Budget tracking is the process of monitoring your nonprofit’s income and expenses to ensure they stay within your planned budget.

No time to read this article now? Download it for later.

Imagine this: your nonprofit is busier than ever with fundraising events and field work to help make your community a better place. So busy, in fact, it’s time to hire a few new employees. But despite your job postings, you’re not recruiting as many candidates as you hoped.

If this sounds like your organization, it might be time to analyze why your recruiting efforts aren’t paying off. Hiring new employees–and retaining your existing ones–is a challenge for nonprofits and for-profit businesses alike. In this article, we’ll look at three reasons you’re not recruiting the talent you need and how to fix it.

3 Reasons Your Nonprofit is Failing to Recruit

Noncompetitive Compensation and Benefits

It’s no secret that most nonprofits have limited budgets for employee payroll. A constrained compensation budget might be the main reason you’re not attracting talent to your organization.

Many people who work in the nonprofit sector join an organization because they have a passion for the cause. While passionate employees are essential for driving your mission forward, passion can’t pay their bills.

In addition, most workers place high value on jobs with comprehensive benefits in addition to reasonable wages. A good health insurance plan and paid time off are requirements for a lot of great employees.

Compensation and benefits that are significantly below industry standards can deter employees from joining your organization. Likewise, if an employee’s salary cannot keep up with the cost of living in your area, they will likely look for a different job.

Solution: Review Your Compensation Package

There’s really only one solution to fixing low wages: adjusting wages and benefits packages to meet industry and local cost of living standards. You’ll need to assess and adjust your payroll budget to stay competitive in the job market.

While you can’t make money appear out of nowhere, your nonprofit accountant can likely help you determine how to make compensation more competitive. They’ll go over comparable salaries from other organizations and review your budget. Working together, you should be able to find a solution that compensates employees fairly without wrecking your budget.

Lack of Visibility and Brand Recognition

Marketing and branding your nonprofit isn’t just great for bringing in new volunteers or raising funds. Brand recognition is a huge part of attracting great employees to fill open roles.

For example, a person follows a nonprofit closely on social media. They enjoy the mission and support the work the organization does in the community. When a new job comes up within the organization, the job seeker already knows it’s at an organization they respect.

Job seekers tend to avoid applying for jobs with companies or organizations they don’t know. Skipping unknown organizations helps job seekers avoid scams. In addition, a lack of employee reviews can put job seekers off and have them scroll past your job ads.

Solution: Build a Strong Employer Brand

If you’re having problems even getting applicants, you may need to take a look at your marketing. Effective marketing efforts should include a strong online presence, such as a website and active social media pages. You also want to be sure your organization has a compelling mission narrative and recognition within your community or industry sector.

Some ideas for marketing and recruitment campaigns include:

• Social media campaigns highlighting the work of your organization
• A portion of your website dedicated to your mission, values, and how you achieve your nonprofit goals
• Encouraging volunteers and employees to leave positive reviews on job boards like Glassdoor or Indeed
• Attending in-person recruiting events like job fairs to increase visibility

Unclear Career Development and Advancement

Like any sector, nonprofit employees seek opportunities for career advancement, growth, and professional development. Nonprofits that fail to communicate career paths or advancement opportunities will likely deter candidates from applying or joining the organization.

Without a clear advancement path, job seekers may worry that the job is a dead-end role or has limited advancement opportunities. Worse, some job seekers may assume the organization is intentionally hiding career paths.

Qualified, ambitious candidates are much more likely to apply and take a job with an organization that will invest in their growth and offer paths for advancement.

Solution: Communicate Clear Career Paths

This is one of the easiest recruiting issues to solve–you simply need to be transparent and clear about a role’s future opportunities. Additionally, you should highlight professional development opportunities for employees. Even if a role doesn’t have a direct advancement path, cross-training and professional development resources can help prepare employees for new roles within the organization.

You should also highlight the success stories of employees in your organization. Maybe a volunteer or intern came to work for you full-time and now works as a manager. Or, you might have someone who started in one department and used the provided resources to move into a more impactful role.

Dig Deep to Find the Root of Your Staffing Struggles

The three reasons above are only some of the issues you might have when recruiting employees. There are plenty of other potential problems that could be hurting your recruitment efforts.

