Nonprofits desire streamlined, automated processes for financial planning and analysis (FP&A), grants and donor management, and managing their projects and programs. Achieving efficiency and simplicity positively impacts their mission by freeing up valuable resources. In this special mini-series, Shawn Windle reveals his trends and predictions for the nonprofit industry, and the best practices organizations can leverage to reach their goals in 2024.

ERP Trends for Nonprofit Organizations

Introduction

At their core, Nonprofits want nothing more than to execute their missions, whether that be fighting world hunger, assisting adults with special needs, battling illiteracy, or many other humanitarian purposes. Nonprofits have diverse needs for software including financial planning, project management, grant management, and donor management. ERP vendors continued to meet Nonprofit organization’s demands for software solutions in 2023. By streamlining business processes, Nonprofits can magnify the impact they can make with their dollars and their human resources. In this industry review, ERP Advisors Group addresses the 2023 ERP trends of the nonprofit industry and evaluates how these organizations will be able to capitalize on emerging technology in 2024.

Emerging ERP Trends for Nonprofits

The nonprofit industry changed substantially in 2023 as corporate executives moved to nonprofit work and technology emerged to help them better serve their communities. As executives moved from the corporate world to the nonprofit, they demanded the tools they were using at their previous Fortune 500 companies. This migration opened the door for greater technological advancement in the nonprofit industry and provided opportunities for these companies to do more with the resources they have. Additionally, donation management has grown in importance, with subscription giving becoming more prevalent than one-time donations. This has made mobile donor capabilities, donor management systems, and similar functionality all the more vital to running a successful nonprofit.

More and more nonprofits are making the move to cloud ERP but are still hesitant to invest because it pulls resources away from their mission. Emerging nonprofit ERP trends are enabling nonprofits to justify their investment and tackle transformative efforts with fewer resources, especially as vendors make tools traditionally only available to large organizations accessible to SMBs.

Status Quo

Nonprofits tend to stick with the “status quo” when it comes to their technology – they may simply request the latest version from their favorite vendor, which, unfortunately, puts them at risk of selecting the wrong solution. Sometimes the best new ERP solution is one they are not using or have never heard of. Nonprofits can identify the business benefit to make the case for any new software solution but may need to look outside the organization to get ideas about the most modern software available to them.

Exciting New Tools

A major must-have for nonprofits moving forward is financial planning and analysis (FP&A) capabilities. Nonprofits often have difficulty tracking their budgets and planning for the distribution of finite resources. The availability of FP&A tools enables smaller nonprofits to take advantage of affordable software applications permitting greater financial independence and efficiency.

Conclusion

Nonprofits are well on their way to reaching new heights in 2024. As more organizations move towards the cloud, firms will continue to implement better tools to benefit both their mission and customers. The greater availability of FP&A tools will empower the future growth of nonprofits to ensure their resources are preserved for the mission. We look forward to the opportunities available to nonprofits in 2024.