Finance

Collaboration between Development and Finance

Effective donor stewardship is more than just building relationships. It is demonstrating donor funds are being used as intended, in a timely manner, accompanied by transparency and open communication. It’s finance, development, and leadership working as a team with the donor’s best interest in mind. To achieve this, three tenets of achieving donor stewardship should be followed: sharing information with donors in a timely manner, ensuring gifts are spent as intended by donors, and enabling fundraisers to steward donors. 

• Sharing Information with Donors in a Timely Manner: For this to happen, a healthcare foundation needs to have complete visibility of their funds. To effectively steward donors, foundation staff needs to be able to access this information without relying on an already over-burdened hospital accounting department. It would be even better if the development officer could view this information while meeting with a donor, or proactively provide this impact information. 
• Ensuring Gifts are Spent as Intended by the Donor: Effective financial stewardship is knowing and documenting the donor’s intentions, ensuring gift restrictions are enforced throughout the foundation, and enabling development officers to confidently share impact information with donors. 
• Enabling Fundraisers to Steward Donors: Ultimately, it is fundraisers who help donors feel a connection to the organization, understand the impact of their gift, and plan their next donation. It is vital for the fundraiser to be building relationships. Intentionally restructuring non-donor-touch fundraising work can create more space to focus on strengthening donor stewardships. 

Grants Management 

Grants often comprise a significant revenue stream for healthcare institutions, particularly for research. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, 23% of nonprofit funding came from foundation and corporate grants in 2020. 

The process of winning and administering grants is a team effort, and your team is essential for effective grants management. It is critical to collaborate with your organization’s program and financial staff people when preparing grant proposals, so they will be aware of the program goals, outcomes and metrics, evaluation methodology, and program budgets. 

Applying, tracking, administering, and reporting on grants require a grant management system, a web-based platform used to fulfill the obligations of each grant. An efficient grant management system streamlines allocations and facilitates interaction among all stakeholders involved in grant management. It saves time and money, and helps measure impact, and document efficient use of funds.   

Audit Best Practices

An independent audit is an examination of the financial records, accounts, business transactions, accounting practices, and internal controls of a charitable nonprofit by an auditor who is not employed by the organization. 

The purpose of an audit is to ensure that the organization is financially accountable to stakeholders. Every organization should have an accounting policies and procedures manual that identifies procedures to monitor and record all the organization’s assets and implement a checks-and-balances system to discourage fraud and embezzlement. 

State laws vary in the scope of their regulation of charitable nonprofits, so it is imperative that your organization understand whether there is an audit requirement in your state, and if so, under what conditions.  

Organizations requiring an audit must hire an auditor, prepare for the audit, and review the auditor’s recommendations for improved financial controls and operational efficiency. Audits must be shared with the board of directors, which has a fiduciary responsibility for the organization, and with any members of the public who request it.