Non-Profit Project Management
Foundations, NGOs and NFPs face ever-growing demands to manage contracts and contractual relationships more efficiently. These relationships include funders, service delivery partners, suppliers, and broader community stakeholder commitments.
The challenges of compliance and reporting in each of these relationships add to the time and costs incurred, putting further pressure on already stretched organisational capacity.
Foundations, NGOs and NFPs are under pressure to deliver the maximum benefit for their funder investments. Many face guidelines on the portion of funds used by administration to assure funders that they are distributing the maximum dollars possible to impactful projects.
At Tactiv we have worked within the grant funded non-government and government sector for almost two decades. We have seen rapid changes in how the sector has adopted more standard commercial style procurement and service agreements to improve contracting. At the same time, the sector faces ever-increasing regulatory, compliance and transparency demands.
Over this time, we have witnessed first-hand how organisations can successfully “do more with less” by growing their capacity through adopting a lifecycle approach to contract management.
Here are 4 simple benefits a project management software system can deliver to Foundations, NGOs and NFPs to improve their organisational capacity.
Eliminating Time Sinks
Simple and frequent demands for documents, information, help or other matters quickly amounts to a lot of time. Streamlining processes, enhancing scheduling, and structuring your projects is critical.
Organisations that have a non-profit project management software system in place benefit from eliminating or reducing the most time-consuming tasks that chew up time and reduce capacity.
Some easy wins to address time sinks are:
- Alerts and notifications on important dates like milestones, renewals, and payments
- Secure online role-based access to information
- Reporting on status to prevent and identify bottlenecks
Improving Contract Data Management
Foundations, NGOs and NFPs often manage multiple contracts and a variety of suppliers, stakeholders, and investors.
Managing critical dates, commitments and finances across contracts can be time-consuming and complex. A project management software improves contract data management by bringing together all contracts in a central repository and providing the structure needed to improve data quality.
With data managed and quality assured organisations can streamline and improve management of:
- Renewals, milestone data, and variations management.
- Budgeting, payment processing, and financial management.
- Acquittals and performance reporting.
➔ Finding these tips useful? Download this FREE guide to learn more about project management
Saving through Standardisation
Growing capacity within existing resources can be achieved from standardising business processes. Reduce manual tasks and take advantage of integrations to eliminate the need for ad hoc processes. Compliance, audits, and risk management all become far less arduous with standardisation.
Standardisation depends on not only having a non-profit project management software system, but also ensuring the standards are clear, and everyone involved can access and engage in the processes, data and content as needed.
Typically, non-profit project management software provides standardisation benefits including:
- Templates for contracts, letters, and reporting.
- Online business process workflows.
- Budget, finance, and payment processing.
Using a Collaborative System
Project management involves the engagement between two or more parties, and often a variety of additional stakeholders.
Maintaining contact relationship information is a costly administrative task. Milestone reporting, payments and renewals are more time-consuming or delayed due to poorly managed contact information.
Having CRM capability directly integrated into contract management provides the ability to:
- Easily update and manage contact details
- Track and store interactions
- Manage all content shared, discussed, or reviewed
- Align reporting and other information to contacts
Enquire Lifecycle Management
Tactiv clients have transformed their organisational capacity by adopting non-profit project management software. Our solution, Enquire is an online cloud-based system that eliminates costly and inefficient administration and enables staff to focus on higher value, proactive and growth focused activities.
Our experience means we have the insights to identify the quick wins to improve organisational capacity. Talk to us about assessing your opportunity to improve capacity with non-profit project management software.
