July 15, 2015

Stay Sharp. According to Stephen R. Covey, the 7th habit of highly effective people is to ‘Sharpen the Saw’, and we couldn’t agree more.  The more you know, the better and faster the work and the closer you can get to your mission. You’ve heard us say it a million times, “You need to have…

According to a recent study conducted by NTEN, 3.2% of the average nonprofit organization’s budget is spent on IT and IT projects. This is roughly the same as the last study and, by some measures, a third less than similarly sized for profit businesses. Nonprofit organizations famously under-spend on infrastructure and other strategic investments for…

July 7, 2015

The Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) launched its initial ‘State of the Sector’ survey in 2008, when economic crisis threatened the viability of many organizations. The last few years have seen some stabilization and recovery for nonprofit organizations and nonprofits are adding jobs and finding time and resources to focus on strategic initiatives.   But as…

June 10, 2015

It’s always tempting to put off making a change for another day. But in today’s always-on business environment, you need a financial system that’s designed to work the way that you do. Don’t wait for a crisis to make your move to a cloud financial system. The time to act is now. Discover how cloud…

May 5, 2015

At JMT, we have worked with over 1,000 nonprofit organizations during the last 22 years to systematically evaluate their financial reporting and operational requirements and identify “best fit” solutions that will help them optimize their financial management systems and processes.  One of the key things we have learned during that time is that no two organizations…

April 27, 2015

There are a lot of choices in the marketplace.  The dizzying array of consumer choices and relentless marketing bombard us with claims and statements that make it hard to discern fact from fiction.  As a consumer, it is difficult to make a truly educated choice.  This is true in the business application marketplace and it…

April 20, 2015

A recent article in Philanthropy Journal featured advice from Mike Mann, a self-described “social capitalist and serial entrepreneur”, who has dedicated himself and his companies’ profits to help charitable organizations establish strong business models and expand the impact of their programs and services. There were three things in the article that stood out to me…

April 13, 2015

What’s Wrong with Your Chart of Accounts and the Solutions you Need to Make it Right When implementing a financial accounting and reporting system at a nonprofit organization, few would disagree that an optimized Chart of Accounts design is critical to success. Being able to produce accurate compliance reports and meaningful management reports is the…

April 9, 2015

The state of New York is granting an automatic 6 month extension to those that file the Annual Financial Report CHAR500. “Effective immediately, the New York State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau will grant an automatic 180 day extension of time to file an Annual Financial Report due pursuant to the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law…

April 6, 2015

  I spoke recently with a prospective client that asked a simple question:  What makes nonprofit accounting software “nonprofit accounting software”?  I realized at that moment that there are software products in the marketplace that bill themselves as being “built for nonprofits” and there are others that claim to “work well for nonprofits”, but then…

March 31, 2015

If you have ever approached a software vendor about their product, it probably went something like this: “Do you have budget for a purchase?” “When do you plan to buy?” “Are you the decision-maker?” “Who is our competition?” “Have you seen a demo?” Often, there is only a mild interest in reason why you inquired…

March 24, 2015

Why Best-of-Breed Works for Nonprofits For years it seemed like the Sophie’s Choice facing every nonprofit manager was whether to go with a single vendor for all of their business applications (accounting, fundraising, HR, etc.) or source them independently and sacrifice meaningful integration.  The story went that if you didn’t buy from a single vendor,…

March 17, 2015

Why is everything so hard?   Things used to be great.  The data entry made sense.  The reports were all configured to give us exactly what we needed.  Month end processes were efficient, routine and predictable.   Now it seems like we’re doing more and more offline in Excel spreadsheets.  Coding is confusing.  Month end is…

March 10, 2015

Over the past few months we have seen a dramatic increase in organizations using RFPs and RFIs as part of their evaluation process. So, to help your organization meet the new demands of this process, we have put together a few points that will help you see around some of the pitfalls and make your…

  ​Strange to say, a nonprofit organization and Board can become too dedicated to its mission! Such overzealousness can cause them to overlook opportunities for strategic change. For example: Nonprofit boards and their organizations offering mental heath counseling services are aware that new pharmaceutical therapies will certainly reduce the need for face-to-face counseling. They need…

March 3, 2015

As a nonprofit, comparing a subscription-based (SaaS) cloud application for finance or donor management to similar traditional installed client/server application can be confusing. It is easy, but misleading, to focus on licensing alone as the basis of comparison.  In fact, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison since many of the costs associated with applications installed…