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…

February 24, 2015

  How much is that?  Are you sure? Consultants, CPAs, attorneys and other professionals have long relied on time & materials billing as a cornerstone of project costing.  When a client approaches with a problem, they estimate the number of hours they will likely need to complete the work and then multiply that by the…

February 16, 2015

When considering a professional consulting resource for a back office systems project (accounting, donor management, HR, etc.), many people immediately assume that they want to find someone local who can complete the project.  The superficial reasons are obvious – why would I want to potentially pay travel costs any time I need to have a…

February 10, 2015

Among the many advantages of using the top-rated fund accounting solution in terms of user satisfaction is the fact that just about everything in the software just works.  Unexpected error messages and bugs are rare.  The features are mature, intuitive and designed around how nonprofit and local government agencies do accounting.  Considering these factors, many…

February 5, 2015

by Jacqueline Tiso I read an interesting article on CFO.com recently regarding “big data”, a term that we are hearing more and more about.  So what is “big data” and why is it important? Big data is the sum of information your organization captures for who it serves and the services it delivers.  So it…

February 4, 2015

Patterson, N.Y., January 20, 2015 – JMT Consulting Group (https://jmtconsulting.com/), a premier provider of technology and services to the nonprofit sector, announces the availability of Accelerate grants towards the purchase of Abila MIP Fund Accounting software. “Our goal is to empower growing nonprofits with fund accounting software so that they can improve their organization’s financial functions,” says JMT…

January 26, 2015

Let me start off by saying that there is no single product, technology, licensing model or business process that is the exact right fit for every nonprofit organization.  It is incumbent upon every organization evaluating their business systems to do proper due diligence and evaluate all of the appropriate factors that impact the potential success…

January 23, 2015

Our Abila experts have researched and crafted Key Fundraising Predictions for 2015 to help you gain a clear understanding of the challenges facing your sector in the coming year, and how you can turn them into real advantages for your organization.   Below is a deep dive into Fundraising Prediction #1 – Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)….

January 21, 2015

In the absence of the right tools and processes, gathering, organizing, validating and presenting the information becomes a labor-intensive, manual exercise that must be repeated at each reporting interval.  Multiply this by the number of funding sources requiring reporting and it can overcome an organization’s finance team. When this goes wrong, there is not only…

January 16, 2015

Sometimes working in nonprofit finance can be frustrating.  A tremendous effort goes into carefully planning, recording and reporting financial information to meet regulatory and funder reporting requirements and provide actionable decision support information to the organization’s management team.  What we hear very frequently is that managers in some organizations seem indifferent about the information that…

December 17, 2014

I heard a great term coined recently: “spreadware”, and thought how apt the term was.  It speaks to the gradual expansion of spreadsheets, manual workarounds and paper processes that develop within an organization when systems are not working as they need to. Almost every organization I meet with has this malaise.  It is a serious…

We all know the story of the “Wizard of Oz” and Dorothy’s journey to follow the yellow brick road in order to reach Emerald City. She chose the path of the unknown and despite all obstacles, the path took her where she needed to be. Like Dorothy’s journey, it is frightening to many nonprofits to…

July 15, 2013

  As many of you may have seen through email communications and press reports, Sage Nonprofit Solutions has completed the next step in their transition to being an independent company.  The company that produces the products known as Sage 100 Fund Accounting (aka “MIP”), Sage Fundraising 50, Millennium and Sage Grant Management will now be known…