In the world of senior care, one of the ongoing challenges is balancing high-quality care with cost control. As the demands on assisted living facilities continue to grow, it’s becoming more critical for organizations to adopt systems that Reduce manual administrative tasks and ensure that resources are being used as efficiently as possible. This is where modern assisted living software comes into play, by helping organizations reduce healthcare costs while improving care and operational efficiency.
Creating and maintaining an efficient staff schedule while keeping labor costs under control can be one of the toughest challenges for assisted living facilities. With a diverse workforce that includes full-time employees, part-time staff, contract workers, relief staff, and unionized teams, scheduling quickly becomes complicated. Without the right tools, facilities run the risk of overspending on labor or, even worse, being understaffed—both of which have a direct impact on the quality of care.
With long term care scheduling software, assisted living facilities can simplify scheduling by automating many previously manual processes. This ensures that staff levels align with actual care needs, preventing both overstaffing and understaffing.
These tools make scheduling more efficient with easy-to-use templates, self-service options for staff, and real-time visibility into labor costs. This allows managers to quickly adjust schedules as needed to keep costs in check. With Sparkrock 365, all these scheduling and labor management features are integrated into a single platform, helping to reduce errors, save time, and keep staffing costs under control.
Assisted living facilities often rely on a mix of private payments from residents, government funding, grants, and donations to cover operational costs. Each source has unique compliance standards and reporting requirements. Managing these complex funding structures manually can lead to errors, missed deadlines, and the risk of non-compliance, resulting in financial penalties and loss of funding.
The solution to this challenge lies in having a centralized system that helps senior care organizations manage all of these funding streams efficiently. Sparkrock 365 simplifies the process by integrating finance, HR, and payroll management into one platform, making it easier to track funds, manage grants, and automate compliance reporting. With real-time updates and seamless integration, Sparkrock 365 reduces the likelihood of errors and makes reporting quicker and more accurate, ensuring that funds are allocated correctly and on time.
Many senior care organizations still rely on disconnected systems for HR, payroll, and financial management. This fragmentation leads to data siloes, where information is isolated in different departments, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the organization’s performance. The lack of integration creates opportunities for errors and inefficiencies, especially when trying to move data between systems.
Sparkrock 365 connects finance, HR, payroll, and reporting into one unified system. This integration eliminates data siloes and provides seamless flow between departments. Whether it’s employee records, payroll data, or financial transactions, everything is accessible in one place, giving leadership teams a holistic view of operations. This centralized approach ensures that data is accurate, up-to-date, and easily accessible, leading to better decision-making and fewer mistakes.
Senior care facilities handle a lot of sensitive information—employee records, resident health data, and financial details. Without strong security measures in place, this information is at risk of breaches and cyber threats, which can lead to financial losses, damage to reputation, and legal issues.
Sparkrock 365 leverages the security of the Microsoft cloud platform, offering industry-leading security features such as two-factor authentication (2FA) and continuous updates to protect sensitive data. Cloud-based systems are often more secure than traditional on-premise solutions because they are designed to handle the latest cybersecurity threats and ensure compliance with privacy regulations. By adopting cloud-based healthcare solutions like Sparkrock 365, senior care facilities can be confident that their data is protected while staying compliant with industry regulations.
Payroll is critical in senior care facilities, and getting it right is essential. With a workforce that includes full-time, part-time, casual, and unionized employees, each group has its own pay structure—, including stipends, overtime, expenses, and union rules—making accurate payroll management a necessity.
Sparkrock 365 is designed specifically to handle these unique pay structures. Our team, with experience in the senior care industry, has built the system to support the specific rules and requirements that senior care organizations face. Whether it’s calculating overtime, managing stipends, or adhering to union agreements, Sparkrock 365 automates these processes to ensure employees are paid correctly and on time. This reduces the risk of errors, ensures compliance with labor laws, and saves valuable administrative time.
In healthcare and senior care, we prioritize collecting and analyzing data to inform critical health decisions. Whether it’s monitoring a resident’s medical condition or tracking their care plan, real-time data is essential for making the best possible decisions. But when it comes to administrative functions—like managing finances, staffing, and compliance— this same level of data-driven decision-making is often lacking.
Without real-time access to financial and operational data, senior care facilities are forced to make decisions based on outdated or incomplete information. This lack of visibility can lead to costly mistakes, from overstaffing or understaffing to missed financial opportunities or compliance risks. When financial data is stored in disconnected systems, it becomes even harder to get an accurate picture of what's really happening. As a result, important decisions about resource allocation, budgeting, and compliance can be made with limited insights, putting the facility at risk.
Sparkrock 365 ensures that senior care facilities can access real-time reporting by integrating all essential data into one platform. With built-in tools like Power BI, management teams can track key metrics—such as labor costs, procurement costs, and funding compliance—in real time. This allows for quick, data-driven decisions that help optimize resources, improve cost management, and ensure compliance, just as real-time data helps healthcare professionals provide the best care for their residents.
