By Teddy Nam

The Not for Profits (NFP) sector in Australia is considered diverse and large (approximately 600,000 NFPs in 2010 per the Productivity Commission report), contributing toannual revenue over $100 Billion and representing 8% of the Australia’s workforce (ABS, 2016). With the chief goal of achieving missions beneficial to the public, NFPs are expected to meeta higher standard of public expectations; balancing this withseeking and managing funding has been identified as the greatest problem.

Following the Government policy changes regarding grants in the NFP sector, organisations started to experiencethe impact of increased competition – diminishing funding and enhanced accountability requirements. Specifically, NFPs are expected to convince funds providers of the value of their mission while ensuring efficiency and stewardship of the organisation. This situation creates opportunities for NFPs to manage financials more strategically by reassessing the efficiency of core operations against their budget and demonstrating measurable effectiveness.