Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), are constantly on the look out to increase their profile across the world through sharing the stories and journeys of all organisations; big and small. Their aim is to undertake their important work whilst educating individuals across the world on the impact that all NGOs have on all civilisations and people as well as celebrating the successes and accomplishments of the individuals that setup and run such ideas.

 

But what are the types of issue that NGOs are faced with on a day-to-day basis? To begin with, the management of NGOs is extremely complex due to the high levels of accountability and scrutiny that these organisations are under. This is down the high levels of red tape that NGOs must adhere to in order to run within the law. There have been many instances in the past of organisations and charities abusing their power to benefit a small select few and as a result this is why there are such stringent measures in place to ensure that NGOs are serving the people and communities that they say they are.

Transparency is also a massive element within an NGO. They must all publish very in-depth accounts including who is paid what, where money has come from and also where money has been spent. This is to ensure that the activities undertaken by the NGO are positively changing peoples lives. The major issue with all of this is that it takes a lot of time, expertise and specialism to get all of this right and many NGOs are now turning to bespoke software to help improve their day-to-day processes and management.

As is quite obvious, the key goal of NGOs is to help people at the receiving end of their operations. But how can this be improved by changing what happens behind the scenes to squeeze every last penny out of their fundraising activity without compromising quality and standards but keeping accountability?

 

 

Using automation to help provide information quickly and keep stakeholders on top of activity

 

The teams that manage finances in an NGO focus a lot on transactions, manually entering data, checking lengthy and laborious spreadsheets in order to maintain their financial data. Usually this is seen as the most cost effective way – why spend lots of money on expensive systems when you can use the older, cheaper methods? Largely, in speeding up these processes there are massive time saving benefits which then lead to cost saved through efficiency. Automating many of these processes allows finance teams to spend more time doing other, more complex tasks themselves.

 

 

Respond quickly to the urgent needs of people that the NGO serves, prioritising and moving things quickly internally using bespoke software

 

One of the main reasons that an NGO is setup in the first place is to enable the help of the people and societies that it serves. Being able to do this quickly and efficiently whilst maintaining productivity is extremely important because it allows NGOs to quickly identify where time may be being spent unnecessarily, costing much needed cash.

 

 

Make management of systems more streamlined

 

Slightly related to the previous points in the financial management of the NGO and also the crisis and activity management but software use can massively benefit the way in which systems and duties are streamline. This could be anything from the determining of where donations and grants are apportioned, which departments are allocated which budgets, if emergency funds can be allocated etc. All of this removes a lot of the manual processing that would take time and slow down reactionary moves made by the NGO. Software would also hugely improve any accuracies to this and ensure that money isn’t being wrongly assigned to different places.

 

 

Allow internal stakeholders to stay focused on their specific mission without being overtaken by bureaucracy

 

Software and technology should be there to support and help employees with their jobs rather than provide unnecessary and unneeded barriers to getting their jobs done and ultimately helping the stakeholders that may rely on their organisation. With solutions in place that will help automate systems including things such as managing timesheets, expenses and other businesses related activities this means that more can be done on a outward facing task level rather than staff or volunteers spending too much time on internal tasks.

Bespoke software is good and can be used to build and shape both your regular processes and also your unique business circumstances. It’s quite obvious that most NGOs are unique entities that serve many people for many wonderful purposes. The issue is that there is no real one-size-fits-all approach to the management of software and this is why it is crucial to adopt bespoke solutions in order to manage the NGO is the best possible way.

We would love to chat to your NGO to see how we can provide effective bespoke software solutions – discover more of what we can do and get in touch with our team today.