Digital Strategy for Nonprofits

whitePaper | March 25, 2020

In their seminal article, "Nonprofit Starvation Cycle", Ann Goggins Gregory and Dan Howard exhort nonprofit finance professionals to report to funders the real costs of running nonprofit organizations. The authors explain that the popular trend to restrict funding to specific programs without accounting for infrastructure expenses leads to an unintended consequence, a "nonprofit starvation cycle", where charities cease to function because they can't pay for overhead costs, such as administrative employees, computers and electric bills. To break this unhealthy cycle, the article encourages nonprofits to recalibrate funder expectations by providing accurate financial reports and other supporting information to reflect the true costs of nonprofit operations.

whitePaper | January 11, 2023

The philanthropic sector is an ecosystem: a web of interdependent actors, infinitely variable, striving constantly to build something greater than the sum of its parts. The same is true in philanthropy. Each nonprofit, foundation, donor, community, or network is affected differently by our national and global zeitgeist. But as each player adapts to changes in that context, the sum of those many reactions can become a force of its own.

whitePaper | June 7, 2022

We saw a leveling off in email incidents such as spam and spear phishing, probably related to the use of more tools to protect email. Successful malware attacks declined significantly; whether from protective tools or from a shift in the attack landscape remains to be seen. However, our report shows the blanket risk of cyber fraud attacks on our sector, as in the for-profit and government sectors, is unabated and rising.

whitePaper | December 17, 2021

The ability to create specific approval processes, automate sequential steps, and enable remote employees to complete a variety of tasks, without physically moving paper from location A to location B can be incredibly efficient.

whitePaper | March 3, 2022

Welcome to this special IRIS Risk Retina® focused on the nonprofit industry! IRIS Risk Retina is a service from the Cyentia Institute built on the highly-regarded Information Risk Insights Study (IRIS) series. The goal of Risk Retina is the same as that of the IRIS research—to offer a clearer focus on cyber risk through real-world data and rigorous analysis. To succeed in this mission, we’ve partnered with Advisen to leverage their Cyber Loss Data containing ~100,000 historical events collected from publicly verifiable sources. It’s the most comprehensive incident dataset we’ve seen and is used by many cyber insurers and reinsurers for that reason. Upon that solid foundation, we add our own supplemental research, data science techniques, and security expertise to provide the analysis presented in this IRIS Risk Retina.

whitePaper | January 6, 2022

Nonprofits successfully navigated the challenges posed by the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and though the traditional methods of fundraising and giving were challenged, new trends have emerged for both donors and nonprofits. To help you make the most of the new year, we’re going to take a look back at lessons learned in 2021.