From the Ramp Community: 5 tips to help nonprofit finance teams

Today’s nonprofit finance leaders are navigating a challenging landscape—reduced funding, shifting demands, and growing pressure on lean teams. Yet across Ramp’s community, we continue to see inspiring examples of creativity, resilience, and operational excellence.

In May, we brought together a group of nonprofit finance leaders for two virtual roundtables to discuss what’s top of mind and what’s actually working.

We kicked off the conversation with two simple questions:

1. What’s your biggest challenge right now?
2. What’s working well for your team?

The challenges were familiar: receipt collection, grant compliance, and financial reporting. But the solutions were smart, scrappy, and totally worth stealing.

Here are five strategies nonprofit teams are using right now to improve their workflows, stay audit-ready, and spend more time on their missions.

1. Smarter receipt collection

Chasing down receipts doesn’t have to be a monthly fire drill. Several teams shared smart strategies to boost receipt compliance:

• Auto-locking cards if transactions are missing receipts after a certain date to nudge forgetful employees.
• Manager visibility into transactions as they happen to drive accountability across departments.
• Real-time alerts for cardholders to snap and submit receipts right after a purchase, reducing month-end follow-ups.
• Ramp cards tied to specific spend programs help receipts route correctly from the start.
• Grant vouchers and backup docs uploaded directly into Ramp keep all transactions audit-ready.

“We tied cards to specific programs. That way, receipts route correctly from the start and we’re not cleaning it up later.”
—Nonprofit finance leader

When employees know the system works for them and won’t create headaches, they’re more likely to follow it.

2. Tracking spend by grant

Managing multiple grants? Ramp Spend Programs help nonprofit teams stay organized and compliant, without the chaos of retroactive tagging or messy spreadsheets. Organizations are using these programs to:

• Set project- and trip-specific budgets to avoid overspend.
• Pull reports quickly for audits and grantor updates.

“We make sure every purchase is tied to an allowable funding source. It makes compliance and reporting so much easier.” —Nonprofit controller

3. Pre-coding transactions to save time and headaches

Customers can pre-configure default accounting codes—like department, location, or class—within Ramp Spend Programs. This ensures that every transaction made from those programs is automatically categorized with the correct codes, reducing the need for manual corrections by the finance team and improving the overall accuracy of accounting data.

Setting up default GL codes, departments, and programs means transactions are pre-coded and ready for review.

4. Segmenting spend by program

One team with multiple initiatives, such as housing, education, and community services, uses Ramp to segment spend by program. This helps the organization:

• Provide internal and external stakeholders with a clear view into each program’s financial health.
• Avoid restricted fund overlap and time spent fixing those issues later.
• Tell a better story with its financial data since it's broken down by initiative.

5. Maximizing value through cashback

One customer shared that they actively monitor their Ramp cashback to ensure every eligible dollar is working harder for the mission. Their team uses the cashback to automatically cover the cost of Ramp Plus, essentially reinvesting spend back into their operations.

“We look at it as: if we’re spending the money anyway, how can we get the most value back into the mission?” —Nonprofit finance leader

These practices may not be one-size-fits-all, but they show a clear trend: nonprofit finance teams are moving from record-keeping and admin work to enabling the entire business. With the right tools and systems, they’re spending less time on manual tasks and more time driving impact.

Got a tip of your own?

What’s working for your team? Join us in the Community forum to share your learnings with colleagues and keep the conversation going.