As 2023 ticks away, progress and optimism have defined the year. Organizations are moving on from the challenges of the past few years and creating opportunities and realizing sustained success in creating a “Great, Big Beautiful Tomorrow.”
MIP Fund Accounting conducted its 2023 Trends and Insights Report to quantify the state of the nonprofit, education, and government sectors as a whole and define how organizations believe 2023’s economic environment will affect the various aspects of nonprofit operations and management.
A prevailing theme from the report was around technology investment. Organizations are optimistic about 2023 because of improved technological systems.
Technology has always been a vital part of any nonprofit, and it is especially at the forefront this year. Taking a holistic view of individual systems and ensuring they’re best-of-class to make a complete tech stack which communicates together and can effectively perform multiple tasks is vital to long-term sustained success.
Over the last two years, we’ve conducted surveys on cloud-based technology adoption and workflow efficiency. MIP’s 2022 Nonprofit Research Study found organizations used multiple pieces of technology that created inefficiency, and sought to adopt cloud-based solutions to correct this. In this year’s survey, we saw that organizations began that investment in 2022 and planned to continue to invest in cloud-based processes in 2023.
Concerning cloud-based technology adoption, 59% of organizations have invested in cloud-based processes for accounting. Breaking down by sector, 71% of nonprofits, 57% of schools, and 81% of government organizations have a cloud-based process in place for accounting.
Despite this new investment, inefficient systems still need to be improved. In past studies, we saw half of the organizations surveyed used six or more tools, leading to at least two hours a day spent navigating inefficient systems. In this study, the trend continued. Some 61% of respondents said aspects of their current systems were time-consuming.
Seventy-three percent of organizations expect higher technology investments in 2023. We found that investment is happening in administrative technologies, with 58% of organizations that don’t currently have cloud-based technologies planning to adopt a cloud-based accounting solution and 69% planning to adopt a cloud-based payroll solution this year.
While the nonprofit sector is experiencing labor shortages and potential economic uncertainty, strategic technological investment can increase staff efficiency and position nonprofits to maximize existing resources and create new opportunities.
As more nonprofits continue to invest in multipurpose technology and adopt cloud-based solutions, the eliminated inefficiencies will create opportunities for sustained success to drive missions forward and make a great big, beautiful tomorrow for everyone involved.
The 2023 Trends and Insights Report survey further discusses economic observations by organizational type, technology efficiency, and technology adoption trends.
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