Shaping stronger nonprofits: A look at our impact on the nonprofit community

Student Veterans of America (SVA) is a nationwide nonprofit that supports military veterans as they transition into higher education. SVA needed to balance operational efficiency with rising costs while staying focused on their core mission. The organization was looking to improve their back-office functions to free up staff members from tasks outside their experience.

SVA hired RSM to manage the nonprofit’s essential but noncore functions such as information technology and accounting. Outsourcing provided SVA with RSM professionals who had a broad range of experience, enabling the organization’s staff members to focus on their mission. The approach saved SVA money, improved the nonprofit’s daily operations and boosted employee morale. In addition, RSM’s management of the organization’s IT platform meant SVA had more advanced protection against cyberattacks—an increasing risk for national nonprofits. This alleviated SVA leadership’s concerns about security and compliance, allowing them to expand the technical tools and resources they can offer to student veterans while keeping vital data secure.

Catholic Social Services (CSS), based in Edmonton, Canada, is one of the largest social service providers in the nation. CSS needed to modernize their operations and improve case management as part of a comprehensive digital transformation. By upgrading their system, CSS sought to improve the efficiency of their staff members, eliminate manual tasks and help employees focus on value-added interactions and the nonprofit’s core mission.

RSM executed the project in multiple phases, taking care to guide CSS through key decisions. Throughout the engagement, RSM focused on addressing any challenges promptly and efficiently. The result was that the working relationship extended beyond the technical details, fostering trust and a mutual investment in success. Upon implementation, the nonprofit quickly realized significant improvements, including streamlined case management and analytics. Through the engagement with RSM, the nonprofit not only achieved their goals but also set the foundation for long-term growth and operational excellence. RSM’s technical experience and innovative approach helped CSS improve their efficiency and increase employee satisfaction.

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota (LSS) has been making a positive impact since 1865. The organization supports more than 91,000 Minnesotans annually—including youth and families, individuals with identified needs, and older adults—and serves with a vision that all people have the opportunity to live and work in a community with full and abundant lives.

When faced with the challenge of navigating an immense archive, including almost 100,000 files and millions of pages spanning over 70 years that a project covered, LSS looked to RSM for assistance.

RSM, through innovative technology and problem-solving, helped implement a document digitization framework using optical character recognition, Microsoft automation and advanced artificial intelligence tools. This comprehensive solution not only converted data into a digital format—it improved search capabilities, standardized information and offered more streamlined, actionable results.

As a result of RSM’s approach, LSS gained more reliable access to their historical records, making it easier than ever to find crucial information. With this AI-enabled transformation, LSS team members can now focus their energy where it matters most—on providing services that inspire hope, change lives and build community—instead of being weighed down by manual data searches and paperwork.

With this breakthrough, LSS is reclaiming stories and gaining productivity, ensuring that their mission will continue to thrive and grow for generations to come.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation (BWF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that veterans, service members and their families have stable and successful futures. The foundation invests in programs and services that address the needs of these communities.

BWF faced significant operational challenges with their legacy Salesforce environment. Years of patchwork fixes had created a system that was difficult to manage and nearing obsolescence as Salesforce phased out support of certain functions.

RSM assessed the foundation’s data environment and designed a migration path to a more reliable platform. The engagement focused on stabilizing operations by transitioning the system to a stronger platform, which would also help ensure long-term technical viability for the foundation. In addition, RSM wanted to improve BWF’s data quality and processes to enable more strategic decision making.

RSM’s approach improved billing clarity for BWF, providing detailed invoices that showed where resources were going. Furthermore, the foundation’s employees appreciated the more user-friendly system, which gave the organization a standardized data lexicon that eliminated confusion across teams.

Moving from a fragmented system to a robust platform positioned BWF for long-term growth. With a solid foundation and enhanced platform security in place, the nonprofit has become more efficient and better positioned to serve their stakeholders.