From Scorekeeper to Strategist: How Nonprofit Finance is Becoming Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Nonprofit finance teams are carrying a lot right now. Funding is less predictable, program demand keeps growing, and boards want more clarity and confidence from the numbers. That is why we brought together a roundtable of practitioners during our Future in Focus virtual conference for Nonprofits who live this reality every day: Jim Norton, CPA, CFO Rob Caluori, auditor Alejandra Jensen, advisor Ed Warren and consultant Sarah Hayes.
The goal of this conversation was simple: move beyond buzzwords and talk honestly about what is actually changing in nonprofit finance.
Together they explored how finance is shifting from back-office scorekeeping to a strategic function that protects the mission, why real time visibility into grants and board reporting matters so much, how Excel still plays a central role, and how automation can build capacity rather than cut people. They also dug into the skills and mindset finance leaders now need to lead change with their teams. This article captures that discussion for CFOs, controllers and finance leaders who want a grounded view of where the function is really going.
Nonprofit finance is getting hit from all sides
Funding streams are volatile, program demand is not slowing down, and boards and regulators are asking for more transparency than ever. During Velixo’s Future in Focus roundtable, five practitioners compared notes on what it really looks like to modernize finance in that reality, not in a perfect textbook case.
They came from very different angles:
- Jim Norton, CPA, Sr. Product Manager at Velixo, hosting the conversation,
- Rob Caluori, CFO at Westchester Library System,
- Alejandra Jensen, audit partner at GRF CPAs & Advisors,
- Ed Warren from DSD Business Systems, with decades in nonprofit finance and technology,
- Sarah Hayes, Customer Success Manager serving nonprofit Intacct and Velixo clients, with a background inside arts organizations
Despite the variety, their stories converged on the same idea: finance has become mission-critical infrastructure empowering nonprofit core missions.
Finance is moving from scorekeeper to strategist
Alejandra described what she sees across her audit portfolio. Finance teams used to be judged on whether they could close the books and pass the audit. Now her strongest clients are the ones who use finance to drive decisions, not just report on them. They still care about compliance, but they are deeply involved in planning, scenario analysis and risk.
From the inside, Rob is living that shift. As a CFO in a multi-entity, grant-funded environment, he is part controller, part strategist, part IT product owner. The board and senior leadership expect finance to show not just “what happened” but “what we should do next.” That only works if the team can get to the data quickly and trust it.
Ed framed it bluntly from his years in the space: strong finances are the scaffolding for the mission. His reminder was uncomfortable but true: you have to make a profit to do your mission. Nonprofits do not exist to generate margin, but without one they cannot survive, invest or protect services when funding shifts.
Agility is the new modus operandi for finance teams
When Jim asked the group what agility looks like in practice, the answers were very concrete.
For Rob, agility is the ability to turn around funder and board reports without long “tool time.” His team might be juggling five, six or seven open grants, each with its own reporting format and rules. It cannot take a week to retool a report every time a funder asks a new question. They need reusable models they can flex in hours.
Ed pushed on the stakes. If it takes 21 days into the month before you know where you are financially, you are too late. In a world where a major funder can cut 60 percent of your revenue with short notice, you have to be able to pivot programs and cost structures in something closer to real time.
From Sarah’s vantage point, the organizations that are handling this well have program and finance sitting at the same table. They are looking forward together, not lobbing spreadsheets back and forth. Finance is giving program leaders self-service views into how they are tracking, week by week, so trade-offs can be made early instead of in a panic.
Excel is not dead, it is evolving
The panel laughed at the idea that Excel is going away.
Rob admitted he has a strong opinion. He used to see Excel as a giant free-form table where people dumped data. Now he treats it as a framework. Structured data lives in the ERP. Excel is where they shape that data into views that work for funders, board members and program leads. It is the presentation and modeling layer on top of the system of record.
Alejandra backed that up from audit. The majority of client schedules she receives are still in Excel. If they are not, her team often requests them in Excel because it is the easiest common language for both sides to work in, especially when you need to trace, test and recombine information quickly.
