Growing Your Donor Base Without Outgrowing Your Receivables

In recent years, nonprofit organizations have flourished where other for-profit businesses have struggled. Nonprofit growth – in terms of both the number of nonprofit organizations and revenue generation – has risen even during the last few years of economic challenges.

However, this success can be a blessing and a challenge. As the number of nonprofits rise, many find competition from other nonprofits for shares of donations, and are thus faced with expanding their donor base and diversifying their revenue streams to ensure stability and growth.

This can present a challenge to the back-office of the organization as there is no common set of systems or standards by which nonprofits are managed. Traditional nonprofit receivables solutions are often limited in their ability to scale to accommodate multiple sites and donation sources, as well as to integrate into other systems needed to help the office run efficiently as it grows.

Leveraging the right technology for nonprofit organizations can provide peace-of-mind that they will not outgrow their ability to quickly and accurately process donations – no matter how fast or large the growth occurs.

Key questions each nonprofit should consider are:

• Is my organization prepared to process different donation sources (i.e. mail-in, online, mobile, in-person, etc.) from multiple locations?
• Are all these sources unified in their ability to be accurately and efficiently accepted, posted, reconciled and reported?
• Will my processing platform integrate with other systems to help automate tasks as the organization grows (i.e. thank you letters, tax documents, donor management platforms, accounting systems, etc.)?

The organization should ensure their donation processing system allows for accepting any donation type and can easily managing donations from multiple sites. It should also give them a user-friendly dashboard that can report on all donations coming in at any given time to simplify their total view and add efficiencies across the board.

The system should also have the ability to integrate directly into the nonprofit’s back office systems to provide automation and enable scalability. As growth occurs, the ability for the nonprofit organization to accurately document and communicate with donors will be mission critical.

By leveraging FTNI’s proven technology, systems and processes to optimize and streamline receivables, nonprofit organizations can rest assured they are prepared for the next level of growth. For more information and other tips to help you grow your nonprofit business, download our free eBook, 7 Tips to Grow Donations & Streamline Operations.