Are these four project types leaking your NFP funds?

Are these four project types leaking your Not For Profit funds?

Time to read: This is a five minute read

Getting the most from every pound spent is key for all Not For Profit (NFP) organisations. But are funds being used in the most efficient manner? And what projects are wasting valuable time and resources? Here are the top four you should take a closer look at:

1) Bid and grant projects

Organisations are often under pressure to find new sources of income to replace what were previously reliable revenue streams. This might mean obtaining new skills, new people and new ideas but often organisation’s lack targeted recruitment or don’t utilise the best staff for the project, resulting in missed objectives or funding runs out.

When creating tender budgets, including data both in monetary and time units is essential. But so often the systems and process are not in place to support this, meaning valuable time is wasted trying to pull all this information together. The other costly mistake is underspend which can indicate that the organisation is not delivering, resulting in funds being axed in future rounds.

Accounting Project Management

Posted 15/02/2018

2) Fundraising and marketing projects

Projects are often multi-period and multi-year – the London Marathon is a good example of this. Being able to easily access the life-to-date value, track restricted funds, measure costs against outcomes and access other important data is critical to ensuring projects stay on track and that funding is allocated correctly. If the proper processes and systems aren’t in place it can cost more in time, energy and resource than is necessary and make it difficult to identify and rectify problems before they become major issues. In addition, having strict budgeting and approval processes ensures good fiscal discipline is in place from the start.

3) Service user projects

Quite often these are heavily constrained by contracts, particularly in health and safety compliance. There’s also an element of GDPR for confidential information and other complexities that require careful handling, including outcome-based measurement – all are prime areas where funds can be wasted due to lack of controls for efficient management. Coupled with this, is the fact that there’s often a lot of valuable data within the organisation that could uncover real insights to help improve services. Yet, it often goes underutilised because organisations lack the ability to make this information readily available.

4) IT and property projects

Internal costs often go unrecognised – much of the time people don’t realise what they’re spending. This is mainly because costs are not collected and properly categorised so it’s difficult to see a clear view of spend. NFPs often find it difficult to ascertain the true income and expenditure on their properties too. Being able to compare units such as retail outlets and draw insights into which ones are more successful and why some areas better than others is essential if organisations are to ensure that they’re not losing money on any one unit. It’s all too easy to miss critical data points if you can’t easily unlock this information.

Regardless of the type of projects within your organisation, you can be sure that there’ll be inefficiencies where funds and resources aren’t being adequately utilised. Whether the project is internal or external, cost only or revenue generating, all NFPs would be wise to discover and address their points of weakness. After all, funds can often leak from the areas least expected.