http://www2.guidestar.org/rxg/news/webinars/webinar-archive.aspx

2. A New Industry Standard
Sound Financial Health
Strong Organizations
Quality Programs
Effective Solutions
Financial SCAN demystifies nonprofit data and
illuminates nonprofit financial health, providing
the field with knowledge and tools for building
and sustaining healthy, effective organizations.

3. Why now?
 The sector lacks a common language and understanding of
what it takes to keep a nonprofit in business and in balance
 Existing ratings platforms focus on metrics like “overhead” that have no
bearing on nonprofit efficiency or effectiveness
 There is little agreement on what to measure, why it matters and how it
links to mission success
 Financial data collection, reporting and analysis is time and
skills intensive
 Everyday demands of running a nonprofit compete with funder/donor
demands for myriad reports and data sets
 Data-crunching can supersede data-driven decision making in grant
management and due diligence

4. Financial SCAN At a Glance
What: Data platform for assessing nonprofit financial
Data platform for assessing nonprofit financial
WHAT
health and fostering dialogue among all stakeholders
health and informing grantmaker-grantee
involved in making social(280K orgs)
dialogue impact
Who: Private and public grantmakers/donors,
Private and public grantmakers, individual
nonprofit organizations, nonprofit organizations, philanthropic
WHO
donors,
philanthropic advisors,
consultants and advisors, consultants and media
media
How: Private and public grantmakers/donors,
Draws data directly from IRS Forms 990,*
nonprofit organizations, philanthropic advisors, an easy-to-
HOW presenting complex information in
consultants and analyze and communicate format
media
*Note: Financial SCAN v. 1.0 does not include data from Form 990 EZ

5. What are existing grantmaker users
saying?
 Reveals trends and critical information about “We have a small staff,
“Financial SCAN
surpluses, deficits, debt, liquidity, and so adding an in-depth
helps us manage
restricted funds financial review to our
our financial
due diligence was close
analysis in a
to impossible. With It’s
systematic way.
 Allows for consistent analysis while offering Financial SCAN, it’s tool
a very valuable
almost as if didn’t have
that we we hired a
context and accessible narrative
part-time before.”
staff member
to do financial analysis
 Helps identify strengths and raise red flags, for us. It’s really
streamlining our efforts
informing conversation among ourselves, and in a tremendous way.”
with our grantees
 Will help us present to our board the financial
issues our grantees are dealing with
 Saves us time and resources

6. How are grantmakers using Financial
SCAN?
Program officers at one foundation use FinSCAN as a
key supplementary piece to their diligence process
Uses include: Regularly used by:
 First look at applicants  Program staff
 Means of identifying areas of  Grants administrators
deeper analysis  Trustees
 Component of board packets
They make frequent use of single-page Financial
Health Dashboard PDFs, and are beginning to run
analyses using grantee-provided peers

7. What’s in a Financial SCAN?
Organizational Dashboard: Five
years of key financial trends and ratios
for a selected organization
Graphs & Explanatory Text: More
detailed overview of the nonprofit’s:
 Expenses
 Revenue
 Profitability
 Balance Sheet
 Liquidity
Peer Comparison Dashboard:
Comparison with up to five peer
nonprofits you select

8. Financial SCAN Demonstration

9. Nonprofit Finance Fund
Thank you!
Rebecca Thomas
Vice President, Strategy & Innovation
617-204-9772
Rebecca.Thomas@nffusa.org
To learn more:
www.guidestar.org/financialSCAN
nonprofitfinancefund.org 8