What financial data can tell you about your charity

Download The Road to Nonprofit Success e-book

Driving your charity forward with data is like adding footnotes to an essay – while people may be initially persuaded by your argument, evidence is what seals the deal.  

Charities house a lot of data, from donor details to information about service users. Financial data, in particular, can be very useful for organisations looking to understand more about their impact. They can see donation sizes, revenue per donor, how much services cost, and how many have been delivered over different time periods, and much more. 

Sage Intacct’s eBook, which you can download below, outlines how charities can use their financial data to make decisions and drive the greatest impact. It also highlights the barriers that organisations may face in doing this.  

It reveals the internal frustrations of more than 500 non-profit finance leaders, most of which relate to the inability to see or monitor their metrics. Delays due to disparate systems, lack of real-time visibility into key metrics, and an inability to measure their outcome metrics all entered into the top five challenges that nonprofits face.  

Yet looking at this data in real-time can help you make mission-critical decisions. It can help you be agile with your fundraising strategy, identifying early tactics that might not be working, or alternatively, discovering what is working instead.  

Understanding any financial variables can also determine how you talk about your charity to external audiences. You can talk about how much fundraising money has been spent on each service you provide or talk about how much is needed to deliver more of them. Simply put, you can use your data to justify why others should invest in your cause. 

For example, you may notice a sudden spike in donations – once you’ve noticed the trend, you can start to discover why. Once you’ve discovered why, you can capitalise on the momentum, putting out similar content that resonates or doubling down on messaging.  

Charities should not shy away from failure either. Failure can be catalyst for innovation, when the reasons for it are understood. But first charities must be able to spot the downward trends, so they know exactly which areas they need to work on. Being able to spot these trends early is vital to catch issues before they become too entrenched. 

Ultimately, the Road to Nonprofit Finance Success eBook concludes that financial visibility saves more lives. NATCO, the American organisation for donor and transplant professionals, estimates that because their board can see what they’re doing well and what they need to fix through their financial management system, they are remaining solvent where they weren’t before.  

“[The Board’s] whole attitude about the future of the organisation changed once they had valuable financial information, they could actually make decisions with,” commented Donna Dickt, executive director of NATCO. “Bottom line, Sage Intacct is helping us save lives.”