Conclusion: How to Save Costs While Improving Efficiency in Assisted Living
The assisted living and senior care industries are under constant pressure to reduce costs while maintaining high-quality care. To meet this challenge, senior care facilities need solutions that simplify operations and improve efficiency. Sparkrock 365 is the comprehensive platform that can help. By integrating finance, HR, payroll, and reporting into one system, it provides real-time data and insights that support better decision-making. From eliminating manual tasks and improving payroll accuracy to enhancing security and managing complex funding structures, Sparkrock 365 helps senior care organizations streamline operations, reduce healthcare costs, and ultimately deliver better care to their residents.
Want to see how these features can benefit your facility? Reach out today to schedule a demo and discover how Sparkrock 365 can help you operate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Navigating change requires more than flexibility—it requires resilience.
In a time when nonprofit organizations are facing delayed funding, shifting priorities, and increasing pressure to do more with less, your systems can either support your mission or hold you back.
Watch our on-demand webinar, “Staying Resilient: Strategies for Nonprofits in Times of Change,” and learn how Sparkrock and Finnovate for Good are helping nonprofit finance and operations teams stay aligned, agile, and mission-focused with purpose-built tools and practical strategies.
✅ Resilience in Action: Understand the unique challenges nonprofits are facing today—and what resilient organizations are doing differently to stay ahead.
✅ Finance Demo Spotlight: See a live walkthrough of Sparkrock 365's finance tools, designed to improve visibility, increase control, and reduce manual work.
✅ Expert Perspectives: Hear from nonprofit advisor Andrew Horrow and Sparkrock experts as they share real-world strategies for navigating uncertainty with clarity and confidence.
✅ Interactive Q&A: Learn from the questions your peers are asking and get expert insights tailored to nonprofit finance and operations.
Build the resilience your mission needs—without adding complexity.
Watch the webinar on demand now.
Across North America, nonprofit leaders are navigating a landscape defined by unpredictability. Shifting political priorities, rising operational costs, and unpredictable funding streams are creating real pressure for organizations that rely on stable support to deliver vital services. In this environment, one constant remains: strong donor relationships are essential to organizational sustainability and long-term impact.
But building and maintaining those relationships requires more than heartfelt appeals or year-end reports. It requires transparency, clarity, and the ability to communicate impact in real time. That’s where Sparkrock 365 comes in.
In times of uncertainty, transparency becomes a powerful differentiator. Donors want to know not just that their support is appreciated, but that it’s being used thoughtfully and effectively. Sparkrock 365 helps nonprofits deliver that clarity with precision.
Dimensional accounting capabilities allow organizations to track every dollar with purpose across programs, locations, or funding restrictions. When a donor contributes to a specific initiative, whether it’s supporting food security programs or expanding outreach services, Sparkrock makes it possible to isolate that funding, follow it through the system, and report back with confidence.
This isn’t just about compliance or reporting, it’s about trust. When organizations can show the story behind the numbers, they invite donors into the mission in a meaningful way. Transparency fosters confidence. Confidence drives loyalty. And loyal donors are not only more likely to give again, they’re more likely to champion your cause.
Donors today are looking for more than gratitude—they're looking for impact. They want to see how their generosity is driving meaningful change; not just at the organizational level, but within the communities you serve. Data is the bridge that connects their intention to real-world outcomes. Sparkrock equips your team with the tools to surface, organize, and share that data in ways that make your impact clear and compelling.
With real-time financial insights and budget-to-actual tracking, your team can access the kind of information that turns a spreadsheet into a story. Instead of overwhelming donors with raw figures, you can highlight tangible progress, showing how their contributions fuel momentum and lead to real results When you can show that a donation supported 500 hours of tutoring or enabled a new program to reach underserved neighborhoods, the story becomes personal.
And personal stories stick. They deepen emotional connections, increase donor satisfaction, and turn supporters into advocates. Sparkrock 365 equips you with the ability to tell these stories consistently and confidently, reinforcing the value of every gift, and elevating the role your donors play in advancing your mission.
Operational excellence doesn’t always get the spotlight, but it’s often the foundation for everything else, including donor relationships. When internal processes are efficient, your team has more time and energy to engage externally. When your operations are organized and professional, your credibility with donors grows.
Sparkrock 365 supports that operational backbone. By automating key processes in HR, payroll, approvals, and expense management, you reduce friction across the organization. Staff aren’t bogged down by administrative burden, they’re freed up to focus on what matters: strategic planning, proactive stewardship, and relationship-building.
The result is a more agile organization that’s able to respond to donor inquiries promptly, deliver personalized communications, and follow up with purpose. Operational improvements like these build confidence, showing donors that your organization is both mission-driven and well-managed. In today’s climate, that kind of credibility can make all the difference.
Strong stewardship doesn’t end when the donation is processed. In many ways, that’s just the beginning. To keep donors engaged, organizations need to communicate ongoing progress and demonstrate how contributions are making a difference.
That’s where data integration becomes essential. Sparkrock 365’s ability to connect with popular donor management and CRM platforms, such as EveryAction, Raiser’s Edge, DonorDrive, and Microsoft Dynamics, means your fundraising and finance teams can work from a shared source of truth. Grant budgets, spending, and outcomes are no longer siloed; they’re part of a larger, connected story.
