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4 Internal Controls For Preventing Fraud in Nonprofits

By Greg McRay posted 5 days ago
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Fraud presents a significant threat to fundraising dollars, causing a median loss of $76,000 each year for nonprofits. Protecting your organization’s revenue against this threat is vital to powering your mission. After all, every dollar counts when it comes to funding your programs and services. Fortunately, the key to safeguarding your resources is within your nonprofit’s own processes. The first line of defense against fraud is internal controls . In this guide, we’ll explore four internal controls your nonprofit should implement to prevent fraud. 1. Create a Fraud Policy To prevent, detect, and address fraudulent activities, ...
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Nonprofit Impact Measurement Demystified: 4 FAQs Answered

By Stephen Minix posted 09-03-2024
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As a fundraising professional, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day work of planning campaigns, building relationships with supporters, and making donation requests. Focusing on all these moving parts may sometimes leave you wondering, “Is our fundraising work truly making a difference to our beneficiaries?” In other words, you may wonder if your efforts, (or, more broadly, your organization’s programs or services) are having a positive impact on those you serve. To answer that question, you need to engage in carefu l impact m easurement . To help you get started, let’s tackle a few frequently asked questions about impact ...
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How to Interpret the 4 Core Nonprofit Financial Statements

By Jon Osterburg posted 08-06-2024
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No matter what position you hold at your nonprofit, having at least a general understanding of your organization’s financial situation is critical to furthering its mission. Finances play a major role in nonprofit management, strategic planning , and nearly every aspect of fundraising, among other activities. Since you likely have a lot on your plate as a fundraising professional, having resources that organize and summarize your nonprofit’s most important financial data is helpful, rather than sifting through hundreds of records to find the information you need at a given moment. Fortunately, your organization’s financial team is required to ...
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AI and Prospect Research: What Your Nonprofit Should Know

By Sarah Tedesco posted 06-04-2024
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Strategically soliciting major gifts has always been essential to nonprofits’ fundraising success. By conducting prospect research and cultivating potential donors, your organization can secure the significant contributions necessary to fund its most important initiatives. As a fundraising professional, you’ve likely also heard that a current trend in the nonprofit sector is the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into various fundraising processes—including major donor prospecting. In this quick guide, we'll explore the benefits of leveraging AI to enhance your prospect research process and provide actionable steps to implement it effectively. ...
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Top Nonprofit Management Skills and How to Develop Them

By Caitlin Patterson posted 04-23-2024
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Becoming a nonprofit manager is a career path that can provide highly rewarding opportunities to develop a wide skillset, lead with purpose, and unite a team of passionate individuals toward a common goal. However, because the nonprofit landscape is so diverse, there’s no universal roadmap for charting your course toward a successful management career. Instead, it’s important to embody and nurture the skills you need to build cohesion, uphold a positive workplace culture, and adapt to changing needs in your community. In this article, we’ll discuss four essential management skills and how you can develop them in your role. 1. Clear and Open Communication ...
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Abusive, Arrogant, Arrested, and Awful Board Members

By Michael Baker posted 03-25-2024
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In more than 20 years of consulting with over 100 nonprofit organizations, I’ve seen my share of conflicts, chaffing personalities, and troublemakers serving as board members. Destructive behaviors are a choice, just like when we teach our children to make good decisions and good consequences will follow, make a poor decision, and negative consequences generally follow. A board member’s sole purpose is to ensure the nonprofit’s success. For most individuals, they follow and lead to put the organization on a successful pathway. For a select few, their behaviors negatively impact the organizations they’re supposed to be helping! Leadership of an organization ...
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Doing it for You: The Personal Importance of the CFRE Certification

By John Greenhoe posted 02-07-2024
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There are many well investigated and delineated reasons for earning the CFRE certification. Certainly, career advancement, building donor trust, and elevating the fundraising profession are among the most oft-mentioned points. All are important. What inspired me to become a CFRE more than 20 years ago was far more personal, and a reason I rarely hear mentioned. Quite simply, I did it for ME. Although much has changed over the years, in some circles, many individuals still shudder at the thought of a career in fundraising. As we all know, it is a most noble profession, but it is also often grossly understood. Unfortunately, there are ...
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Successfully Training Your Fundraising Team on AI: 3 Best Practices

