February 24, 2015

Why Guaranteed, Fixed-Price Projects are Ideal for Nonprofits

  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…

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When is Using a Local Consultant the Wrong Answer?
February 16, 2015
When is Using a Local Consultant the Wrong Answer?

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…

5 Reasons Why You Should Participate in your Local MIP Users Group
February 10, 2015
5 Reasons Why You Should Participate in your Local MIP Users Group

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…

Big Data – What does that mean to non-profits
February 5, 2015
Big Data – What does that mean to non-profits

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…

JMT Launches Exciting New Grant
February 4, 2015
JMT Launches Exciting New Grant

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…

Is Purchasing Cloud Accounting Solutions an Example of Mass Hysteria?
January 26, 2015
Is Purchasing Cloud Accounting Solutions an Example of Mass Hysteria?

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…

8 Pillars of Conversion Optimization
January 23, 2015
8 Pillars of Conversion Optimization

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)….

Are Your Systems & Processes Optimized for Grant Compliance Reporting?
January 21, 2015
Are Your Systems & Processes Optimized for Grant Compliance Reporting?

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…

Why Doesn’t Anyone Read These Reports?
January 16, 2015
Why Doesn’t Anyone Read These Reports?

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…

The Spreadware Epidemic
December 17, 2014
The Spreadware Epidemic

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…

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Financial Confidence
Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Financial Confidence

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…

Sage Nonprofit Solutions is Now Abila
July 15, 2013
Sage Nonprofit Solutions is Now Abila

  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…

What if you didn’t have a server room?
April 23, 2013
What if you didn’t have a server room?

That’s the question we asked ourselves at JMT a few years ago when we were deciding whether that next big investment in servers and other infrastructure upgrades was the right path.  For many businesses and nonprofits, costs related to IT infrastructure, personnel, outside services and all of the other expenses necessary to keep your critical…

Sage Nonprofit Solutions is now an Independent Company!
March 21, 2013
Sage Nonprofit Solutions is now an Independent Company!

Last month we all were given the official news that Sage Nonprofit Solutions was being sold to Accel-KKR, a private equity firm.  This week, that sale was finalized and Sage Nonprofit Solutions is legally an independent company, no longer a part of Sage North America.  Congratulations to our colleagues at the new company! As we…

Independence from Sage for Sage Nonprofit Solutions
February 19, 2013
Independence from Sage for Sage Nonprofit Solutions

The Sage Nonprofit Organization is Being Kept Intact Last week the news broke that Sage Group PLC, the UK-based company that owns Sage North America and many software brands worldwide, was planning to sell Sage Nonprofit Solutions along with a number of other products as part of its stated goal to become more focused on…

Happy Birthday JMT!
January 10, 2013
Happy Birthday JMT!

  Yesterday was a momentous day for JMT…it was our 22nd birthday! I know you would usually think of it as an anniversary, but for some reason I always think of it as a birthday rather than an anniversary as it really was the birth of JMT. And where I couldn’t care less about my…

Much Ado About Nothing
July 30, 2012
Much Ado About Nothing

As many of you may or may not have been aware, last week Sage released their regular mid-year report for investors and market analysts.  Unfortunately, the wording in some areas of the report was poorly chosen identifying some products as “core” and others as “non-core”.  This caused all manner of responses, including glee from competitors…