Three different bicycles share access to a repair stand and tools in an imagined community workshop. This original painting is an editorial metaphor for shared support, not a photograph of a Foundation project or a documented partner arrangement.
Shared expertise and practical agreements can strengthen everyday operations without dissolving each organization’s purpose
By Arbab Naseebullah Kasi, Chief Executive Officer - CEO, Feel Worldwide Foundation Inc.
Illustration: Three different bicycles share access to a repair stand and tools in an imagined community workshop. This original painting is an editorial metaphor for shared support, not a photograph of a Foundation project or a documented partner arrangement.
A small nonprofit can know its community intimately and still struggle to close its books on time. It can have an excellent program coordinator but nobody available to resolve a difficult payroll question. It can own a room that stands empty most afternoons while another organization searches for somewhere accessible to train volunteers.
These are different problems, but they invite a common question: which capabilities really need to be built alone?
Sharing operational support can make skilled help more accessible. Several organizations might use one accounting team, commission training together, share a facility or purchase a limited amount of specialist time. Each can retain its own mission and relationships while gaining support it would struggle to maintain independently.
The opportunity deserves serious attention. So do the arrangements that make it dependable. Goodwill cannot reconcile a bank account, decide whose urgent request comes first or determine who may see a confidential personnel file. Those responsibilities need people, time and clear agreements.
Start with a task that keeps getting stuck
“Let’s collaborate” is an invitation, not yet an operating plan. A more useful starting point is a recurring difficulty that staff can describe precisely.
Perhaps monthly reports arrive after the board meeting. Perhaps every new supervisor receives a different explanation of the same employment policy. Perhaps an organization needs an accessibility specialist for occasional reviews, not a full-time appointment. Name the work, how often it occurs, who currently does it and what happens when it is delayed.
Ask staff what they would need to change. A director may see duplicated effort where a coordinator sees two genuinely different requirements. One organization may work with restricted grants, another with membership income and another with complex contracts. Similar job titles do not mean interchangeable processes.
Choose a first service with a clear boundary and a realistic volume. Sharing a quarterly training program is a different undertaking from moving payroll and employee records into a common service. Beginning with the smaller arrangement can reveal whether partners communicate well, but success there does not automatically establish readiness for the more sensitive one.
Decide what sharing actually means
Several independent nonprofits can jointly commission a provider. One nonprofit can host a specialist who supports the others under separate agreements. A purpose-built service organization can employ a team that serves many members. Organizations can also share space without sharing financial or personnel systems.
These choices distribute work and power differently. A host organization takes on employment and management responsibilities. A jointly governed service requires a way to make decisions when members disagree. A contracted provider needs oversight even when its staff are experienced and its purpose feels closely aligned.
There are operating examples. In a May 2016 announcement, the organization now known as Ascend Nonprofit Solutions documented Community School of the Arts joining shared finance and human resources services with eight other nonprofits after board due diligence. That is evidence of a particular arrangement, not a claim that every arts organization should adopt it.
TSNE’s current shared-services description separately identifies accounting and bookkeeping, payroll at a higher service tier, and human resources support for nonprofits with their own charitable status. The distinction matters: purchasing operational support is not necessarily fiscal sponsorship or a merger. Boards should understand which relationship they are actually considering before signing anything.
Share bookkeeping without surrendering financial judgment
A shared bookkeeping service can handle repeatable work such as transaction entry, reconciliations and preparation of financial reports. Its value depends on whether those reports are accurate, timely and useful to the people making decisions.
The Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits describes monthly bookkeeping and accounting services alongside technical assistance, including grant reporting, financial procedures and attention to segregation of duties. This is a useful example of a service scope that goes beyond entering transactions. It is a provider description, not an independent evaluation of client outcomes.
Before joining any arrangement, agree on the chart of accounts, treatment of restricted funds, supporting documentation and the point at which management must answer a query. Decide who approves spending, who can change payment details and who reviews reconciliations. A provider preparing information should not quietly become the person making every financial decision.
Each organization still needs someone able to understand its reports, question an unusual balance and bring problems to its board. Sharing expertise works best when it strengthens that ability rather than leaving nobody inside the organization who knows how its finances operate.
Ask about continuity, too. Who covers leave? Who checks another staff member’s work? How many clients depend on the same person at month-end? A shared team can provide backup, but only if the staffing plan actually includes it.
Make training useful after everyone goes home
Joint training can bring peers together around a common need. Supervisors might practice giving feedback. Volunteer coordinators might work through scheduling problems. Finance and program staff might learn to interpret the same monthly report.
A workshop becomes more useful when participants leave with a task they can complete in their own organization, a named person to support it and a date to review what changed. Attendance is easy to count. Whether a new process is used consistently is a better test of capacity.
Research gives a reason to take follow-through seriously. The 2015 MDRC and Child Trends evaluation, The Skills to Pay the Bills, followed 25 Chicago organizations during a 2009–2013 financial-management initiative. It compared a more customized support model with one centered primarily on group learning. Financial practices improved in both groups; the group-learning organizations generally progressed more slowly.
