How Unit4 can help nonprofits deliver on time, within budget, and with an eye to social impact

Cloud-based ERP is presenting a solution for many nonprofits, helping them streamline tasks and strategically plan for the future. A recent Unit4 study found that 86% of nonprofits in the US and UK have, or plan to, transform operational capabilities with Cloud-based ERP.

In this blog, we will explore how Unit4 ERP is an ideal solution for nonprofits looking to manage their projects more effectively, as well as the compliance measures that come with that - keep reading to learn more.

A recent Unit4 study found that 86% of nonprofits in the US and UK have, or plan to, transform operational capabilities with Cloud-based ERP.

In this blog, we will explore how Unit4 ERP is an ideal solution for nonprofits looking to manage their projects more effectively, as well as the compliance measures that come with that - keep reading to learn more.

What challenges do nonprofits face when managing their projects?

• Manual workloads – Larger projects are key for nonprofits to grow financially or to deliver a large impact, but large projects can strain teams with manual work that eats into analysis time, fatigues teams and is error-prone
• Talent shortages – A recent survey completed by the National Council of Nonprofits in the US found that 75$ of those surveyed reported vacancies in their program and service delivery positions, with at least 50% reporting stress and burnout as a cause. 
• Lack of analysis and strategy – Nonprofits need to analyze both ongoing and historic performance to understand the drivers that affect delivery, from allocation to time to completion and more. Yet, with unmanageable workloads, and fragmented data, this becomes a huge challenge.
• Poor visibility of data – Often nonprofits rely on disparate systems, with various HR software or manual processes for payroll or people planning, which aren’t connected to a financial system or banking application. This creates poor visibility of an organization's ‘big picture’ data, with large workloads related to data consolidation.

As you can see it’s hard for nonprofits to understand or analyze their performance when delivering projects, securing grants, allocating funds, or integrating their HR processes. With manual or legacy systems, it’s an unmanageable task – nonprofits need reliable data and software capabilities and tools that help refocus on strategy-building analysis.

Click to read Helping nonprofits deliver on their mission with FP&A and HCM Gated 

Why ERP is key to nonprofit delivery

Two key factors will drive performance and delivery for nonprofits: their people and finances. With unrivaled visibility into these two key areas, nonprofits can more easily allocate their resources and understand which areas need improvement as a priority.

With Unit4 ERP, nonprofits can integrate all their organizational data into one Cloud-powered platform, allowing it to flow seamlessly across key functions like finance and HR, with advanced capabilities to report accurately on this data and ensure compliance is efficient and effective.

Finances

Our FP&A module takes financial planning and analysis to a whole new level. It empowers you to allocate resources effectively and make informed budgeting decisions.

Importantly, the visibility of financial data is a key part of social responsibility, ensuring that sustainability compliance such as ESG reporting, and other financial compliance regulations like IFRS 16, are being treated with the diligence they need.

With improved visibility, nonprofits can track project expenditure against the planned budget, down to the individual resource level, while also understanding resource risks. The project overview includes budgeted versus actual spending, including commitments, to provide a clearer picture of project impact. 

Unit4’s ERP allows you to then dig deeper into the data to learn valuable insights.  When you need to make changes to your plan, you capture them in ERP and it’s then easy to run them through a change control process for additional budget approval for the additional work. 

People

And what about the heartbeat of your organization? Your employees and donors. With our HCM module, you can go beyond project completion and capture post-project pulse feedback.

Our software solution offers easy-to-use surveys to gather valuable feedback so your people managers are empowered with the data they need to turn around poor engagement rates or take preemptive action so that you can retain the employees and volunteers you rely on.

With ERP you can run evaluations to understand what went right and what needs improvement, allowing you to form the kind of strategic analysis that defines successful and growing nonprofits.

Project planning is reflected per employee or volunteer, and assignments, so you can easily reallocate people to different project teams when needed. This is then sent directly to your employees’ calendar, so allocation is always up to date, and employees and volunteers know what work or support is needed. 

How can Unit4 help nonprofits manage projects efficiently

Unit4’s comprehensive ERP software suite empowers you with 24/7 performance analysis in Unit4 FP&A, so you can track project progress, monitor expenditure, income from grants, ensure compliance, and make more robust data-driven decisions.

By harnessing the power of Unit4 ERP, you'll not only deliver successful projects but also build stronger relationships with your donors and employees. From planning to executing, Unit4 provides an ERP solution tailored to your nonprofit focusing on running projects most efficiently, enabling you to:

• Optimize entire project cycles and continually track financials to plan effectively
• Manage and understand the financial implications of sub-awarding to local partners and agencies, including the disbursement process
• Understand organizational resources, such as fixed assets, to help allocate and reallocate effectively
• Streamline volunteer management through review and vetting steps, and the creation of volunteer resources
• Manage projects, donations, workforce status, and mission impact with more transparency, locally or across the globe.

Our people-centric solutions are purpose-built for nonprofits and blend industry-leading software to allow your organization to modernize and deliver more impact. To learn more, schedule a demo today, or hear how we have helped nonprofit organizations like yours.