Tag Archive for: staff

Stuck in a Staffing Crisis? 3 Reasons Your Recruiting Might Not Be Working

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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.

Staffing

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.

Staffing

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.

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When to Look for Expert Nonprofit Accounting Services

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When you are a nonprofit organization, finding expert nonprofit accounting services may not be high on your to-do list. Surely there are more important things to focus on instead of focusing on accounting, especially because your organization’s goal is not to make more profit?

In reality, nonprofit organizations can benefit a lot from nonprofit accounting. This article will go through the scenarios when you would need to look for expert nonprofit accounting services.

1. You Need to Consider COVID-19 Implications

The pandemic has resulted in a lot of changing regulations and greater overall uncertainty regarding the finances and accounting requirements of a firm. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which was passed in March 2020, affects nonprofits as well.

For organizations with less than 500 employees, you can have access to small business administration (SBA) loans or loan forgiveness. You can also access emergency economic injury disaster loans (EIDL) grants and employee retention credits.

For larger organizations with more than 500 employees, you can only access employee retention credits and EIDL grants.

The eligibility criteria and the need to report benefits from the CARES Act will mean that you can benefit from having expert accounting services providing you with greater insight. They are a lot more knowledgeable on how the CARES Act will change what you report on your statements, and they will ensure that your financial reports will accurately reflect the adjustments while complying with regulations.

At the same time, other COVID-19 considerations can cause an accounting headache for your nonprofit. For instance, you may experience modifications in the number of liabilities you have or will need some guidance with the ongoing financial concerns of your nonprofit.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation, and responding to accounting rule changes can be a challenge for everyone. By relying on an accounting service, you can rest well knowing that your audits and bookkeeping are all up to par.

2. You Find it Hard to Manage Cash Flow

Managing cash flow in a nonprofit can be more difficult or unstructured than a typical company. At the same time, it’s an important thing to consider, because you need that money to keep your organization going. You will therefore be able to benefit from nonprofit accounting, which aims to both manage and improve your cash flow.

A common challenge that nonprofits face is that their greatest cash flow only happens in certain seasons or months in a year, which means they will have to allocate this money throughout the less profitable months. By taking the time to properly plan your cash flow and ensure your balances will remain positive, you will need to spend a lot of time evaluating your finances and your budget.

An accounting service can analyze the existing financial information to understand where you get most of your revenues and benefits, and whether this is enough to sustain operations for a certain period of time. They can also pinpoint risk areas, where you may be spending too much or where you may be liable to losing a lot of money.

The information they gather will allow you to make well-informed decisions regarding your cash flow.

3. You Need Better Staffing and Payroll Strategies

Payroll management is a headache for any company, and it is a particularly challenging aspect of running operations for a nonprofit. Nonprofits are usually motivated by passion, so matters of staffing changes or payroll requirements can be a bit awkward to focus on. What happens, for instance, if there are some incredibly loyal staffers who are also becoming financially burdensome?

An accounting service can provide some insight into this area by identifying cost-effective strategies and the financial impact of having a certain amount of staff members. While it may not be the easiest thing to consider, expert accounting services will be able to pinpoint areas where you will have to cut costs to ensure that your organization can succeed in its endeavors.

At the same time, you will benefit from speaking with an accountant before hiring someone new so that you can understand how this will impact your financial position in the long run.

4. You Have Difficulty Tracking Revenues

As a nonprofit organization, the way you receive revenues will be very different from the orthodox method of selling products for profit. Your revenue will come from donations and grants more than anything else. The accounting process will be different for you, but it is just as important so that you can manage cash flow and understand your company’s financial position.

By having nonprofit accounting services helping you out, they will be able to maintain accurate and updated financial records which track all the revenues you receive. This ensures that you have a sound knowledge of how well your company is doing, and also prevents the possibility of you presenting inaccurate data in your financial reports.

Tracking this information will also be important in ensuring you continue receiving grants in the future.

Situations When You Need Nonprofit Accounting Services

As a nonprofit, you can benefit a lot from accessing nonprofit accounting services. Your accounting needs may be unique, and you may not be profit-motivated, but managing your finances is essential to ensure your organization survives.

Nonprofit accounting services can provide assistance if you need help with COVID-19 considerations, if you find it hard to manage cash flow, if you need better staffing strategies or if you have difficulty in tracking your revenues.

Contact us today for expert accounting services for nonprofits.

How to Create a Budget for Grant Writing

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Crafting a budget for grant writing can be tricky. That’s why you need to listen and subscribe to A Modern Nonprofit Podcast, feat. Kate West.

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