This alignment empowers fundraisers with up-to-date, accurate information that enhances outreach, reporting, and stewardship. It enables personalized donor experiences at scale, because you’re not just tracking transactions, you’re nurturing relationships built on accountability and shared purpose.
Every nonprofit’s tech stack is a little different. Many use CRM platforms to manage donor relationships while also relying on tools like Asana or Trello for project coordination. Sparkrock 365 is built to support this kind of diverse ecosystem—one where multiple systems play a role in delivering impact.
With out-of-the-box Microsoft integrations and robust RESTful API support, Sparkrock 365 connects seamlessly with the systems you already rely on. Whether it’s bi-directional syncing of campaign data, importing journal entries, or updating CRMs with payment and budget milestones, Sparkrock offers the flexibility to meet you where you are.
And when prebuilt integrations aren’t available? You’re still covered. Sparkrock 365 supports secure custom integration via Power Automate and file-based exchange, giving your team options without compromise. Importantly, data exchange is secure and SaaS-compliant, no direct SQL access needed.
Economic and political pressures may be out of your control, but how you connect with donors isn’t. With the right systems in place, you can build lasting relationships rooted in clarity, credibility, and impact.
With Sparkrock 365, nonprofits are equipped to lead with transparency, communicate with clarity, and operate with efficiency. That’s how you build lasting donor relationships. That’s how you navigate uncertainty with confidence.
And that’s how you continue delivering programs that change lives.
Curious how Sparkrock 365 can strengthen donor relationships in your organization? Book a personalized demo with our team to see it in action and explore how smarter systems can help you build lasting impact.
If you’re a nonprofit finance or HR leader, you’re probably familiar with this scenario: it’s payroll day, and your team is buried in spreadsheets, cross-checking multiple sources of data, and working late to reconcile payroll entries with your fund accounting system. These frequent problems are a telltale sign that your payroll software and your financial management system aren’t communicating effectively, and it might be time to consider an integrated approach.
Here’s why the best payroll software for nonprofits isn’t just a standalone solution; it’s a system deeply integrated with your nonprofit’s fund accounting and financial management platform.
Payroll management is more complex for nonprofits than most people realize. Unlike a for-profit business, your payroll expenses often need to be carefully allocated across multiple grants, projects, or programs. You have restricted funds, detailed grant-reporting requirements, and regulatory compliance concerns that make payroll processing anything but straightforward.
When your payroll software operates separately from your financial software, your team likely faces these recurring problems:
Nonprofits need to precisely allocate payroll expenses across multiple grants, programs, departments, or restricted funding sources, often down to the individual hour of an employee’s work. When payroll and financial systems are separate, capturing and allocating these payroll costs typically relies on manually maintained spreadsheets. Each payroll cycle, finance and HR staff need to manually input employee timesheet data, match salary allocations to specific funding sources, and verify adherence to grant restrictions.
When payroll and finance systems operate in isolation, nonprofit managers and program directors struggle to quickly understand their payroll-related financial positions. Without real-time data integration, essential information—such as remaining payroll budget, staff hours charged to specific grants, or actual spending versus budgeted amounts—is unavailable at a glance. Managers frequently have to reach out to finance or HR teams with urgent questions like, “How much budget remains for payroll this quarter?” or “Have we exceeded our salary budget under this grant?” Answering these questions typically requires the finance or HR team to stop their existing work and manually compile reports by pulling data from multiple spreadsheets or software platforms. The resulting lag means delayed decision-making, frustration across teams, reduced operational agility, and potential overspending or underspending—both of which can jeopardize the nonprofit’s financial health and grant compliance.
Manual reconciliation between separate payroll and financial systems often requires nonprofit staff to transfer data manually, either by copying and pasting information or re-entering payroll expenses into accounting spreadsheets. This increases the likelihood of human errors such as mistyped numbers, missed entries, duplicated records, or incorrect fund allocations. Even small mistakes can cascade into significant discrepancies, creating audit red flags and forcing finance teams to spend extra hours revisiting past transactions.
The ideal solution for nonprofits is payroll software that connects directly into your ERP and fund accounting platform. With a truly integrated solution, each payroll cycle instantly updates your financial records and reports in real-time, dramatically simplifying fund accounting and reporting processes.
Here’s how an integrated approach simplifies nonprofit payroll.
Payroll expenses automatically appear in your general ledger, accurately allocated by fund, grant, or project. There’s no lag, no spreadsheets, and fewer reconciliation issues.
Payroll expenses are automatically aligned to grant timelines, restrictions, and budgets. The result: simplified grant reporting, easier compliance, and fewer adjustments later.
Employees and program managers can instantly see accurate budget status with payroll expenses included. Real-time visibility reduces those frequent budget inquiries, empowering your teams with confidence and autonomy.
Integration isn’t only about process improvement; it’s also about tangible, measurable overhead reduction. Time spent wrestling with separate payroll and accounting systems is time taken away from your mission, time that could be reinvested in mentoring staff, supporting clients, and driving real impact in your community, instead of completing redundant administrative tasks.
