How We Work With Nonprofits

Nonprofit Bookkeeping and Controller Services

As a part of your team, Supporting Strategies will bring streamlined processes and enhanced controls to your organization, so you can focus on your mission.

As a nonprofit leader, your focus — and your budget — is on your organization’s mission. How can you reduce administrative time so less of your budget goes toward overhead and also gain financial insight that will help you operate more effectively? Professional outsourced bookkeeping and controller services can be the solution for both of these goals. By using proven processes that streamline systems and enhance controls, Supporting Strategies helps nonprofit leaders channel their efforts toward fulfilling their mission.

For over 15 years, Supporting Strategies’ locally owned and operated offices have served thousands of companies, helping them focus on their core business. With a high level of expertise in nonprofit bookkeeping, including in grants management and fund accounting, Supporting Strategies will improve financial transparency for your board, make sure your books are done correctly and provide guidance and analysis to help you make better strategic decisions for your nonprofit.

Set a foundation of financial excellence and transparency

Many executive directors find that it’s easy to get distracted by the need to track down a misclassified donation, answer a question from a board member, or decipher the implications of the latest change to tax code or accounting standards. All of this happens while ensuring a steady stream of donations in an increasingly competitive nonprofit environment.

Setting these challenges aside and investing in best-in-class nonprofit bookkeeping can help ensure success, both now and long-term. Knowing how money flows in and out of your organization and sharing that data effectively with your board and donors will help your organization run more smoothly. In addition, nonprofit bookkeeping will provide the data you and your team need to identify the most pressing needs that your nonprofit faces and finding ways to address them. Give yourself the opportunity to focus on fundraising, infrastructure, staffing, marketing and more — while your financials run smoothly.

Master the challenges of tax-exempt status

A nonprofit’s tax-exempt status makes it very complex to manage from a financial point-of-view, and even the most seasoned executive can struggle with IRS Form 990 and the deductions eliminated by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). You stand to benefit from the right software and ideally, a professional bookkeeper who is proficient in fund accounting.

Remove compliance obstacles

Staff turnover, legacy bookkeeping and the complexity of multiple funding streams can make it difficult to track funding appropriately. Yet speed, accuracy, and financial transparency are crucial factors in a nonprofit’s ability to stay in compliance with regulations and tax filings and provide your board with timely data.

Fund accounting services

Perhaps you have revenue coming into the organization from a myriad of different sources and need to be more effective at fund accounting. Fund accounting is required of all tax-exempt nonprofits by industry regulator Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). When you choose Supporting Strategies for this work, you gain a partner that is aware of the latest changes involving revenue recognition, presentation of financial data, and more. Supporting Strategies is skilled at nonprofit bookkeeping and adept at setting up the software and systems needed to capture data in a way that will streamline the tax preparation process, especially for IRS Form 990.

Controller Services

With Supporting Strategies controller services, you can ensure that your board receives clear and accurate financial information on a frequent basis. By outsourcing this important aspect of your nonprofit’s bookkeeping, you gain a partner that has depth and longevity in that role and can offer new or transitory board members a smooth, consistent understanding of your organization.

Grants management services

Early in the sales process, Supporting Strategies identifies the client’s funding sources in order to establish and manage the nonprofit bookkeeping process efficiently. We can report on fund spend to grantors and fully allocate grant funds to all applicable items, including portions of staff salaries. We can also serve as a liaison to the grantors, answering questions and explaining the financials directly to the grantors as needed – and taking a lot off your plate in the process.

A consistent source of support for your board

Your board members are responsible for high-level oversight of your nonprofit. In order to be able to draw conclusions about the organization’s current level of effectiveness and recommend new strategies, these leaders will need to take financials into account. Board members will come and go over time, and some of them will have more financial proficiency than others. Being able to break your nonprofit’s expenses down by funding source and provide details and accompanying visuals will keep your current board in-the-know and ensure that new members can get up-to-speed quickly and stay current easily. Supporting Strategies can discuss the financials directly with your board as needed and can also handle the financial analysis needed for audits and donor reviews.

In choosing Supporting Strategies, you also select a financial partner that is capable of scaling with your organization as it grows — a nonprofit bookkeeping partner for the long-term.

Outsource nonprofit bookkeeping and focus on your mission

Everyone involved with your nonprofit, from your customers to your employees and your board, wants to see you pursue large-scale opportunities that support the organization’s mission. By outsourcing your bookkeeping and controller work to Supporting Strategies, you will ensure that you’re able to focus on the mission of your organization. Supporting Strategies offers the proactive guidance and partnership that will take your organization to its next level.

Supporting Strategies has allowed us to get out of our own way and focus on the long-term strategic financial-planning decisions we need to make. Instead of spending meetings going over the granular general ledger and whether something is in the wrong line on a balance sheet, now we’re thinking cash flow, budgeting and deeper-level analysis because we have the time and the confidence in our numbers and our reporting that we can move on to bigger issues.