Grow Your Mission: Foster Collaboration with Development and Finance Teams

Nonprofits face countless challenges managing financial operations and harnessing full fundraising potential. While working towards accomplishing your organization’s mission, development and finance teams have different timelines and metrics.  

Balancing your development team’s needs with your organization’s fiscal responsibility can be challenging, and navigating and integrating data from multiple sources can be complex and time-consuming. These inefficiencies contribute to errors related to manual entry and can limit visibility into nonprofit operations. Storing data in multiple systems opens an organization to error and builds barriers between departments. 

Executive directors are responsible for bridging the gap and promoting collaboration between finance and development teams. When these teams work together, they align operational priorities, move missions forward, and position organizations to accomplish more.

Overcoming Operational Challenges

Development and fundraising teams are working towards the same shared mission, and data is the throughline that ensures individual departments are on equal footing. Fundraising relies heavily on data analysis to identify donor trends, track campaign performance, and make strategic decisions, and finance teams need data for budgeting, forecasting, financial analysis, and compliance.   

Both departments often spend hours manually pulling data and creating reports. On average, nonprofit employees spend a third of their day managing data. Data needs to be shared freely between departments. If one department lacks full visibility, it can cause inconsistency and make informed decisions more difficult.  

For example, finance teams require detailed and precise information about donations and expenditures from development teams to inform budgets and other operational necessities. If development teams provide incomplete or inaccurate data, it complicates the financial reporting process, and team members from both departments end up spending time discussing what is needed instead of focusing on the mission. 

Reporting complications also could lead to compliance errors down the line. Nonprofits can be subject to strict regulatory compliance standards, especially in financial reporting. Lack of coordination can lead to errors in financial reports or non-compliance with funding restrictions, potentially leading to legal issues or loss of donor trust. 

The executive director is positioned to influence both departments and create a culture of collaboration and data sharing between departments.  

Increasing Collaboration and Data Sharing 

Collaboration and ensuring data availability unifies departments and ensures everyone has the data needed to grow their organization’s mission.  

When development and finance teams integrate data, they can influence:  

Budgeting and Forecasting: Integrating finance and development data and sharing fundraising goals and expected revenue streams lets your organization align financial projections with expected donations to ensure financial stability and sustainability. 

Expense Tracking: Collaboration between finance and fundraising ensures efficient tracking of expenses related to fundraising activities. This includes more accurate event budgeting, tracking marketing expenses, and other fundraising expenditures, enabling better financial decision-making and resource allocation. 

Grant Management: Finance teams can provide accurate financial data and reports required for grant applications, while fundraising teams can focus on developing compelling grant proposals and maintaining relationships with grantors. 

Strategic Planning: Finance and fundraising teams can collaborate and report on long-term financial strategies, campaigns, and resource allocation plans to maximize impact and achieve mission objectives. Integrated reporting allows for a deeper analysis of fundraising effectiveness, return on investment, and overall organizational performance, leading to more informed and complete strategic planning.   

Nonprofits are striving to increase collaboration and efficiency by examining operational processes and systems.  

In 2023, 43% of nonprofits used seven or more tools daily, limiting employee efficiency and splitting data between systems. By consolidating vital operational functions into an integrated nonprofit software suite, your organization can strategically unify its fundraising and developmental data and align each department.  

All-in-One Nonprofit Software  

The all-in-one nonprofit software suite of GiveSmart, a fundraising, events, and donor management solution, and MIP Fund Accounting, a complete nonprofit accounting solution, provides organizations with the tools to raise more funds, gain more revenue, measure their impact, and achieve their goals. 

With GiveSmart and MIP, you can cut costs by unifying multiple single solution tools and improve data integrity through single data entry that flows between solutions and accommodates effortless data sharing.  

The nonprofit software suite unifies finance and development departments by reducing double data entry, manual processes, and human error. These departments also benefit from a complete data platform to inform strategic decision-making.   

Gain efficiency, save time, and reduce frustration with an integrated technology solution that streamlines every aspect of funding, from raising funds to accounting for them. Connect with a GiveSmart expert to learn more.