Nonprofit organizations are encountering new complications and intricacies all the time, and monitoring performance, success, and failure is more important than ever to ensure that your organization has what it takes to not just survive but thrive. Being successful and thriving as an organization requires planning, executing those plans in a methodical way, monitoring activities, and analyzing the results of those carefully thought out plans. The overall performance of your nonprofit is essential to its current and future success.
In addition to this performance piece, strong financial practices are also needed. Beck and Company’s Certified Public Accountants and Business Advisors know that doing all of this is no easy task. That is why we are here to help your organization with the financial end of being a nonprofit so you can focus on carrying out plans and acting on your organization’s mission. Contact our CPAs today to get the nonprofit accounting and controllership services you need to further your mission from a financial perspective. By allowing us to take care of some of the financial pieces, you can focus on your organization’s ongoing performance. In focusing on performance, we will take a closer look at performance indicators over the course of this month and will discuss what they mean for your organization. The “4 Ts” are four performance indicators that deserve strong consideration and ongoing analysis, not to mention action, too. The first of those four indicators is transformation.
Transformation: Adapting and Changing as a Nonprofit is Essential
It is hard to deny that businesses and organizations alike are always in the process of change. But, do you view the ongoing transformation of your organization as something that adds value to it? Or worse, do you not allow your organization to transform while forcing it to stay as it has always been? Do you see that there are benefits to transformation including financial benefits? There is value to transformation, and transformation is all about effectively managing changes made to the organization or services delivered by it.
Transformation must be viewed as an ongoing activity rather than a single event. An effective performance management system will aid in this process, bringing a clear, consistent, and constant focus on organizational strategy, planning, execution, and review. Being onboard with allowing your organization to transform with the times and helping it along in this process are not easy, and it can be challenging to see the financial benefits—at least initially.
Here are five challenges your organization will likely face in the process of transformation. Recognizing these but not letting them stop your organization from making changes is key.
Challenges associated with organizational transformation:
1. Getting people to adapt to changes
2. Securing the necessary budget to support transformation and make the needed changes
3. Determining the cost benefit of making the changes
4. Finding the right skills and people to help in the transformation
5. Making the decisions in knowing where, exactly, to put the focus in the process of transformation
Transformation requires supporting significant change in approach to your organization’s operations, technology, processes, and service delivery wherever and however it may be needed in order to improve efficiency and deliver better outcomes. Beck and Company CPAs can help you help your organization in this process by sorting through and identifying the right financial information you will need to provide to stakeholders within the organization. This financial data will support decisions around the delivery of services and will provide all involved with the best access to the relevant financial information needed to make the needed changes.
Being open to transformation and being well prepared for it with the financial data you need are great places to start in truly responding to needs and making ongoing changes as an organization. Please contact us to learn more about how we can assist you in this process of continual improvement through organizational transformation. Stay tuned next week as we take a look at another performance indicator worth consideration—technology—that is closely tied to transformation.