The post-pandemic world won't be a reversion back to the world pre-cornavirus but something entirely new, and if nonprofits want to survive it, they will need to significantly rethink every aspect of their organizations, according to a pair of speakers at the Foundation for Accounting Education's 43rd Annual Nonprofit Conference on Thursday.

Ellen Labita, a Baker Tilly partner, said nonprofits should be rethinking their prior assumptions and working with the understanding that nothing is going to remain completely unchanged. Every aspect of how an organization works needs to be reconsidered for what she said was "the next normal." A major part of this reevaluation, she said, will be recognizing the new prominence of virtual experiences and remote work, something she said is not going away anytime soon.

"You're going to be experiencing the contact-free economy," she said. "We're moving more to telemedicine, more to online education and programming, more automation. You may need to have new delivery models. You've probably developed some of them [in the pandemic] but you may need to expand those." 

This could even include questioning whether one's organization even needs a brick and mortar location, and whether going 100 percent virtual is viable; even if going virtual is not viable, she said, an organization might decide to "really condense some of the space in which you operate."

The virtual will also likely affect how an organization operates, she said, noting that it will impact everything from events, conferences and product sales. Nonprofits won't be able to proceed as if 2020 never happened; they will need to account for how circumstances have affected their viability as sustainable nonprofits, and retool if they're need to. She added that such considerations affect internal matters as well, such as people working from home or board members meeting virtually. How, she asked, will the nonprofit maintain engagement and cohesion when physical presence has become less important?

Labita added that fundraising assumptions will also need to be reassessed. She noted that state and local governments, which provide the bulk of grants that fuel nonprofits, are running serious budget deficits due to the pandemic's economic consequences and so will likely be more reluctant to send out grant money as they were before.

However the other speaker, Patrick Yu, also a partner at Baker Tilly, said that nonprofits should also recognize that there can be great opportunities in such reassessments. Many activities have moved to the virtual world, yes, but rather than think about how it limits them, organizations should think about what it allows them to do that they could not do before.

He talked about one client that recently held a virtual gala in place of its usual in-person event. Because it was virtual, it was no longer bound by geography, which is what allowed 100,000 people to attend, far more than would fit in even a stadium, let alone a ballroom. This huge attendance also caused a spike in donations.

Yu said that reassessing a nonprofit should be a holistic process that looks specifically at how the organization was impacted and how it impacts others; financial resilience in the post-pandemic era; and the adequacy of the information technology infrastructure for current needs. Through it all, he stressed the importance of getting input from as broad a base as possible, from the board to staff to constituents, and making the process diverse and inclusive.
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Through processes like these, he said, he has seen nonprofits retool to the new reality; for instance, while many performing arts nonprofits have had to stop live shows, some have found new life through online content. While many people can't go to museums anymore, some museums have used the Internet to go to them instead. There are many similar ways to reorganize and reassess for nonprofits facing 2021.

"While there are many challenges, there are also opportunities," said Yu. "There are going to be ways ot be successful going forward."