Nonprofit organizations are aware of the need for digitalization and believe that without it, they cannot effectively implement their social mission. This article will explain the role of board portal solutions in nonprofit management.
Board software – intelligent business solution for nonprofits
A specific feature of the corporate governance of nonprofits is the unique role of a collective body consisting of persons who contribute to achieving the organization’s main goals without having the right to receive income from it. The powers of such a body, called a board of trustees, supervisory or other councils, relate primarily to supervision over the content and financial activities of a company but often also include the approval of plans, the appointment of organization leaders, determining the amount of their payment, etc. In addition, the tips help to attract donations and volunteers and establish and maintain relationships with valuable partners.
Nonprofits often understand digitalization as applying specific digital solutions that simplify and automate work. At the same time, digitalization is perceived as a sign of the development and competitiveness of organizations. These companies use a variety of digital practices. At the same time, they work with them rather superficially, without using a significant part of the possibilities, especially when working with the site and social networks. Most nonprofits use digital tools for internal and external communication, for work with documents, activity management, and data analysis are the least digitalized areas.
The most relevant for nonprofits are the internal incentives for digitalization: the formation of the image of an open and transparent organization, the optimization of current processes, the growth and scaling of organizations, and the desire to be fashionable and modern. Therefore, the modern IT market has developed board portal solutions for the comprehensive collaboration of collegial bodies. Board portals for nonprofits are digital platforms that comprise well-structured data repositories for confidential business documents, efficient collaborative tools, data analytics, and reports.
How to organize comprehensive collaboration of the nonprofit board?
While most organizations use digital tools for internal and external communication (messengers, video calls, websites and social networks) and work with documents, the least digitalized area remains the management of nonprofits. In addition, although many nonprofit organizations store data digitally, not all use digital solutions to analyze and present the collected data. In addition, the gap between the most and least digitalized organizations is the most significant in data collection and analysis.
The board portal solutions ensure the following functions for nonprofit organizations:
- Creating a unified information environment for the enterprise;
- Automating of accounting, tax and management accounting;
- Providing operational financial and management reporting in real-time;
- Restricting user access to information following the allocated access rights;
- Improving decision-making.
The introduction of the system allows the boards to combine databases from different departments (accounting, warehouse, production department) into a single information system. As a result – minimization of re-entry of information and labour savings.
In the board software, the boards can extract data and create meaningful reports using pre-built templates or customizing their own. It will help develop balance sheets, income statements, member lists, etc. In addition, the absence of the need to manually multiply documents, track the movement of paper documents within the organization, and control the procedure for transferring confidential information reduces the labour costs of clerks. End-to-end automatic control of execution at all stages of work with documents dramatically improves the quality of work of performers, making preparing documents more predictable and manageable.