By Joshua LaBorde posted 01-23-2024
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When leveraged correctly by nonprofits, AI tools can elevate fundraising success. Just take a look at this image to see how AI can help with nonprofit fundraising: However, a tool is only ever as effective as its wielder. That’s why it’s imperative to train your nonprofit’s team members on properly using AI tools. If this is the first time you’re in charge of a team or implementing a large operational change for your nonprofit, we’ll guide you through three best practices for training your fundraising team on AI. 1. Establish a Responsible-use AI Policy Poor fundraising AI usage can lead ...
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Fundraising Through Friction: 7 Tips From a Consultant to Manage Difficult Clients

By Amie Bossi posted 01-16-2024
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As a fundraising consultant, I can say most clients are a joy to work with. However, the occasional "challenging" one is inevitable. These interactions, though stressful, can be navigated with grace and tact, ultimately strengthening my professional skills and client relationships. While every client is different and requires a unique approach, I find these general guidelines to be effective: 1. Identify the True Source of Conflict Before diving into solutions, understand the source of the difficulty. Is the client expressing/displaying: Misaligned expectations: Constant calls, unrealistic deadlines, ...
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How to Tell Ethical and Impactful Stories for Your Nonprofit

By Ryan Felix posted 01-09-2024
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Most of us enjoy a good story. Whether we’re watching the latest hit movie, reading a favorite novel, or listening to a friend talk about their recent vacation, stories hold our attention and engage our emotions. Besides its usefulness for entertainment and personal connection, storytelling can also make your fundraising appeals more inspirational. However, it’s easy to get caught up in showing how your nonprofit made a difference in your community and forget to consider the ethical implications that come with telling stories about real people. Because effective nonprofit storytelling involves balancing ethics with impact, this guide ...
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Why Do Businesses Offer Matching Gifts? An Inside Look

By Adam Weinger posted 01-02-2024
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Corporate giving is a powerful force in the fundraising world. More and more companies realize their duty to give back through philanthropy, and matching gifts are one of the easiest ways to accomplish that. This type of corporate giving empowers employees to direct their company’s philanthropic spending toward causes they care about. When an employee donates to a nonprofit, the company promises to match that donation, effectively doubling the contribution. While it seems like nonprofits primarily benefit from matching gifts, the positives are actually mutual. As a fundraising professional, it’s vital to know why ...
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How CFRE Certification Supports Professionalism in Fundraising

By Eva Aldrich posted 12-11-2023
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We readily accept the notion that medicine and law are professions. As members of the public we even have a general idea of how membership in these professions works: doctors, lawyers, and accountants get the required education, pass a licensing exam, and agree to ethical conduct as outlined in their profession’s code of ethics. If they don’t achieve and maintain these standards, they either cannot initially join the profession or, if currently practicing, their ability to practice is revoked. This clear set of standards is partly why established professions generally enjoy an enhanced level of trust and respect. Mind the Knowledge ...
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How to Talk About Your CFRE Designation With Prospective Employers

By Stacia Swanson posted 11-28-2023
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One of the many benefits to earning and recertifying your CFRE designation is that it sends an important signal to prospective employers: I am a proven skilled professional who takes this work seriously. The truth is, most of us find our way into fundraising through a variety of channels. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who said their childhood dream was to be a fundraiser! Or even to be a nonprofit executive, for that matter! In fact, I often hear the opposite: “I could never do what you do.” I could spend hours telling anyone who will listen that fundraising isn’t about asking people for money—it’s about relationship-building. ...
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Adapting to the Digital Age: 3 Online Engagement Strategies