To find the root of your recruitment problems, dig deep and engage current employees, potential candidates, and volunteers to find out:

• Why interviewees went a different route
• What employees like and dislike about working for the organization
• Whether volunteers or community members would consider working at the organization–and why or why not

In addition to asking others, it’s important to self-evaluate your hiring process. With a little introspection, you might find something that’s deterring candidates. Then, you can create a solution to the problem and start attracting the talent you need.

If you find your recruiting efforts hindered by financial issues, reach out to The Charity CFO today.

No time to read this article now? Download it for later.

Are you using social media to generate an audience around your nonprofit so that you can maximize donations? Social media is a must-have tool for nonprofits, as it can help you expand your reach and share your important mission.

For some tips on how to optimize social media for nonprofits, keep reading. In this guide, we’ll go over some things you can do to grow your social media presence so that you can grow your profits.

1. Encourage Engagement

On social media, engagement is everything. To receive engagement from your audiences, you need to begin posting interactive and creative content. This content should be something that asks your followers to make an action rather than passively watching or viewing something.

Sprinkle this kind of content throughout your scheduled posts to boost your engagement rates so that you can get people involved with your brand and your mission. The more engaged your followers are, the more likely they are to make a contribution to your organization. Some ideas for boosting engagement could be running a poll, posting a Q and A session on your Instagram story, creating a Facebook survey, or asking your followers to share something about themselves.

This is a great way to get your current following engaged while also creating some buzz around your brand that can lead your followers to share your posts with others. Getting your audience involved will also help you gain insights about your target audience, which can help you optimize future posts.

2. Use Hashtags to Grow Your Audience

Hashtags are a great tool for finding new followers that are within your target audience. Using branded hashtags when posting your social media content is a great way to generate organic leads as it allows your content to be visible to those searching for the hashtag, or following certain hashtags. These individuals will likely already have some kind of connection to your brand or your cause, and they can then follow you to find out more and make a donation.

You can also create your own branded hashtag that others can use when discussing your charity online. You can encourage your followers to share your hashtag to spread awareness about your cause. Using your followers that are already loyal to your brand and mission to market your nonprofit is a great way to utilize user generate content.

You should make sure you create a strong hashtag that will easily catch on, and use it across all of your active platforms to spread brand awareness. You can also use hashtags that are related to your cause that are already popular to reach new audiences. Testing out a handful of relevant hashtags can help you discover which terms are being searched and are resonating with your audiences.

You will also be able to see how well certain hashtags resonate with audiences on different platforms. This will give you the insights you need to someday run your own hashtag nonprofit social media campaigns.

3. Be Responsive

To properly run your social media accounts, you can’t rely on follower engagement alone – you must also actively work to engage with your audience on a consistent basis. You should think of your social media accounts as places to offer your target audience amazing customer service. This means that you should respond to all of your private messages and post comments efficiently.

If someone wants to get involved with your nonprofit or is asking how to make a donation, you’ll want to make sure you’re there to answer their questions before they forget or change their mind. You should check in on your accounts daily and work to respond to as many messages as possible to show that you are a reliable organization that cares about its donors and supporters.

4. Make It Easy for Followers to Donate

In today’s convenience-driven world, nonprofits should make it as easy as possible for their followers to make a donation to their organization. To do so, you will need a “donate” call to action area available on your accounts. A great way to do so is to add a link to the donate page of your website in all of the bio areas of your social media accounts.

Then, when making posts, you can let your followers know that they can head to the link in your bio to make a donation to your cause. Additionally, on Facebook, nonprofits can add a “donate” call to action button that makes it easy for followers to pitch in. This gives your followers a clear and easy way to get involved with supporting your mission.

5. Measure the Success of Your Efforts

To make sure your social media efforts are optimized, you’ll need to continually track and measure your analytics. This will allow you to find out whether or not you’ve met the goals you’ve set. It can also help you streamline your social media marketing strategy, as you will be able to see what content resonates with your audience and boosts engagement, as well as what efforts aren’t worth continuing.

Social Media for Nonprofits: Tips and Tricks

When it comes to growing your following to boost your donations, social media for nonprofits is a must. Keep the tips and tricks in this guide in mind to create a social media presence that’s built to last.

Are you looking for an accounting and bookkeeping service that can help you handle your nonprofit finances? Request a meeting with us today to find the solution you need.

According to 2019 data, there were 1.54 million nonprofit organizations registered with the IRS. Charities are the way we, as Americans, support our fellow citizens. They’re also how we fund art and the humanities. These are all worthwhile endeavors, but nonprofits face operational challenges.

