Case Studies
Bookkeeping, Accounting and Financial Reporting
Accounting Assistance for Immigrant Support Organization
Client/Profile: The organization helps, educates and inspires Latin American immigrants to learn to function in American society and to overcome barriers of poverty, isolation, cultural shock and language differences, so they can become self-sufficient, active participants in their communities.
Presenting Challenge: The client requested assistance as a result of a DYCD audit.
NPHD Solution and Results: Two technical assistants from the NPHD trained the organization’s staff in basic accounting and set up the organization’s books correctly. Equally important, they stayed until the job was done, and one of them still helps out as needed. The organization is now running in the black and IRS problems have been eliminated. Thanks to the NonProfit HelpDesk, the organization can now focus on its important goals.
Audit and Bookkeeping Assistance for Healthcare Outreach Organization
Client/Profile: This outreach organization links underserved members of this ethnically diverse community with quality healthcare by putting the consumer in touch with healthcare providers. The organization’s multilingual staff makes it well-qualified to perform this important function in an area where cultural, educational and economic barriers make some members of the community hard to reach.
Presenting Challenge: The client needed assistance with an important audit, and was aware that their accounting might not meet the required standards.
NPHD Solution and Results: The NonProfit HelpDesk (NPHD) sent in a technical assistance provider who specialized in fiscal management. She trained the fiscal officer in the use of QuickBooks, and working together, they set up the accounting system correctly. The NPHD also set up ongoing procedures for performing bank reconciliations, preparing reports for funders and processing payroll. The client now has a savvy fiscal officer who can perform his job in a fiscally accurate way.
Financial Reporting Help for a Neighborhood Cultural Organization
Client/Profile: This Queens nonprofit organization links community, cultural, and economic objectives into exciting neighborhood programs like a music festival attracting over 150,000 people, and Arts in the Parks, a summer program of free cultural and educational events for children.
Presenting Challenge: A full schedule left the client’s executive director with little time to prepare financial reports.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NonProfit HelpDesk (NPHD) came to the rescue with one-on-one financial services. NPHD’s fiscal expert showed the organization’s staff how to store its financial data in QuickBooks by category, indicating the program and funder. Now the executive director can produce financial reports for the board of directors in less time, and with much more confidence, and talk to the board using the accounting terms they understand. With QuickBooks producing the reports, grant reporting is much faster, funding cycles and monthly reporting are easier to handle, and the executive director can focus her attention on her programs, not her bookkeeping.
Leadership & Organizational Development
Training the Trainer: Leadership and Technology
Client/Profile: A Bronx nonprofit organization with a multi-faceted approach to economic development and family well-being.
Presenting Challenge: To develop a custom computer training program targeting the skill level and business needs of home-based childcare providers, and to train and support a selected group of childcare provider trainers so that they could train others in the organization’s home based childcare provider network.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NonProfit HelpDesk produced a 117-page “Technology Training and Leadership Institute Curriculum for the nonprofit’s home-based childcare trainers. We conducted ten hours of initial training, plus additional hours to help the trainers become more familiar with the curriculum. Several of the organization’s childcare trainers are now comfortable teaching basic computer skills to network providers, which will help the providers to improve the management and marketing of their businesses.
Technology, Software and Data Management
Data Management Assistance for a Social Service Organization
Client/Profile: Social service organization providing support in obtaining entitlements to a low income population with many underemployed members. A high percentage of clients speak little or no English.
Presenting Challenge: The client needed quick access to answers on basic managerial questions, such as the demographics of the people served or which staff was working on what projects. While they were able to get some of the information they needed to provide to funders, it took many days of work.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NPHD installed a standard database system that we customized for this client. This allowed them to record demographic data once for a client and have it available at all subsequent visits. They also record service history information.
They can now get the information they need to report to funding sources in a fraction of the time it used to take. They can get the demographic profiles they need for management; this data allowed them to determine what kind of staff demographics would be the best fit with their client demographics and to use that data in guiding recruiting.
Outsourced IT Services for An Agency Serving Abuse Victims
Client/Profile: An organization serving victims of abuse
Presenting Challenge: The client needed more control over their information and also needed to drive down their cost for managing their information technology. They had no in-house technology support and were using a patchwork approach to IT, with no overall management of the function and no ability to budget for it. IT was taking significant time away from the agency’s core service mission. In addition, the client was using an external server for email, which raised confidentiality questions with this highly sensitive population.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NPHD took full responsibility for the organization’s IT infrastructure—everything from desktop computers to the server to software applications to backup and security. As a result, the client now has:
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A functioning server with a new backup system |
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Email on their own server, eliminating the cost for hosted service and improving the perception of privacy |
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Appropriate system and data security, including constantly up-to-date antivirus and antispam software |
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Software that is kept updated with vendor “patches” as they are released |
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Someone to handle computer changes related to staff transitions |
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Helpdesk support when any of the staff have computer questions. |
The client now has a fixed IT budget. They can focus on their work, while spending less on IT and having greater control of their information.
Reporting Capabilities For a Social Service Organization
Client/Profile: A social services organization serving many seniors; one focus is on Holocaust survivors. Many of their clients are immigrants and many face language barriers.
Presenting Challenge: The client was unable to generate information needed to respond to questions for funders, nor to respond to day-to-day managerial needs.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NPHD customized our standard database system to fit the unique needs of this client. They now record each transaction, and can aggregate the information about those transactions to create profiles of their clients, the kinds of services they receive, and the frequency and timeframe of those services.
The database system includes easy reporting features that let them generate reports for both funders and internal use in a matter of minutes.
Establishing a Technology Lab forAn Educational Program
Client/Profile: A nonprofit program working in public schools to help students living in poverty to finish high school and get into college. The program is highly successful, with 80% of program students going on to college, in an area where very few students do.
Presenting Challenge: To create a technology lab that would allow the students to learn computer skills while completing real life tasks such as researching colleges and jobs, completing resumes and portfolios and creating websites. The lab set-up needed to balance the need for wide Internet access with the need to protect the youth from predatory and other negative websites. This task was complicated because the lab was to be shared by the students of the high school in which the lab was located.
NPHD Solution/Results: The NPHD was able to work successfully with the schools to establish a separate internet access system for the independent nonprofit program and for the school’s other students. The lab has been so successful that the program is allowing program alumni to come back and use the lab for keeping resumes and portfolios up-to-date, while having them mentor the program’s current students.
