How to improve spend accountability in nonprofits

Accountability is a hefty word. In the nonprofit world, as organizations work on the frontlines of public trust and resources, it refers to their commitment to being transparent, responsible, and ethical. Organizations are expected to hold high accountability in these focus areas: finance, performance, governance, and of course, their mission.

We’ll focus on the finance aspect, particularly spend accountability. By leveraging smart business buying tools, you’ll have improved visibility into spend while adhering to your board’s regulations and donor expectations.

Improving finance accountability

According to the 2024 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report, inflationary pressures remain as a top concern for nonprofit leaders, with 42% of organizations experiencing a lack of adequate finances and resources. Depending on your cadence whether quarterly or at the start of your fiscal year, you’ll be meeting with your board of directors to further discuss financial concerns and needs to advance your organization’s mission. Therefore, it’s time to start budget planning and find ways to optimize. Assess your current programs. Perhaps, there are programs and services where you saw an increase in demand and at an expense, need to discontinue one or two programs to be able to reallocate resources. Having visibility into your year-over-year spend can help quantify and justify your budget proposals.

With your Amazon Business account, you have access to Business Analytics. Use these intuitive dashboards to sort through your organization’s purchasing history and better understand spending patterns from comparing annual spend to identifying product category gaps. 

If you are a Business Prime member, Spend Visibility arms you with more pre-built and customizable data visualizations to rapidly uncover purchasing insights and analyze spending goals, helping you make smarter budgeting decisions, locate policy-compliant issues, and find more opportunities to save.

Here's a tutorial on how to access, manage, and analyze Spend Visibility dashboards:

Budget Management allows you to actively manage grants and donations, helping ensure funding restrictions or regulations are being followed. Allocate these time-bound funds to your staff and set spending thresholds for the new fiscal year. This self-serve feature empowers your buyers with visibility and accountability over their individual budgets to distribute towards their specific program needs.

Here's a tutorial on how to set up budgets and allocate funds to your staff and buyers:

Meeting donor expectations

Donor expectations to integrate sustainability into nonprofit missions are increasing. In the recent Sustainable Signals Report by Morgan Stanley, more than half of investors (58%) express that they are likely to invest in organizations that target specific positive environmental or social objectives. Meanwhile, only 18% of nonprofits surveyed report evaluating their vendors and partners for their alignment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies and actions. This means that nonprofits should disclose and be more transparent about how they are incorporating ESG principles into their program design and delivery.

As a start, nonprofits can add socially responsible purchasing as part of their procurement process. These practices include sourcing materials for kits with reputable sustainability certifications, reducing plastic usage, using compostable supplies, and more. Before doing so, your organization must vet and choose suppliers that not only meet supply chain and environmental standards, but will also comply with your board’s regulations.

With Amazon Business, you have access to over 4,500 certified diverse sellers, more than 2,000 minority owned vendors, and over 1.4 million Climate Pledge Friendly products. As you begin or continue to adopt ESG practices for your programs, reporting your progress to your donors and communities can help you gain more credibility for your nonprofit and its mission.