These unique third-sector hurdles can squash a nonprofit’s mission. Are you worried about how you’ll handle these nonprofit obstacles? You should be.

Read on to learn about the ten operations issues and how successful nonprofits deal with them.

1. Funding

The people attracted to the nonprofit sector aren’t working to make as much money as they can. The average nonprofit CEO makes $118,678. This number is, of course, only an average.

There are outliers, like the CEOs of large nonprofit medical organizations. CEO pay often coincides with the scale of the operating budget.

That said, all operating budgets come from a steady stream of funding. Organizations love to do fundraisers, but most nonprofits need grants and foundational donations.

Reduce these operations challenges by hiring a team of grant writers and fundraisers. These dedicated employees seek grants and other large donations.

2. Growth

Some nonprofits establish themselves as a product of their place and time. There is a specific need in society, and these organizations sprout organically to help fill the gaps.

Take the current COVID-19 pandemic. Though large nonprofits took a hit in funding, smaller nonprofit organizations dedicated to workers in service industry sectors were born.

Whether large or small, growth remains a considerable challenge for all nonprofits.

Growth Strategy

Like private businesses, nonprofits need a marketing strategy. How do you make the public aware of your cause? How do you generate momentum for donations?

Successful nonprofits market themselves in these ways:

• Professional email blasts highlighting current campaigns and donation updates
• Setting achievable and measurable short-term goals
• Active social media accounts on multiple platforms
• An updated website with a donation and volunteer portal
• Press relationships to garner valuable coverage
• Displayed results for successful campaigns

Successful nonprofits also keep a donor database. This database helps organization increase their repeat donors with targeted updates.

3. Staffing and Volunteers

Many nonprofits have paid staff in charge of campaigns, fundraising, and administrative duties. Unfortunately, the operational budgets of smaller nonprofits aren’t ideal for paid staff.

Most nonprofits rely on a steady stream of volunteers to stay afloat. Volunteers are unpaid labor and can be unreliable. People drift in and out of nonprofit volunteering depending on their time and dedication.

Successful nonprofits can keep volunteers and can attract more to the cause. They do this by:

• Making clear asks and calls for volunteers
• Highlighting volunteer activities on social media
• Posting calls on nonprofit volunteer websites
• Focusing on the benefits of volunteering
• Making it easy to sign up
• Offering varying levels of engagement

If you find you have trouble finding and retaining volunteers, you have to focus on why. Are you asking too much? Are you highlighting the benefits of volunteering?

4. Technology

So much of marketing and accounting is performed online and with modern technology. Having the capacity to go digital is one of the top nonprofit obstacles to operations.

Technology isn’t cheap. Ineffective or outdated software reduces campaign capacity and social media capabilities.

Advancements in technology are a budget concern. Nonprofits, on average, spend 3.2% of their budgets on technology. Successful organizations keep a technology budget that allows them to make purchases.

5. Taxes and Government Regulation

Changes in the tax code come with every new Presidential administration and new Congress. As the tax laws shift, long-term nonprofits have to keep up.

For example, President Biden recently proposed raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. If these shifts become law, nonprofits must navigate how this will impact their donor base.

Will wealthy donors and corporations shrink their donations? If they do, how will your nonprofit pivot its strategy?

6. Audits

When you’re seeking large, foundational grants, you should expect an audit. A lack of preparation for these audits is one of the biggest obstacles to operating a nonprofit.

Independent Audits

These audits review a nonprofit’s financial documents. These documents include accounts, transactions, and accounting records.

Performed by an independent CPA, large donors request them to ensure their money goes to a legitimate cause.

Single Audits

Some nonprofits receive money from the federal government. If you receive federal grants and spend more than $750,000 per year, you’ll trigger a single audit.

These audits are more thorough than independent audits and are compliance measures. Preparation for a single audit requires meticulous and specific bookkeeping.

Tax Audits

These are typical IRS audits and are a gigantic hurdle for nonprofit organizations. They’re horrible PR, and they signal less than professional accounting methods.

Reporting inconsistencies and incorrect information trigger these audits.

Organized accounting is a necessity to keep your organization in the public’s good graces.

7. Burnout

Larger nonprofits with paid workers run like a business. Even though these workers receive compensation, it’s not comparable to private sector salary.

Smaller organizations might be completely volunteer-based. It’s hard to stay on task without compensation. You and your coworkers need a burnout prevention strategy.

