Nonprofits often struggle financially, overwhelmed by the need to muster a complex combination of income streams that range from grants and government funding to gifts-in-kind and volunteer labor. Financing Nonprofits draws upon a growing body of scholarship on the economics and organizational theory of nonprofit organizations to offer a set of practically applicable principles that can guide nonprofits towards firmer financial ground. Organized under the auspices of the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise, Financing Nonprofits is both an invaluable resource to nonprofit leaders and an ideal classroom resource for students of nonprofit finance.
Indispensable for all types and sizes of nonprofit organizations, this important book imparts a clear sense of the technical expertise and proficiency needed as a nonprofit financial officer and includes real-world case studies, checklists, tables, and sample policies to clarify and explain financial concepts.
The financial issues of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increased their importance in recent years, especially after the last global economic downturn. In this way, NPOs have been threatened by a reduction of income, while their work and expenses have not decreased. In this book, the editors bring together several topics that the academic literature has previously addressed, connecting them to each other and evaluating how all these issues are interrelated. Financing Nonprofit Organizations analyses the state of art of all these financial topics and the consequences of the last economic crisis. It dives into the interrelations of these concepts to suggest lines of future research and to reflect on the future of the different sources of funding of the NPOs. It will be of interest to students, practitioners, and researchers interested in initiating and updating their knowledge in the growing field of the financial aspects of the NPOs.
This book applies benefits theory to the financing of nonprofit and other social purpose organizations. Individual chapters are devoted to organizations primarily reliant on earned income, gifts, government support and investment income, respectively, as well as organizations that are highly diversified in their sources of operating support. The book is intended to guide managers and leaders towards finding the best mix of income sources for their organizations, to help educate future managers about resource development and to stimulate additional research on the financing of nonprofits and other forms of social enterprise.
Essential tools and guidance for effective nonprofit financial management Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations provides students, professionals, and board members with a comprehensive reference for the field. Identifying key objectives and exploring current practices, this book offers practical guidance on all major aspects of nonprofit financial management. As nonprofit organizations fall under ever-increasing scrutiny and accountability, this book provides the essential knowledge and tools professional need to maintain a strong financial management system while serving the organization’s stated mission. Financial management, cash flow, and financial sustainability are perennial issues, and this book highlights the concepts, skills, and tools that help organizations address those issues. Clear guidance on analytics, reporting, investing, risk management, and more comprise a singular reference that nonprofit finance and accounting professionals and board members should keep within arm’s reach. Updated to reflect the post-recession reality and outlook for nonprofits, this new edition includes new examples, expanded tax-exempt financing material, and recession analysis that informs strategy going forward. Articulate the proper primary financial objective, target liquidity, and how it ensures financial health and sustainability Understand nonprofit financial practices, processes, and objectives Manage your organization’s resources in the context of its mission Delve into smart investing and risk management best practices Manage liquidity, reporting, cash and operating budgets, debt and other liabilities, IP, legal risk, internal controls and more Craft appropriate financial policies Although the U.S. economy has recovered, recovery has not addressed the systemic and perpetual funding challenges nonprofits face year after year. Despite positive indicators, many organizations remain hampered by pursuit of the wrong primary financial objective, insufficient funding and a lack of investment in long-term sustainability; in this climate, financial managers must stay up-to-date with the latest tools, practices, and regulations in order to serve their organization’s interests. Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations provides clear, in-depth reference and strategy for navigating the expanding financial management function.
A complete guide to the financial requirements a nonprofit organization must follow to indefinitely maintain the volume and quality of their services An organization may have plenty of capacity in the long run, but in the short run, donor restrictions and limited financing options are constraining. Here-and-now liquid assets are the only resources available. Finance Fundamentals for Nonprofits: Building Capacity and Sustainability shows how to measure a nonprofit organization's financial capacity in different time frames and how to measure its ability to sustain capacity in each case. Explains how nonprofits differ from businesses and how they promote values-centered management Reveals how to improve financial capacity and sustainability Written by a nonprofit scholar Filled with real-world case studies and actionable advice relating financial health to financial capacity and sustainability, this book is essential reading for every nonprofit professional.
