Every year, CIMA’s General Charitable Trust funds a number of cutting edge research projects at leading global business schools. One such project is Social Capital, the role of management control systems in NGOs. Yesterday 50 accountants, each working in charities and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), attended a CIMA hosted workshop to further explore this research, and consider the possibilities for accountants to add more value to the work of NGOs.

In the current “Value For Money” (VFM) era, it has become increasingly important for finance teams to be able to demonstrate the value they add. But in NGOs in particular, their work is often considered irrelevant to the programme work being undertaken.

Programme staff frequently view the work of their finance colleagues as an overhead that needs to be reduced. Finance professionals need to debunk this myth, and our workshop attendees have acknowledged several ways that this can be done.

Three value adding roles for the NGO accountant were identified:

1. Educator

In order to educate non-finance colleagues, the accountants first need to have an excellent understanding of the work and priorities of non-accounting staff. The easiest and simplest way of doing this is to get out of the back office and join them, observing their work in the field. By doing this, finance professionals can be proactive in the supplying the relevant information their colleagues need to make the best decisions, without waiting for non finance staff to tell them what information they’d like.

Accountants can also help non-finance colleagues get to grips with basic financial accounting and performance measures, empowering them to take on some simple accounting activities for themselves. This frees up the accountant to concentrate on the specialised, value adding, strategic support.

2. Integrator

Accountants can add increasing value by integrating information and cutting it for different audiences, rather than generating new information each time for different stakeholders. They should also integrate the values of the organisation in to performance measures and help to build connections both within and outside the organisation.

3. Separator

Having worked alongside programme staff, accountants will be able to act as a firewall and shield their colleagues from some of the reporting burdens required of them. They’ll be able to provide some resistance to the demands from donors, freeing up programme staff’s time meaning it can be dedicated to delivering front line services.

If you have any other practical tips for accountants working in NGOs and charities, please share them with us in the comments section.