By integrating your payroll with your financial system, your nonprofit can:
Eliminating double data entry can reclaim countless hours each month, which is time your finance and HR teams can redirect toward mission-focused initiatives.
With real-time integration, you’ll see fewer payroll mistakes, cleaner audit trails, and lower audit preparation costs.
Freed from administrative headaches, your finance and HR teams can focus on strategic projects, fundraising strategies, or programmatic improvements that enhance your mission impact.
If your payroll days are consistently stressful, integration isn’t just an incremental improvement—it’s transformative. Nonprofits that move to integrated payroll and financial management systems report not only significant process improvements but also increased staff satisfaction and reduced organizational risk.
Signs it’s time to integrate:
If you’re nodding along, the benefits of integration are likely substantial for your organization.
Your nonprofit exists to serve your community, not to spend hours and resources fixing payroll problems. The best payroll software for nonprofits isn’t a standalone tool—it’s part of a connected ERP ecosystem that aligns payroll data seamlessly into your financial and fund accounting processes.
By taking the step toward integration, your nonprofit can simplify payroll, eliminate redundant administrative work, and reduce overhead significantly, allowing you to direct more resources and energy back into the programs and communities you serve.
Reach out for a personalized demo to see how integrated nonprofit payroll and finance software can help your organization thrive.
We’re excited to share some incredible news. Sparkrock has been named a Platinum Supplier Partner in OECM’s 2024 Supplier Recognition Program! This recognition reflects our ongoing commitment to delivering value, service, and performance for social impact organizations, helping them better serve their communities.
This recognition from the Supplier Recognition Program (SRP) underscores our dedication to providing the best service and support to organizations that make a real difference.
The SRP is designed to recognize suppliers who excel in meeting OECM’s evolving strategic goals. In 2024, OECM made significant enhancements to the program. These changes introduced a new evaluation approach that focuses on five key criteria:
This updated methodology promotes fairness, transparency, and deeper engagement, encouraging suppliers to continuously improve their performance and deliver more impactful results throughout the process.
Andy Tryba, our CEO, shared his thoughts: “This recognition is a testament to the hard work and collaboration across Sparkrock, where our dedicated teams have consistently delivered innovative solutions and exceptional service. Being named a Platinum Supplier Partner reinforces our mission to provide organizations with the tools they need to make a real impact in their communities. We’re honored to work alongside OECM and look forward to continuing this journey together.”
Receiving the Platinum Supplier Partner recognition is truly an honor. It reflects our continued effort to listen to our customers and understand their needs. At Sparkrock, we’re focused on helping organizations meet their goals through innovative, customer-centric solutions. This recognition motivates us to keep improving our services and delivering the tools that make a difference in our customers' work.
Randy Lenaghan, our Chief Revenue Officer, added: “Receiving the Platinum Supplier Partner recognition is a direct result of our team's dedication to building lasting, impactful relationships with our partners and consistently delivering high-quality service. This recognition motivates us to keep pushing the boundaries and driving even greater value for OECM customers.”
The OECM Supplier Recognition Program is just one way that OECM continues to help organizations in Ontario’s education, nonprofit, and public sectors. Through our partnership with OECM, we are able to offer organizations streamlined procurement processes and faster access to the tools they need to modernize their financial operations. This means quicker implementation times, reduced administrative burdens, and faster time-to-impact, all contributing to a more efficient and effective service for the communities these organizations support.
We want to take a moment to thank everyone involved in making this possible—our teams, our customers, and our partners. This recognition motivates us to keep striving for excellence in everything we do.
We look forward to building on this recognition and continuing our work with OECM and our customers to create lasting, positive change in the organizations and communities we serve.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software may seem complex, but it doesn’t have to be. Think of it as the central hub that connects your nonprofit, bringing finance, HR, payroll, and operations into one system.
Many nonprofits juggle multiple disconnected systems, leading to time-consuming manual processes and endless reconciliations. But with the right ERP, these challenges disappear, giving your team more time to focus on making an impact.
To simplify ERP, we’re breaking it down from A to L, showing how Sparkrock makes nonprofit operations smoother and stronger.
Automation doesn’t just make tasks easier; it boosts efficiency. Take ACCES Employment, a nonprofit helping job seekers in the Greater Toronto Area. They had outdated financial processes and over 30 active projects. Manual tracking and approvals slowed them down and increased errors.
After switching to Sparkrock, they automated project expense tracking, approvals, and financial reporting. This saved time and increased accuracy across all five departments. As Haykaz Ghazanchyan, Director of Finance at ACCES Employment, put it: “With Sparkrock, it’s like having 35 different accounts in one big account.”
With Sparkrock and Power BI, ACCES now provides real-time budget insights to project teams. They’re always ready for audits and funder reports, giving them more time to focus on helping job seekers.
Read more about ACCES Employment’s success here.
When it comes to budgeting, it’s not just about tracking expenses, it's about aligning every dollar with your organization’s most critical goals. Sparkrock allows nonprofits to create multi-year budgets, predict funding gaps, and access real-time financial insights.
