AcctTwo Blog

In 1972, Sharon Johnson went to Haiti to direct a choir that was traveling around the country. As she looked into the faces in the crowds, she fell in love with the people of Haiti. She returned each year with her husband, Bob, and over time, they felt the need to provide the people of Haiti with help every day and not just once or twice a year. In 1983 they formed what is today Mission of Hope: Haiti (MOH).

Officially founded in 1998, MOH has since grown from a small mission located on a barren piece of land, to a fruitful organization that now houses an onsite orphanage, medical facility, school, and church. Through partnerships, MOH also serves outside of its property by helping other orphanages, churches, and schools throughout the country.

When the tech-giant Sage announced plans to acquire Intacct we were excited for several reasons. Obviously, the resources of Sage Intacct would grow, which would allow us to offer more to clients, but we also knew that Sage shared our deep commitment to giving.

The goal of any mission-based organization is to grow in influence and have a greater positive impact on the world. However, when growth does begin to ramp up, it’s both an achievement and an obstruction.

With growth comes complexity. Everything from staffing to operations to marketing becomes more challenging. But accounting is the area where the stress is felt most acutely.

Mission-based organizations that rely on a simplified approach to accounting quickly discover that approach is ill-equipped to serve the needs of a larger and more complex organization. Individual accounting processes may work, but they do not communicate and cooperate in a way that the demands of enterprise accounting require.

As a mission-based organization, your agenda is clear – doing good work around the world. Unfortunately, accomplishing that is more complex than ever, requiring leaders to rely on a lot more than just good intentions in order to achieve the positive outcomes they desire.

As the scope of mission-based organizations has grown, decision-making has become a high-stakes process. At the same time, donors demand a level of transparency and accountability that raises the stakes of decision-making even further.