Sarah added the human side. Many finance professionals built their careers in Excel. It is where they are fastest and most confident. The opportunity is not to rip that away, but to connect Excel directly to the ERP in a controlled way. That is where tools like Velixo show up in real life during implementations: they let teams keep the interface they know, while removing the error-prone copy and paste work beneath it.
Automation is capacity building, not headcount cutting
Automation and integration ran through almost every story, but none of the panelists talked about it as a way to shrink finance. They talked about it as the only realistic way to meet rising expectations without endlessly adding staff.
Rob shared that after integrating his ERP with Excel reporting, he no longer spends days pulling and reconciling data for each new question. His team can get to the numbers faster and spend more time on interpretation. Instead of asking for another full-time hire, he can show his board that smart investment in tools is giving them meaningful amounts of time back.
Alejandra sees that same effect on the audit side. When clients have strong systems and automated controls, her team can do more work remotely with read-only access. On-site audits shrink from a week in a conference room to a day or two. That is less disruption for staff, and more energy for both sides to focus on the real risk areas.
Ed described it as a win-win. Staff are not doing extra work to feed multiple disconnected systems, so they are less burned out. Leadership gets stronger, more frequent information. And critically, automation becomes part of capacity building: every hour you take out of manual tasks is an hour you can reinvest in analysis, planning or partner conversations.
The most important skills are human ones
When Jim asked what high-performing, mission-driven finance teams look like, the panel did not start with certifications or specific tools.
Sarah answered first: they have a mindset of continuous learning and continuous improvement. They are willing to question whether the way they have always done a report or process still makes sense.
Rob added that the best teams are willing to challenge convention respectfully. When you invite that questioning into finance, you get some of the most creative ideas for how to serve the mission better with the same resources.
Alejandra pointed to curiosity and collaboration as core traits. The future finance professional is comfortable talking to program staff, development, IT and auditors. They are not hiding behind the numbers; they are using the numbers as a bridge.
There was a talent angle too. Younger professionals simply do not want to work in archaic systems forever. If you want to attract and retain strong people, you have to modernize the tools you give them. Otherwise, you make it much harder for early-career staff to see a future in your organization.
Change is the hard part, and you cannot shortcut it
Everyone agreed that technology is the easy part. People are the hard part.
Sarah’s advice on change management was very practical: start early, and be explicit about what people will gain. Take time to understand their fears and concerns. Address them directly instead of hoping they will “get on board” once the new system is live. Use champions who can show colleagues the benefits in their own language.
Rob talked about the “big carrot.” You have to show skeptics the tangible payoff. If someone sees that a task that used to take them three days now takes three hours, they are suddenly much more willing to learn the new workflow they were resisting.
Ed shared the cautionary version. If people feel railroaded, or if they think leadership does not understand the real impact on their day, they will quietly torpedo your project. And leadership often underestimates how long real implementation takes, especially when it involves changes to workflows, chart of accounts and reporting structures. That time has to be in the plan, not bolted on at the end.
Jim summed it up well: big ERP and reporting changes are not flip-the-switch events. They are multi-month people projects that happen to have software in the middle.
Where this leaves nonprofit finance leaders
Taken together, the roundtable paints a clear picture.
Nonprofit finance is becoming the control center, early-warning radar and translation layer between money and mission. Agility now means being able to re-cut funder, board and internal views on demand, not once a quarter. Excel is still the everyday workspace, but it is most powerful when connected directly to the ERP through tools that respect both control and flexibility. Automation does not replace people, it frees them to do the work only they can do. And the leaders who will thrive are the ones who treat change as a human journey, not a technical rollout.
If you sit in a finance seat, the practical takeaway is simple: start where you are. Map the reports and grant schedules that cause the most pain. Look at how many manual steps sit between your ERP and those outputs. Ask where Excel is already doing the heavy lifting, and whether it could be wired in instead of working around the system. Then build a change plan that assumes the real work is earning trust, not installing software.
That is the future the panel described. Not a glossy vision of “AI-driven finance,” but a very grounded picture of finance as the right hand of the mission, powered by real time data, familiar tools and people who are curious enough to keep evolving.