For example, a nonprofit running after-school programs across multiple communities relies on different funding sources each with its own reporting rules. Without a centralized system, finance teams spend hours reconciling spreadsheets to ensure compliance.
With Sparkrock, these tasks happen automatically. Funds are allocated based on grant conditions, spending limits are enforced, and Power BI dashboards provide instant visibility into cash flow. This lets leadership spot potential funding gaps early and adjust strategies to keep programs running smoothly.
Many nonprofits use separate systems for payroll, donor management, HR, and financial reporting. This creates inefficiencies, manual work, and a higher risk of errors.
Consider a human services nonprofit that uses different systems for payroll and scheduling. Staff have to re-enter data multiple times, which leads to discrepancies and slows down approvals.
By consolidating everything into Sparkrock, they can eliminate duplicate data entry and reduced errors. Payroll and HR now operate from one system, giving finance teams real-time budget insights and producing reports instantly. This frees up time for staff to focus on delivering services to their community.
Disconnected data can be a productivity bottleneck, but its true danger lies in the risks it creates for your organization. When finance, HR, and operations exist in silos, nonprofits struggle with inefficiencies and compliance challenges. Sparkrock integrates data into a single platform, ensuring accuracy and easy access.
Rehoboth Christian Ministries, a nonprofit supporting individuals with disabilities, faced challenges with financial reporting and payroll accuracy. Reconciliations took days, and payroll discrepancies were hard to catch. After integrating Sparkrock with Power BI, reconciliations that used to take days now happen in hours.
Power BI dashboards instantly identify payroll discrepancies, track deductions, and improve financial reporting. This saved time and increased trust in their financial data.
Explore how Rehoboth Christian Ministries improved their financial processes here.
Selecting an ERP requires careful evaluation, not just of the software itself, but of how it fits into and improves your entire operation. Before making a switch, nonprofits should assess their current systems, identify pain points, and prepare their team for change.
Key steps include:
Want help getting started?
Watch our webinar, Legacy Systems vs. Modern ERP: Finding the Right Fit for Your Nonprofit, to learn how to evaluate your current tech landscape and spot the signs that it’s time for change.
Good financial management isn’t just about tracking spending, it’s about planning ahead. Nonprofits face constant funding uncertainty and shifting community needs. Sparkrock’s forecasting tools help anticipate challenges and adjust strategies proactively.
For instance, a food security nonprofit can use Sparkrock to predict seasonal spikes in demand and adjust procurement accordingly. Similarly, a nonprofit focused on affordable housing can forecast rental assistance needs and apply for grants before a funding gap emerges. With Sparkrock, organizations can make data-driven decisions to secure funding and maintain stability.
Managing grants can be complicated, with different rules, reporting deadlines, and spending restrictions. Without the right tools, this process becomes overwhelming, leading to compliance risks and missed deadlines.
Sparkrock simplifies grant management by tracking funds automatically, generating real-time reports, and producing audit-ready documentation. A nonprofit managing 50+ grants can easily allocate expenses to the right project and generate compliance reports with just a few clicks.
Power BI integration also helps nonprofits visualize spending trends, making it easier to identify funding gaps and apply for additional grants.
HR and payroll for nonprofits can be complex due to union agreements, multi-source funding, and project-based employees. Managing a mix of full-time, part-time, and temporary staff with different pay structures and benefits adds another layer of complexity.
Without an integrated system, payroll errors and compliance risks pile up. Sparkrock automates payroll processing, benefits tracking, and compliance with labor laws. For example, a nonprofit with seasonal staff can use Sparkrock’s self-service HR portal to let employees manage schedules and timesheets, reducing the administrative workload.
With Power BI, HR teams can also analyze workforce trends and forecast budget needs, ensuring the right resources are allocated where they matter most.
Nonprofits need timely, accurate financial and operational reports to maintain transparency and accountability. But, many organizations still rely on manual data pulls, making it difficult to provide real-time insights.
Sparkrock’s real-time reporting, paired with Power BI, lets nonprofits track financials, monitor program impact, and generate compliance-ready reports instantly. Instead of waiting weeks to reconcile spreadsheets, organizations can access critical data immediately and make faster, more informed decisions.
Collaboration across departments works best when everyone has access to the right information. Sparkrock allows finance, HR, and program teams to work from the same data set, reducing silos and improving teamwork.
Role-based permissions ensure that users only see relevant information. For example, HR can manage employee records while payroll teams process salaries, all within the same platform. Program managers can track expenses in real time while finance teams maintain compliance. This structured access improves efficiency and keeps teams aligned.
Nonprofits rely on institutional knowledge to operate smoothly, but without a system to store and share information, organizations risk losing valuable expertise when key staff members leave.
Sparkrock integrates with Microsoft tools like Outlook, Excel, SharePoint, and Teams to create a structured knowledge management system. Finance teams can pull real-time budget data into Excel for analysis, while HR manages compliance documents in SharePoint. Role-based permissions ensure that sensitive information stays protected while giving the right people access to what they need.