AS a financial manager of a nonprofit organization, are you so preoccupied with its social and welfare objectives that you lose sight of operations efficiency and operating cost controls? In a time when you risk potential government cutbacks at any moment, informed resource management is more critical than ever. Financial Management for Nonprofits is a practical guide for financial managers in a variety of nonprofit organizations including charities, educational and medical institutions and religious organizations. Distinctive in its generous use of case stuides, examples and illustrations, this book also distinguishes itself through its emphasis on software. Its free software disk will help you to perform break-even, Cost-Value-Profit (CVP), financial ratio analysis, and "what if" analysis, and an appendix reviews and rates other available sofware programs. Financial Management for Nonprofits covers: Operational differences between nonprofit and for-profit corporations. Accounting practices broken down by specific nonprofit organizations. Ways to spot and avoid financial problems. Sort and long-term financing. Improving managerial and department performance.
The first and only guide of its kind to offer nonprofit executiveshelp with the vital task of cash flow management! Murray Dropkin--an expert in the field of nonprofit accounting andauthor of The Budget-Building Book for Nonprofits--reveals how tocreate an effective plan for cash flow management. Thisunprecedented guide offers you nuts-and-bolts suggestions for usingthis plan to develop successful strategies for the day-to-day andlong-term financial planning of any nonprofit organization. Filledwith to-do lists, sample forms, worksheets, schedules, policies andprocedures, and checklists, The Cash Flow Management Book forNonprofits is a fundamental financial management toolkit fornonprofit managers and board members.
Making sure that your nonprofit is going to be around long-term requires financial leadership. This means creating a financial vision for your organization and planning how you’ll get there. Financial Leadership for Nonprofit Executives gives you the framework, specific language, and processes to lead with confidence. With it, you’ll learn how to protect and grow the assets of your organization and accomplish as much mission as possible with those resources. The good news is you don’t have to be a trained accountant, earn an MBA, or have run a for-profit business in another lifetime. You already have many of the skills it takes to be a financial leader. This useful guide makes the process understandable and doable. You’ll find clear, logical steps to learn how to get accurate financial data—in a format you can understand; use financial data to evaluate your organization’s health; plan around a set of meaningful financial goals; and communicate progress on these goals to your staff, board, and external stakeholders. You’ll also find five foundational financial leadership principles; three overarching questions every financial leader needs to be able to answer (and where to find those answers); two fundamental budgeting principles; and five steps to building a strong annual budget. At the end of each chapter is an evaluation tool. You can rate how your organization is doing relative to the component of financial leadership covered in each chapter. Each attribute is scored as being red, yellow, or green. “Red” items are below standard and require immediate attention; “yellow” items are widely practiced though not generally ideal; and “green” items are considered best practice. Over time, as you and your partners on the board and staff move the organization toward “green” in each of these areas, you will create an environment in which financial leadership can flourish.
Much more than a book on compiling grant proposals, Grant Management: Funding for Public and Nonprofit Programs presents grant writing in its broader organizational management framework. This text takes a comprehensive approach to external funding for public and nonprofit agencies. The book begins with an introduction to grants, their types, their history and their key characteristics to inform the next stagethe search for funding. A key part of any management process, an entire chapter considers the purpose and approaches to evaluation that should be considered in conjunction with grant-funded programs. The book concludes with a chapter that considers the process in reversehow to go about distributing funds as a grant maker rather than a grant seeker. This text leads the reader through the technical steps of preparing an application, explaining the process used to make decisions, key aspects of grant management, and includes a summary of important factors directly pertaining to grant funds. Written from the perspective of community development, With information drawn from core theories and tools of public administration, Grant Management: Funding for Public and Nonprofit Programs addresses overarching theoretical issues for public management as well as offers an applied perspective of grant funding and management. This is an ideal text for students and public and nonprofit managers alike.