What can you and your organization do to prevent this?

• Vacation time and dedicated unplugging
• Encourage self-care and empower workers to say “no”
• Search for outsourcing opportunities to lessen workloads
• Keep communication open

Too often, workers or volunteers at low wages fizzle from stress. If you’re grinding too hard, step back and breathe, and encourage your staff to do so as well.

Overcoming Nonprofit Operational Challenges

Operational challenges can compromise a nonprofit’s mission. To achieve your nonprofit goals, you need a steady stream of funding and volunteers.

Learning how to identify and overcome these operational challenges is the key to a successful mission.

Are you starting a nonprofit to address a specific community need? Raising money and helping people in need is a noble goal, but the nonprofit world can be challenging.

Request a meeting with The Charity CFO, and we’ll get you on the path to success.

Want to know how you can attract and retain more volunteers for your organization? It’s this simple with our latest blog.

Your nonprofit organization is only as strong as its weakest link. And if your nonprofit was previously a solo operation, and now more recently evolving to a team, then you need to know the importance of scaling.

Every nonprofit will have to determine what and when they need to scale itself as an organization. When expanding your organization, you need to consider important points like its infrastructure, budget, team members and even strategy as it relates to your mission. These are so important!

However, “scale” can mean many things. To ensure that you can grow your nonprofit through the most successful way possible, you need to ensure that your organization has certain structures in place that will make for a long-term future you can be proud of.

If you want to learn all there is about scaling your nonprofit, then you need to listen to this episode of A Modern Nonprofit Podcast. In this week’s episode, Travis D. Johnson of the Nonprofit Architect Podcast joins forces with Tosha Anderson of The Charity CFO for an in-depth discussion geared towards board members, charity leaders and aspiring nonprofit professionals.

LISTEN TO TRAVIS AND TOSHA DISCUSS HOW TO SCALE YOUR NONPROFIT HERE. 

On this episode, the two converse about important questions such as:

• What do nonprofits need to scale so they can get paid?
• What processes need to be in place in order for this to happen?
• What is holding nonprofits back from taking these steps?
• Does this process work for solo operations?
• And more!

Travis Johnson is this week’s guest on A Modern Nonprofit Podcast!

It’s a great episode for any listener wanting to learn more about reaching your organizational growth goals and how scaling will effectively manage your expansion, if done correctly. You shouldn’t take on the challenges of the nonprofit sector alone! And fortunately, you don’t have to.

Here’s how podcast listeners like you are tackling challenges within the nonprofit sector

We’ve had many new listeners request a free consultation with Tosha and her team of expert, certified public accountants at The Charity CFO after recognizing that their organization’s structure and bookkeeping were in desperate need for improvement across a variety of areas. Our team performs outsourced accounting work for hundreds of nonprofits and we want to walk alongside your nonprofit to help you save money, modernize and truly achieve its mission. Check out our services here. 

Aside from Tosha, Travis Johnson is the current host of The Nonprofit Architect, which is the only nonprofit podcast dedicated to giving you the actionable steps needed to build a stronger nonprofit. He has interviewed tons of nonprofit leaders, business leaders, and consultants in order to help you say no to more work and say yes to more donations. Check out his podcast series here. 

Lastly, make sure you subscribe to both A Modern Nonprofit Podcast and The Nonprofit Architect! Hear something that stood out to you in this week’s episode? Share your thoughts with A Modern Nonprofit Facebook Group, which you can request to join here. There’s hundreds of nonprofit professionals conversing about topics and challenges they face across their organization. It’s one big, exciting think tank. Don’t miss out!

Recognizing potential situations and environments your nonprofit may encounter in the future, and determining how your organization should react, are important towards its long-term success. To build a successful nonprofit, one must learn the importance of nonprofit strategic and scenario planning.

While these two terms sound similar, they are fundamentally different. Quickly, strategic planning typically focuses on identifying and/or describing likely futures, then developing a plan that allows an organization to succeed. Similarly, scenario planning process tends to explore the uncertainty involved in analyzing a long- term future.

But, you shouldn’t just rely on the short paragraph above as your information, or all that you need to know for your nonprofit.

You should rely (and listen) to the latest episode of A Modern Nonprofit Podcast if you want to learn everything you need to know about strategic and scenario planning.