Nonprofits come in many forms, and Sparkrock supports a wide range of mission-driven organizations, including:
Whether an organization focuses on social services, healthcare, education, or the arts, Sparkrock provides the tools they need to improve financial clarity, enhance reporting, and operate efficiently.
Nonprofits need a technology partner that understands their challenges. Sparkrock offers a comprehensive, integrated ERP solution that improves efficiency, enhances transparency, and maximizes impact.
Book a demo today and discover how Sparkrock can simplify your nonprofit’s operations.
Governance is a cornerstone of nonprofit operations. If you lack a means of ensuring accountability and transparency, you can't build trust with donors and potential stakeholders.
Similarly, without established processes for risk management and compliance, you might find yourself running afoul of regulators.
Effective governance also helps your nonprofit not only stay true to its mission, but pursue it more effectively. With the proper frameworks in place, you'll be able to more effectively allocate resources while navigating everything from leadership transitions to changes in legislation. But how do you ensure you've proper governance in place?
Simple — through regular internal audits. Although they can be costly and time-consuming, audits verify that everything looks the way it should from a governance standpoint. They help ensure compliance with laws and regulations, reduce the risk of fraud or other financial irregularities, optimize operations, and keep you prepared for future challenges, opportunities, and bottlenecks.
In this blog, we'll go over what's involved in an internal audit.
External audits are conducted by a third party — either a government agency or an independent auditor. They're typically performed to validate a nonprofit's finances on an annual basis for the sake of stakeholders such as investors and creditors. An external audit may also be required as part of a grant agreement or as a condition for a loan.
Internal audits are an evaluation of an organization's reporting, processes, and controls, including:
Internal audits can be performed on a more recurring basis than external audits, and may be used by management for validation and optimization. There's actually a lot of commonalities between the internal and external auditing process — so running more regular internal audits can help a nonprofit be better-prepared for external audits.
Generally speaking, an internal audit is performed for a few different reasons:
Internal audits are usually carried out by a committee appointed by the organization. Once the audit is complete, management integrates any findings and insights from the audit into the wider organization.
Now that you understand the basics of an internal audit, let's move on to how you can plan and execute one.
Your first step is to appoint an audit committee. This committee, while generally still under board oversight, must be independent of both your organization and the board. Beyond that, what it looks like and who it includes will vary slightly depending on both your industry and your region.
You'll want to look for the following characteristics when appointing committee members:
You might also consider including a chartered professional accountant (CPA) on your committee.
Keep in mind that your audit committee will not be the ones responsible for actually implementing any of its recommendations. Your auditors also will not have any authority over what your organization does with their reports. They will operate largely in an advisory capacity.
Once you've appointed your committee, it's time to decide what and how they'll audit your nonprofit. What sort of time period are you looking at? Are you auditing everything from the past year, or just the past several months?
What about scope? Similarly, are you exclusively focusing on financial details, or do you want your audit to focus more broadly on governance?
Finally, over what timeframe do you want to complete this audit? Do you have a specific start and end date in mind? Make sure you keep your expectations realistic in this regard.
Next, compile all relevant internal documentation. You'll obviously need financial statements, bank reconciliations, payroll documents, and grant information. Beyond that, however, you should also gather any documents related to internal processes or controls.
Other documentation crucial to your audit includes minutes from board meetings, policy manuals, legal contracts, tax returns, and information on completed or ongoing initiatives. Once you've collected all the necessary information, your committee can begin their work.
Using the documentation collected in the previous step, your committee will perform a high-level evaluation of how things currently look for your nonprofit. They'll examine the protocols and internal controls that are in place as well as how they are monitored, looking for any obvious problems. They'll also review whether there have been any significant operational changes since the last audit.
Finally, they'll build a risk profile for your nonprofit based on how well it manages governance, operational, financial, and regulatory risks.
When performing an audit, transparency and communication are essential. The auditing process often brings with it a great deal of stress, and audits themselves tend to carry negative connotations. With that in mind, it's important that you brief everyone involved on what's going to happen, and what they need to do.
For employees, you should make sure they're ready to answer any questions about their roles and responsibilities, including deliverables, established processes, and controls. Management should also schedule regular check-ins with the audit committee, relaying any changes in timing or expectations to the wider organization. The committee, meanwhile, should keep management updated on things like milestones or outstanding terms.
Once you've laid all the groundwork, all that's left is to let the audit committee do their job. They'll interview employees from various departments throughout your nonprofit while also reviewing and testing internal controls. They may also evaluate your technical infrastructure as well as the effectiveness of any fundraising initiatives.
Once they've finished, the committee will prepare a comprehensive audit report that details both the results and their recommendations, then submit that report to management.
Once an audit has concluded, the next step is to schedule two meetings. The first will be with the audit committee, where they'll outline their findings and recommendations to leadership. This meeting will also cover any difficulties the committee encountered during the audit.
After the audit committee meeting, management should then meet with the board of directors to discuss next steps. When relevant, the results of the audit should also be shared with external stakeholders such as major donors. The most important result of this meeting is the preparation of an action plan.
