Not-for-profit financials: accelerate recovery in 5 steps

As governments around the world continue easing lock-down restrictions, executives are thinking about how to help their not-for-profit financials accelerate recovery post COVID-19. Rather than hunker down, it’s time for not-for-profit organizations to take 5 proactive steps to stabilize their finances, adapt to new conditions and prepare for continued mission success.

The financial deterioration caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased community needs while simultaneously reducing charitable donations. As weeks eventually become months of stay-at-home orders and millions of jobs lost, not-for-profit leaders are increasingly concerned about meeting demand for services and sustaining funding levels.

But there is some good news for not-for-profit organizations! A March 2020 donor survey by Fidelity Charitable states donors are stepping up during this time of crisis. When asked how the pandemic would impact their charitable donations, 54% of donors intend to maintain their prior giving levels and 25% plan to actually increase donations. Donor-advised funds were even more positive, with 59% planning to continue normal contributions and one-third planning to increase their giving this year.

As you make plans to lead your organization into recovery, here are five steps to think about:

1. Build team agility by adding flexibility

It will be critical to invest now in processes and infrastructure that infuse the most flexibility into your organization which leads to resilience, enabling you to move with agility to adapt to any new situation. The way to do this is to:

• Analyze your current processes, workflows and tools. Now that you’ve experienced remote work as a team, how could things work better in the future? How can you create greater engagement and empower employees? By now, you have probably noticed that working remotely requires extra clarity when it comes to defining next steps, objectives, and deliverables for your employees.
• Implementing paperless processes and cloud (SaaS) solutions now can give your team the agility to rapidly transition from the office back to remote working. With the right combination of tools and communication strategy, you can offer the option to your team to stay remote while other employees return to the office without losing productivity or collaboration capabilities. Think about all of the tools you needed as an organization, like group communication tools and file sharing, as well as the specific systems for specific functions such as financial management or human resources solutions.