By Kimberly Richardson posted 11-20-2023
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Is your nonprofit doing everything it can to leverage technology to connect and engage donors? Social media offers a personal, immediate way to communicate with supporters, allowing nonprofits to build more intimate donor relationships. Additionally, tools like Artificial intelligence (AI) are being used by nonprofits (and across other industries) for anything from generating content ideas to building predictive models for prospect research. Because the marketing and fundraising technology landscape is constantly evolving, nonprofit fundraising professionals must stay on top of new developments and adapt their strategies alongside ...
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Engaging Asian Giving: A Guide to Philanthropy and Community Involvement

By Judy Zhu posted 10-26-2023
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As an individual who embarked on a transformative journey from China to Canada, I've been fortunate to witness and partake in the tapestry of cultural experiences, values, and traditions that distinguish both of these vibrant societies. It's in this delightful tug-of-war between my Chinese roots and my Canadian dreams that I've come to appreciate the unique ways we all think about community, charity, and helping others. It is against the backdrop of this unique perspective that I invite you to explore the dynamic and inspiring realm of "Engaging Asian Giving." In Asia and Canada, giving and philanthropy occupy unique places. The fusion ...
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5 Common Capital Campaign Myths & How to Educate Your Board

By Andrea Kihlstedt posted 10-16-2023
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While capital campaigns allow organizations to raise funds for significant projects that grow their capacity and impact, many board members have misconceptions about what they are and how to run them. This is understandable—they’re much larger projects than anything else most nonprofits attempt to tackle, rooted in major gift fundraising , and only come around roughly once a decade. Your board will play a pivotal role in your campaign’s success, so they should all be operating from a shared understanding of campaign best practices. Educating your board members will help ensure they don’t fall prey to the most common campaign myths. ...
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Charting Your Career Path: 5 Strategies for Fundraisers

By Jennifer Loftus posted 10-11-2023
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As a fundraiser, you source and secure funding that will ensure your nonprofit has a bright future. But what about your future? What does your personal career path look like? What can you do to take your career to new heights ? In this article, we’ll walk through five strategies to chart your career path. As you set clear goals for where you want to be and what you want to achieve as a fundraiser, you’ll not only discover personal fulfillment in your work, but be equipped to make a greater difference at your nonprofit. Let’s dive in. 1. Set Clear Goals To map out the journey you want to take throughout the course of your fundraising ...
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Crash Course for First-Time Managers: 12 Suggestions

By Bridget Murphy posted 09-05-2023
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A manager—good, bad, or well-intentioned but inexperienced—can make or break an employee’s overall experience and success in a role. For nonprofits, management is especially important. People are often drawn to this work for idealistic or community-minded reasons. They might feel personally invested far more than employees in other organization types. Nonprofit budgets are often tight. Relationships with donors, sponsors and governments are complex. Funding is a continuous challenge. It’s a lot to juggle and can create a hectic environment where the employee experience falls by the wayside. Nonprofit employee turnover ...
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5 Interview Secrets to Impactful Nonprofit Hiring

By Joshua Meyer posted 08-21-2023
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Hiring the right nonprofit employee can positively impact your organization for years to come. Unfortunately, the opposite is true when you hire the wrong person. But how can you know for sure that you’re making the right hiring decisions? Of course, you can never eliminate all uncertainty from the hiring process. However, the key to increasing the likelihood of bringing on the best new fundraising professionals lies in your interview process. Let’s review five impactful tips for holding better nonprofit interviews that lead to successful hiring. These tips help you look beyond just the CVs or resumes to assess candidates on multiple levels ...
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A Fundraiser’s Guide to Omnichannel Marketing: 3 Tips

By Kristin Priest posted 08-01-2023
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As a nonprofit fundraiser, you’re likely always looking for ways to sharpen and hone your craft. Improving your marketing strategies is a smart place to focus. With a robust marketing strategy, you can reach more new donors, strengthen relationships with existing supporters, and drive deeper involvement with your organization. An omnichannel approach allows you to establish multiple touchpoints with donors so you can build stronger brand awareness and recognition. In this guide, we’ll cover three key tips to implement an omnichannel strategy that will elevate your career as a fundraiser: Center data in your strategy. ...
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