Getting Started with Armanino Benchmarking for Nonprofits

A Microsoft account is required to access the tool. Armanino will set up credentials for your preferred email address during the onboarding process.

Use this link to access the tool. We recommend bookmarking this URL for easy access moving forward.

Product Workflow

Benchmark your organization against +320,000 nonprofits across the United States in 3 easy steps!

Introduction & Landing Page

When you first login, you will arrive at our landing page where you can learn:

1. How the tool works
2. Where Armanino sources the data
3. Exciting new features and enhancements that are in progress
4. Contact information if you ever run into issues or need a question answered 
5. Click “Let’s Start” to begin benchmarking

Select Your Organization

The first step is selecting your organization, which will allow you to view personalized benchmarking results on the subsequent tabs. To do so:

1. Type your organization’s name into the search bar and click the radio button next to your name
2. You will see information on your organization’s location and IRS’ national taxonomy classification
3.  Along with a quick snapshot of key financial metrics
4.  Next you are ready to select your peers

Build Your Peer Group

1. Build a benchmark population using the following filters:
   1. NTEE classification and type. Click the  icon to expand for more granular categories
   2. State
   3. Total Assets
   4. Total Revenues
   5. Total Expenses
2. The map and graphs on the page will give you a sense of how many organizations meet the filter criteria to assist you in making your selections.
3. The benchmarking group will update in real time as you make selections. Organizations can be further excluded/included using the checkboxes.
4. Once you are satisfied with the peer group, click Profile Peers 

Profile Your Peer Group

1. The first tab provides a summary of the organization profiles in your peer group. This includes metrics such as average salaries, number of employees, individuals making over $100K, and years in service
2. At the bottom is a table with the details for each organization. Click on any of the column headers to sort the records.

Compare Balance Sheet

Next up are the financial KPIs, starting with balance sheet health.

1. You can see data on assets, cash, investments, liabilities, debt, and more. For each of the bar graphs:
   1. You is the value for your organization 
   2. Peer is the average for the peer group
   3. Sector is the average across all organizations with your NTEE classification
2.  While averages are helpful for benchmarking, it is also important to look at the distributions to find concentrations and potential outliers. With this drop down, you can select any of the metrics on this page and see a visual distribution.

3. These graphs can also be expanded ( icon) to give you a deeper look into the distribution and values for specific organizations. This may help you identify and remove any significant outliers that are influencing the results. You can jump back to the Select Peer Group tab at any time.

Compare Liquidity

1. Up next are metrics on liquidity, starting with Days of Cash on Hand and Years of Operating Reserve. Just like the Balance Sheet tab you can select any metric on the page to view a distribution of your peer group.

Compare Profitability

Finally, we have metrics on profitability. Highlights include:

1. Insights into revenue streams and expenses, including program revenue and contributions
2. Earned Revenue vs. Contributed Revenue compared to your peer group
3. A look at Operating Gap – do your operating expenses exceed your program revenue, and are your net contributions sufficient to cover that gap?
4. Fundraising efficiency – how much does it cost for you to raise a dollar compared to your peers?
5. Breakdown of Program, G&A, and Fundraising expenses as a percentage of total expenses

Overall Summary 

Finally, the Overall Summary tab pulls all of the metrics into a single view.

1. From left to right, the table captures:
   1. the value of the selected organization
   2. the peer group average
   3. the average for all nonprofits with your same classification
   4. high and low values
   5. the quartile boundaries and where your organization falls
2. On the left, you can select any metric from the drop down to get a visual representation

Download Data

The final tab (Clipboard Icon) allows you to view and download data for your organization and selected peers.

Instructions to download data into an Excel spreadsheet:

1. When you hover over each table, three icons will appear . Click on the three dots for More options .
2. Select Export data
3. On the pop up, make sure “Summarized data” is selected with file format set to Excel, and click Export

The file will be downloaded to your computer.