Closing the Gap

Nonprofit Finance Software’s Crucial Role in Today’s Landscape. How nonprofit finance leaders are managing growth, complexity, and the tools they need to move forward.

Nonprofits are facing a widening gap between the complexity of their operations and the systems meant to support them.

In this new research we uncover the hidden costs of relying on spreadsheets and disconnected legacy tools — costs measured not only in money, but in time, accuracy, staff wellbeing and lost opportunities.

This report gives nonprofit leaders the data, peer insights and critical questions needed to assess whether their current financial infrastructure is helping them move forward — or holding them back.

Download the full report to get the facts, the benchmarks, and a practical roadmap for closing the gap.

key Insights

  • Funding diversification increases strain: 41% say the complexity of managing multiple funding sources creates major operational challenges.
  • 61% of nonprofits still rely on spreadsheets as their primary financial management tool — only 44% use purpose-built nonprofit financial systems.
  • Most organizations treat symptoms rather than causes: budgeting improvements, new campaigns, and grant hunts dominate — but only 21% tackle root problems through system rationalization.
  • Hidden operational costs accumulate fast: manual processes drive errors, compliance risks, decision delays, and staff frustration that ultimately contributes to turnover.
  • When selecting new systems, nonprofits prioritise nonprofit-specific accounting compliance (88%), robust security (87%), integration across tools (80%), and strong budgeting/forecasting capabilities (78%).

Successful transformation depends on two things: understanding the true cost of maintaining the status quo, and engaging cross-functional stakeholders early to align goals and expectations. Read how your peers face today’s frustrations of: limited visibility, high manual workloads, inconsistent data, and slow financial reporting cycles that hinder strategic decisions.