LISTEN TO EMILIE AND TOSHA DISCUSS NONPROFIT STRATEGIC AND SCENARIO PLANNING ON A MODERN NONPROFIT PODCAST HERE! 

On this episode, Dr. Emilie Socash, CEO of Nonprofit Help Center, to talk with Tosha Anderson, founder and CEO of The Charity CFO, to review this important topic. Some questions covered during the episode include:

• What’s the difference between scenario planning and strategic planning
• What’s unique about the scenario planning process for nonprofits (vs. for-profits)?
• What does the scenario planning process look like? Is there just one way to do it? Does it require a specific skill set?
• Can you give an example of how a nonprofit has effectively used scenario planning?
• And more!

Make sure to subscribe to A Modern Nonprofit Podcast and share our episode to your nonprofit, professional network to get the word out about the helpful tips and tricks shared during this nonprofit-oriented series!

Dr. Emilie Socash is the CEO of Nonprofit Help Center, and also joins Tosha Anderson on A Modern Nonprofit Podcast!

So, you’ve listened to A Modern Nonprofit Podcast. Now what?

Nonprofit organizations—and the people who lead them—bring unique value to our communities, particularly during times of challenging change. The Nonprofit Help Center delivers a leader-focused suite of services that are grounded in organizational and leadership psychology, delivering transformational and long-lasting change where it’s needed most. Is your organization looking to build itself into an organization that can truly succeed? Become a NHC member today, which includes full access to all live and pre recorded webinars, special member resources, and a discount on coaching!

Visit the Nonprofit Help Center Website to learn more. 

And if you want to build your organization, you need to focus on the work that matters. That means you shouldn’t have to spend your nights and weekends completing financial paperwork, performing bookkeeping tasks or learning nonprofit accounting jargon. You need to outsource your accounting, and ensure you have a team of certified public accountants who actually know nonprofits.

If this sounds like your nonprofit and your own needs, then you should consider us, The Charity CFO. Discover what bookkeeping and accounting services we can provide your organization, then schedule a free consultation with us to start your journey.

Nonprofit financial statements, reports and jargon are the key to ensuring your organization, or business, can operate at its full strength. Thus, it is important that you can understand financials- which involves reading, creating, editing and analyzing your financial reports.

Financial reports will shine light as to how much money your organization operates with, how much donations you received and how much your staff are making. Understanding these numbers is especially important when tax season rolls around!

To better help nonprofit leaders and CEOs understand their financials, Tosha Anderson of The Charity CFO invited Sara Lahman of Annie Malone Children and Family Services on A Modern Nonprofit Podcast.

Sara Lahman of Annie Malone is this week’s A Modern Nonprofit guest!

Previously an Assistant Vice President of Residential Treatment Services with Great Circle, Sara knows a lot about helping the community. And as the CEO of an organization with a very influential mission, she knows how important nonprofit finances are.

If you want to learn how to understand nonprofit finances to help your nonprofit thrive, then you need to subscribe and listen to the latest A Modern Nonprofit Podcast episode!

LISTEN TO SARA AND TOSHA DISCUSS FINANCIALS ON A MODERN NONPROFIT PODCAST HERE! 

Some of the topics the two discuss include:

• Differences between being the head of a program vs. head of an entire organization
• Tips and tricks to understand numbers
•  The most important thing(s) a nonprofit leader should know about their financials
• Strategies to improve financial knowledge for beginners
• And more!

Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast for future episodes, as there’s tons of more exciting content coming your way!

So, you’ve listened to the most recent episode of A Modern Nonprofit Podcast. Now what?

Everything that Annie Malone does is aimed at ‘Making Lives Better’ for the children and families they serve. As a premier organization that provides a diverse array of services advancing the quality of life for children, families, and communities, Sara Lehman and her team at Annie Malone play a vital role in their community. To learn more about Sara’s organization and to support their mission, make sure to visit their website here. 

For individuals who might have realized you’re in over your head with your nonprofit financials, then you are not alone. Have you considered outsourcing your bookkeeping and accounting? Check out the services and pricing that The Charity CFO has to offer, and get the help you need to ensure your financials are not only up-to-date, but efficient and modernized.

Fortunately, you’re not alone if you are struggling to understand nonprofit financials. That’s why Tosha and her team created A Modern Nonprofit Facebook group, which is filled with insightful comments, posts and discussions from industry leaders. The best part? It’s completely free to join this inclusive community! Learn more and join today using this Facebook link.