:
- Donation software: What you need to know.
- You can identify your donors by identifying their key characteristics.
- Export the list with relevant information.
- Sorting it out is possible.
- The critical donors within your database.
- You can import the email list directly into your software.
- Create and send your communications campaign.
All these steps take time. You can make a mistake at many points, which could cost you more time. You don't need to switch between multiple systems, as everything is available on one platform.
As we've seen with Tom's example, everything happens automatically. The process of creating your campaign for donations is much shorter with ERP software:
- Find your most important donors within your database.
- Email them using the tool within the ERP software.
- That's it.
You can also find the donor's donation history in their profile. Tom's simple example of using the software can be applied to many other tasks:
- Members and Donors Management.
- These are some specimens of the function that you can attend.
- Communication
- Online Store
- Pay Online
- Create & Manage Websites.
You don't need to interfere with a set-up process. You should also know that it can manually enter data when needed.
Improving Data Protection
Using ERP software, your nonprofit's data will be centralized onto one platform instead of spread across multiple systems. As a result, you have less risk of losing your data and the information about your members. You will spend less time trying to find lost passwords by sending email address.
You may be one of many using management tools for your organization. It should never be shared between admins. Depending on the responsibilities, you can give admins access to all features or just certain ones. For instance, your nonprofit's treasurer can access accounts but not online ticketing.
Arion ERP is designed for collaboration - it's easy to edit which user type with deep understanding of software provider can access what features for successful implementation in business function of consultancies, partners & end for strong understanding of all-in-one software of nonprofit software.
Reduce Management Costs
The number of subscribers increases as the number of systems is increased. Even though each of these expenses may seem insignificant when added together, they represent an actual cost for your nonprofit.
You will be led into trouble if you don't keep up with the costs:
- Increase the number of email campaigns.
- Need to manage more complex databases.
- To organize even more events.
- Want to start an online shop?
- Add information to your Website.
Even if you don't consider the price, this different subscription can impact how much time your volunteers spend. Multiple programs can be confusing and demotivate volunteers.
Reduce Training and Knowledge Transfer
You need to know how to use each tool and train the other people who will be using them. You must teach new members how to use the software if your committee is restructured. It will be much faster because ERPs are all-in-one systems. Like cloud-based hosting, ERPs have intuitive and coherent interfaces. If you can master just one feature, you will quickly learn the rest.
How to Choose the Right ERP for Your Nonprofit
Choosing the right software program may be difficult for you when there are so many options. These tips will help charities find the best ERP to suit their needs.
What Is Your Mission Statement?
Understanding your company's goals and mission is the key to choosing an ERP. What's your ultimate aim, and how will you attain it? Whom are you helping, what services are provided, if any, will remain the same, will you stay within one area or expand into other charity fields? An in-depth mapping of your business processes can yield invaluable insight into your organization and aid with making an educated selection decision for an ERP.
Project management may be essential in an organization dedicated to housing underprivileged populations. In contrast, fundraising organizations require advanced functionality for donor or grant management. Nonprofits that operate internationally must assess the complexity of their human resource requirements before selecting HCM software accordingly.
What are Your goals for software?
Information and operation within an organization follow a hierarchy, with specific data or facts having more significance than others. By unrivaled understanding personnel, processes, and interactions within your company more fully, your software needs can become clearer; others might not require CRMs for managing donors - you must get only those features necessary without incurring unnecessary additional charges for strong customer base with interpersonal skills in software option to meet business sales target.
The Aspects Changing the Application Size
Many applications designed specifically for nonprofits feature sophisticated user interfaces with innovative toolkits to track every intimate detail. Innovation, complexity, or expense come to mind; sometimes, this means making difficult choices in favor of core functionality - each scenario may differ, but weigh ownership costs versus benefits to make an informed decision.
Do not think of purchasing software as simply exchanging dollars between you and it; instead, consider its impact as helping staff provide more aid, motivating donors to give more, and interacting with donors in new ways - the latter would suggest you've picked an ineffective ERP. If this seems counterproductive to you, seek alternative software options instead.
Choose the Right Partner
Don't just buy the least-expensive product on offer: when making decisions about vendors and systems that provide support and upgrades as you grow. Select an organization that will still be around when upgrading or supporting the system you select. As your relationship will extend over the years, make sure the number and personalities are compatible - as this relationship could last five or ten years at least. Do they care for the nonprofits in their care?
ERP Systems: Are they Worth it for Nonprofit Organisations?
Enterprise Resource Planning software designed to aid nonprofits can free them from spending too much time managing data, so their employees and resources can focus more effectively on fulfilling their missions. Though Enterprise Resource Planning encompasses all, nonprofits may find an ERP system tailored specifically for nonprofit organizations beneficial.
Every nonprofit relies on employees, financial systems, and data to fulfill its mission effectively. Health and human service organizations - which specialize in community services - require accurate tracking, reporting, and allocating funding/revenue/expenditures against budget. Furthermore, associations must monitor membership dues collections and constituent management capabilities tied back into a CRM that ties revenue generated into General Ledger accounts.
At its heart lies an ERP (enterprise resource planning). ERP's goal is to eliminate disparate silos for data and products while creating one central record system for financial records. Nonprofit organizations must recognize their finances because they lack profit motivation; having limited resources means allocating them efficiently, and accounting software for them correctly is even more essential.
Accounting must include reporting about operating costs, salaries, and both short and long-term project financing costs - manually creating this reporting can be time-consuming and resource intensive; ERP software provides nonprofit organizations with quick, accurate reports efficiently, which saves staff from time-intensive administrative work which could otherwise be put to more use elsewhere.
ERPs can assist nonprofit organizations in saving both tangible and intangible amounts of money through quickly complying with reporting guidelines, tracking multiple funding sources for projects or contracts while decreasing human error, and using grant management software can save organizations both time and money while increasing chances of receiving more funding from grants writers or managers.
Nonprofit organizations can demonstrate their value to the board of directors and funders through reports they create, which often take days or weeks of effort and cannot be created by individual board members alone - something which alone could justify investing in ERP software.
Our expert consultant roles are ready to assist you if you want to implement an ERP system in your company but need to know where to begin or what ERP will suit your requirements best. Get In Touch with most dependable and effective nonprofit ERP solution.
Arion ERP is a Microsoft Gold Certified ERP Partner with over two decades of experience successfully implementing ERP systems and optimizing them for companies of every size and shape across the United States.
Conclusion
ERP Advisors Group appreciates working with nonprofits and takes great pleasure in finding an ERP solution to enable their staff to do even more suitable for others. Our team is proud of assisting those dedicated to bettering the world, so should any software solutions simplify your work, please don't hesitate to let us help you find them.
