Ending “Administrative Madness” with Nonprofit Virtual Assistants

This summer, I was delighted to be featured in Episode 26 of GroupFinity, the excellent podcast for nonprofit leaders hosted by Anthony Wilson. I’m sharing some highlights below. If you have curiosity about how our Nonprofit Virtual Assistants (NPVAs) are trained, what they can do to help your organization, or how much the service costs, this is the blog post for you! Or grab yourself a coffee and listen to the whole 20-minute podcast here.

Anthony: Your company, The More Than Giving Co., provides virtual (remote) assistants to nonprofits to help them with their back-office needs. Tell us what virtual assistants do and how they help nonprofits.

Vicki: What I’ve found, Anthony, over 35 years in the nonprofit sector, is that a general lack of adequate admin or project management support is really killing a lot of our nonprofits. The desire to meet this need is where the Nonprofit Virtual Assistant service was born. 

We hire seasoned professionals who have 3-5 years of previous experience as virtual assistants. Also, we only hire virtual assistants who have had some experience working at nonprofits, so we tend to attract people who are really purpose- and mission-driven.

Once selected, our NPVAs are put through a certification program that includes 10 modules of nonprofit-specific training, from strategic planning to board development to meeting management to constituent relations. After that, we test for proficiency in software applications and platforms that are typically used by nonprofits so our NPVAs are ready to hit the ground running when they are paired with a nonprofit client. 

Anthony:  What are the duties that most nonprofits are looking for a VA to accomplish? 

Vicki:  We typically get clients who are just too busy to get to the day-to-day tasks. These Executive Directors will tell you that they are buried in the weeds and unable to get to the things that only they can really do. They’ve got great boards but no one who is willing to work in the operations of the organization. They find that relying totally on volunteers ends up with a lot of the work coming back to their plates. 

There is always a need for fundraising support. I hear this all the time. Data, donor records, constituent records; making sure that donations are quickly and appropriately acknowledged; setting up systems and process documents are things that we get requests for all the time. I think really the general organization and back-office of any nonprofit can be well run by a NPVA.

Anthony:  What about back-office accounting? Do you find that to be a big need?

Vicki: There are a lot of people who ask us whether we provide light bookkeeping, and we certainly do. Our Nonprofit Virtual Assistants can certainly handle basic spreadsheet accounting. We do recommend that when you start to get to taxes and other things that you’re working directly with an accountant, but certainly for frontline bookkeeping and basic finance backup – making sure accounts payables are prepared and ready to be out, making sure receipts are recorded, keeping track of multi-year pledges, making sure that corporate pledges are getting their invoices by their renewal dates – I think NPVAs do a nice job.

Anthony:  When people come to you, what’s the biggest pain point you hear? 

Vicki: They will come to us and say, “I don’t know where to tell you to start.” Things have gotten so out of hand that they are already in a chaotic state. So, I would say in most cases they are looking for a professional to come in and start to take things off their plate and begin to organize their day. What I often describe is, once you have a NPVA you will start to see the time come back in your day because pieces will begin to be removed from your plate and done efficiently and effectively. 

I think professionals are finding – and even volunteer boards are finding – they are spending way too much time doing the detail work and not enough time cultivating donors, bringing on board members, doing program development. It gets frustrating because you just can’t seem to find an organized way to get out of the weeds.

Anthony: Vicki what are your customers most surprised about when they come to you looking for solutions and you send a virtual assistant? 

Vicki: The first thing we typically hear is “I don’t know how I have survived so long without one.” Then I think they are thrilled with the depth of knowledge that the NPVAs have on basic nonprofit governance. You don’t need to teach them how to maintain a board, what kinds of committee activities should be happening. In many cases, what I will hear our clients say is, “I didn’t realize that the NPVA would be as proactive in helping to guide the activities of the organization.” And I think that our NPVAs balance that line of they are there for support, but they also have a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience that can be very helpful to nonprofits. 

Anthony: Have you seen any differences with the roles of VAs now since the pandemic hit us? Are you finding organizations are more open to having VAs?

Vicki: I think some of it still comes down to costs. Nonprofit organizations are always extremely cost-focused and budget-focused and I think in some cases to the point of really starving themselves in the ability to build out the organizations. Some of that has changed in the pandemic because they’ve had no choice but to start working remotely. They don’t necessarily need a full-time employee coming into the office and I think the NPVA has provided the flexibility and certainly the cost savings that have been helpful for nonprofits. I think some of that’s going to continue because now that they’ve gotten a taste of how effective Nonprofit Virtual Assistants can be, there really is no need to go back to that traditional style of support.

Anthony: I’m so glad you went there Vicki. I find so many organizations resist spending money on tools, apps, solutions, people, due to costs. But I think that they miss something here. They miss the time savings. “If I could just offlay this to someone else and it costs me a little bit of money, I might be freed up to go raise more money.”

Vicki:  There’s a direct correlation between having the time to do the things that you need to do vs. doing all the minutia of the organization. I have seen organizations circling the drain because they’ve refused to make the allowances to hire on the support or, to your point, purchase the software or the applications they need, to make the job easier so that volunteer board members and even some of the staff members can be more focused on higher level fundraising and program development. In fact, even some of the nonprofit credentialling organizations like GuideStar and Charity Navigator are starting to point out that there needs to be money spent on project management, administration and infrastructure for nonprofits to adequately meet their missions. 

Anthony: Do you have any success stories that you could share?

Vicki: I have one, in particular. It’s a summer camp. During the pandemic they were moving very quickly into remote work and the Executive Director resigned, overnight. You had a new Executive Director just learning the ropes, the old one was no longer available, and two people going out on maternity leave. And you want to talk about a panic call? That was a panic call. Her testimonial basically says that she would not have been able to launch camp this summer without the help of a NPVA, who filled the gaps not only of an administrative project manager, but also of some full-time staff members who this Executive Director did not have at the time. 

We were a success story for her because we could start immediately. There was no hiring. You didn’t have to write a position description. You didn’t have to publicize it. You didn’t have to interview. We could bring her a group of candidates and let her choose and in two days she was up and running. 

Anthony: Vicki, how much should I expect to pay for a NPVA?

Vicki: Our standard packages go from $550 (10 hours) a month to $1950 (40 hours) a month, with customized packages also available. I think the key thing is you can get started for a minimal investment. Since we do not make people sign up for any length of time, I always say it’s worth a try.

Anthony: How can people learn more? 

Vicki:  I encourage anybody who is looking for some solutions, especially in time and support, to take the opportunity to schedule a complimentary call. I’m happy to address pain points and try to steer people in the right direction.