This will serve as a roadmap for implementing the audit committee's recommendations, up to and including defining the timeframe.
Regular audits go hand-in-hand with effective nonprofit governance and financial management. But accessible, accurate, well-organized documentation is the bedrock of all three. That's where Sparkrock 365 comes in.
A cloud-based ERP solution purpose-built for the needs of the nonprofit sector, Sparkrock 365 offers comprehensive, built-in financial reporting and management tools backed by a centralized database that acts as a single source of truth for all information. In addition to ensuring accurate, timely reporting through intelligent automation and data entry, Sparkrock 365 includes a range of controls and utilities designed to help nonprofits easily navigate the complexities of risk, compliance, and grant management.
More importantly, however, is the fact that Sparkrock 365 facilitates seamless collaboration between the audit committee and stakeholders during an audit. Moreover, it equips nonprofits with powerful, intuitive reporting and analytics functionality, offering deep insights to guide decision-makers as they develop and implement their action plan.
Want to see how Sparkrock can streamline audits for your nonprofit? Book a demo and we'll show you.
Public sector agencies rely more on legacy systems than organizations in other industries.
Many of these systems were, at one time or another, best-in-class.
Compared to more modern solutions, however, legacy solutions are less secure, less efficient, and more resource-intensive.
In other words, they're showing their age.
In Canada, for instance, 51% of public sector personnel feel that technical debt limits their ability to provide the necessary digital services. Another 25% felt technical debt accounted for up to half their total operating budget.
The United States is in a similar boat, with most of the federal government's annual $100 billion technology budget going toward maintaining and operating existing systems.
Consequently, public sector organizations that migrate to the cloud can leave behind time sinks and technical debt, consolidating their technology stack to enable more effective, efficient, and secure operations.
Let's talk about what that looks like, using our own platform — Sparkrock 365 — as an example.
There are a lot of costs associated with legacy tools, which typically require capital-intensive on-premises hardware. In addition to being expensive to operate and maintain, this hardware also severely limits an agency's ability to adapt to evolving demands. For example, scaling operations to accommodate growth, increased workloads, or new service requirements often requires significant upfront investments—not to mention the time personnel must spend on maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
Right out of the gate, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform does away with the need for on-site hardware. It leaves behind expensive IT investments in favor of either a recurring subscription or consumption-based licensing. Reduced total cost of ownership aside, this pricing model also makes it easier to dynamically scale resources with demand.
The financial benefits of cloud ERP software are far more significant than reduced spending, however. Sparkrock 365 empowers your team with distributed budget planning, automated tracking, and real-time visibility of every dollar that passes through your agency. The platform also provides world-class analytics and insights into spending through Microsoft Power BI dashboards.
Human resources and payroll operations tend to be quite complex, especially at the federal level. Managing everything by hand is consequently an extremely time-consuming and error-prone undertaking. In extreme cases, this can lead directly into a sort of vicious cycle.
Overwhelmed and overworked HR personnel struggle to keep up with the demands of their positions. Administrative bottlenecks begin to form. Employees elsewhere in the organization run headlong into these frustrating roadblocks, impacting their job satisfaction and overall morale.
Cloud-based ERP solutions like Sparkrock 365 address this paradigm through fully-integrated accounting, reporting, and payroll features such as:
In the public sector, accountability is everything. Unfortunately, for agencies with legacy systems, this usually means countless hours spent tracking down and validating information for reports and audits. It's a state of affairs that can make regulatory compliance feel like an uphill battle.
Cloud software solves this problem in a few ways. First, it establishes a single source of truth for all organizational data, breaking down data silos to ensure information is as accurate as possible. What's more, it collects this information through a combination of built-in auditing functionality and optimized data entry, reducing administrative workloads while also decreasing the chance of error.
There's a common misconception about cloud software that needs to be put to rest: The idea that it's in any way less secure than on-premises solutions. The truth is that in today's landscape, cloud platforms are often more secure than their legacy alternatives. That's certainly the case with Sparkrock 365.
Powered by Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, our platform provides clients with Microsoft's industry-leading security, ensuring your systems remain both protected and compliant. Moreover, Microsoft's infrastructure allows us to support more sophisticated security than most on-premises solutions. We're also fully committed to helping clients maintain their data sovereignty.
Lastly, let's talk about something that's been front-of-mind for everyone over the past few years: AI. It's a technology with the power to completely transform how your agency operates, unlocking new opportunities, innovations, and efficiencies. That's why we've invested in turning Sparkrock 365 into a cutting-edge, AI-driven ERP platform.
Among other things, Sparkrock 365 uses artificial intelligence to:
The public sector is no stranger to legacy technology, not in the least because legacy solutions are often the only ones that exist for certain use cases. If your agency is among those that hasn't yet migrated, you should start thinking about doing so. We'll help you leave behind any systems you don't need — and modernize those systems you do. Contact us to book a demo and get started.
It's that time again. As 2024 draws to a close, people and businesses alike are looking toward the New Year, thinking about what they can do better as they wonder what 2025 has in store. If you're here, it means your nonprofit's likely in the same boat.
Not to worry. In this blog post, we'll walk you through everything you need to know to prepare your nonprofit organization for 2025 and beyond.
First thing's first, this isn't the sort of thing you should be doing solo. You're basically charting your organization's course for the next year. We recommend involving key stakeholders at the outside to ensure your strategic plan is fully aligned with your mission and their needs.
Generally, the people involved at this stage should include:
Make sure everyone's role is clearly defined at the outset. Board members, for instance, will help establish the high-level goals and strategic direction of your nonprofit. Your planning committee will develop your strategy with help from third-party consultants and input from employees and constituents.
Finally, your employees will help implement everything once you're done.
There was a great deal of disruption in the nonprofit sector this year, and 2025 has the potential to be even more disruptive. Before you start building out your strategy, take a moment to look at what's coming and prepare accordingly.
As with virtually every other industry, AI has had a massive impact on the nonprofit sector. The technology enables considerably more effective donor engagement by delivering dynamic, hyper-personalized experiences. It's also helping nonprofits streamline virtually every organizational arm, including donor segmentation, grant management, and data entry.
The real strength of the technology lies in relationship-building. Rather than having to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for and managing donor information, nonprofits can focus their attention on engaging with donors on a more personal level while also maintaining consistent ongoing communication. Not only that, AI technology can help nonprofits unlock new and powerful insights about both donors and themselves.
Simple: Explore and embrace the potential of AI.
The nonprofit sector's gone digital. Hybrid and online events have increasingly become the norm. As offline-only fundraising increasingly falls to the wayside in favor of hyperconnectivity, Nonprofits need to transition to digital- and mobile-first fundraising and engagement.
The days when a nonprofit could rely solely on donation drives are behind us. Expect savvy nonprofits to diversify their fundraising efforts in 2025 to generate more attention, attract more donors, and ultimately drive greater positive change. Some of the most prominent changes include:
One word: Diversification.
For the uninitiated, the Generosity Crisis refers to the ongoing decline in philanthropic activity seen in the United States over the past several decades. The coming year promises to be a perfect storm that makes the Crisis all but impossible to ignore, especially for US-based nonprofits. There are several factors at play here:
Ramp up donor outreach, streamline and modernize operations, and put more focus on younger individual donors.
Now that you're prepared for changes 2025 will likely bring to the nonprofit landscape, it's time to start planning.
Evaluate the way everything currently looks. Examine your people, processes, and systems. Think about how things have changed over the past year, and if you have a strategic roadmap from 2024, include it in your assessment. Consider also any budgetary changes or organizational shifts that might impact you in the coming year.
Lastly, take the time to think about your successes and failures. How can you improve upon the latter and avoid the former this year? The answers to these questions will help you build a strong foundation for your 2025 roadmap, one that iterates and improves on what you did in 2024.
Define your goals for 2025. What do you want to achieve this year? How do you want your nonprofit to look by 2026?
Make sure you follow the SMART framework for goal-setting:
For example, rather than saying you want to raise a certain amount of money by 2026, set a concrete deadline and establish where you'll direct that funding — which of your initiatives are you attempting to support?
From there, break down your goals into actionable steps and milestones. As you do, think about the role each stakeholder and team member will play in fulfilling your objectives. Pay attention as well to the resources you'll need — not just in terms of budget, but also people and equipment.
Strategic planning is a process. Just as you (hopefully) built your 2025 roadmap atop your roadmap from 2024, you'll be building your 2026 roadmap based on what you achieved in 2025. To that end, review your roadmap throughout the year — conduct regular audits and assessments to ensure everything's running as it should, and adjust as-needed to keep things on track.
Last but not least, if you've not already done so, it's time to start planning your cloud migration. Legacy tools are holding you back. With a platform like Sparkrock 365, your organization can accelerate its mission outcomes while also improving productivity, efficiency, and fiscal responsibility.
That's because, unlike most enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors, we've designed Sparkrock 365 to address the unique finance, HRP, and accounting needs of the nonprofit sector. Powered by Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, Sparkrock 365 is an all-in-one platform with everything your organization needs to prepare not just for the coming year, but also the coming decade.
Its features include project and grant accounting, inventory management, payroll administration, employee scheduling, donor management, and cash flow forecasting — all available in a single platform.
Book a demo to learn more about how Sparkrock can transform the way your nonprofit operates.
Related: 5 Ways ERP Software for Nonprofits Can Boost Your Mission and Impact
Is your K-12 school struggling to keep up with outdated financial systems?
Modern financial management requires tools that streamline operations, ensure compliance, and provide real-time insights. If your school is relying on legacy systems that can’t keep pace, it’s time to explore a modern ERP solution built for Canadian K-12 schools.
Join our on-demand webinar, "Streamline, Secure, Succeed: Modernize K12 Finance with Sparkrock," to see how Sparkrock can transform your financial operations with a secure, cloud-based ERP solution.
Key Takeaways:
Don’t miss this opportunity to future-proof your school’s financial operations while ensuring security and compliance.