This was not a randomized comparison. Assignment reflected the funder’s assessment of what organizations could undertake, and support included grants and consulting. Most participants had initial budgets of $3 million to $8 million, so the findings cannot simply be transferred to a small volunteer-led charity. The study also did not measure service quality. Its practical lesson is narrower: shared learning can contribute to improvement, but a session alone is not the intervention that was studied.
Treat shared space as a working environment
An available room is not automatically a suitable room. Consider accessible entrances and toilets, public transport, opening hours, storage, sound privacy and the needs of people who use the service. A central location may help staff and still make attendance harder for some participants.
The Nonprofit Centers Network’s 2019 State of the Shared Space Sector report provides primary survey evidence. Its tenant survey received 124 responses from 442 executive directors invited through 19 centers, a 28 percent response rate. The report says 86 percent of responding tenants reported improvement in overall organizational capacity. Qualitative responses describe access to other organizations and useful spaces.
Those findings are encouraging, but they are self-reports from participating centers and respondents, not a controlled test. They cannot establish what would have happened without moving, represent every nonprofit or predict savings for a new tenant. The evidence is also historical, not a current assessment of local rental markets.
Ask for the actual terms. Ascend’s April 2025 space announcement described meeting-space use and visitor parking within lease arrangements, with an opportunity to participate in shared services. It also linked a tenant improvement allowance to a ten-year lease. This illustrates why a promising amenity should be read alongside the commitment. The announcement is not confirmation of current availability or terms.
Agree on booking priorities, cancellations, cleaning, repairs and responsibility when equipment fails. Protect private conversations and records. A shared reception area should not reveal which confidential service someone is seeking simply because everyone uses the same entrance.
Buy specialist capacity with a clear boundary
Some organizations need expertise intermittently: a human resources adviser, a data-security specialist, an evaluator or someone qualified to review accessibility. Pooling demand may support a more dependable service than repeatedly asking an overstretched volunteer for help.
Ascend’s published client accounts describe RAIN using its human resources support and Smart Start of Mecklenburg County moving its MECK Pre-K program to centralized IT management. These are named, documented service relationships. They are testimonials selected by the provider, not independent proof of a universal benefit or a measured return on investment.
The useful question is what expertise becomes available and under what conditions. Does the adviser understand the organization’s jurisdiction and activities? What is excluded? Who handles a problem outside their competence? Can the specialist respond during the organization’s busiest period?
Shared services should also have a boundary between providing advice and making consequential decisions. An external HR adviser can support a process; the employer must know who is authorized to decide and who will manage conflicts. A shared evaluator should explain whether confidential organizational findings remain separate from any combined report.
Give every partner a voice and every decision an owner
Before work begins, put the arrangement in writing. Specify the participating organizations, services, responsibilities, prices, review dates and method for changing the scope. Identify a service lead and a responsible contact inside each organization.
Governance needs to handle unequal size without pretending the differences do not exist. A larger member may purchase most of the service but should not silently absorb every urgent appointment. A smaller member should understand what influence it has over price increases, service changes and decisions that affect its records.
Separate operational decisions from decisions reserved to each board or employer. Write down how conflicts of interest will be disclosed, how complaints will be handled and what happens when a service misses an agreed standard. Obtain appropriate legal, accounting, employment and insurance advice for the actual arrangement and jurisdiction.
A shared-services agreement is strongest when a new staff member can read it and understand what to do. It should not depend on remembering a friendly conversation between the founders.
Set standards people can observe
“Responsive support” means little until both sides know what to expect. Specify the working calendar, the information a member must supply and the difference between acknowledging a request and resolving it.
For bookkeeping, the standard might cover when complete monthly records must arrive, when reports will be delivered and how corrections will be tracked. For training, it might cover accessible materials, relevant practice and follow-up. For a facility, it might cover access hours, repair reporting and room-booking reliability.
Consider an illustration, not a real Foundation project: three independent charities agree to test a shared accounting service for six months. They keep separate accounts and approvals. Their written plan says reports are due ten working days after each organization submits complete records, with missing information identified promptly. A monthly review examines late reports, errors requiring correction, staff hours spent resolving queries and the usefulness of the information to each board.
The six-month period and reporting deadline are example choices, not recommended universal standards. A real pilot should match the complexity of the work and include the cycles that matter. A short trial ending before year-end may tell little about how the service handles annual reporting.
Share support without sharing everyone’s information
An agreement to share an accountant is not permission for every partner to see every payroll record. Sharing a training room is not permission to photograph participants or circulate their contact details.
Map the information the service actually needs. Use separate access permissions for each organization, named user accounts and clear rules for sending documents. Decide who may use subcontractors, where records will be kept, how incidents will be reported and what happens to data when the relationship ends. Seek specialist advice for regulated or particularly sensitive information.
The Federal Trade Commission’s Start with Security guidance advises businesses to define security expectations for service providers, put appropriate requirements in contracts and verify that providers meet them. Those are useful practical principles for evaluating a shared service; the guidance does not establish which laws apply to every nonprofit.
Also test the ordinary physical details. Can a visitor see another organization’s screen? Can a conversation be heard through a meeting-room wall? Does a shared printer leave confidential pages in an open tray? Privacy is part of daily service design, not just a clause signed at the beginning.
Count the work of changing before promising savings
Moving to a shared arrangement creates work. Records may need cleaning. Systems may need configuration. Employees need training, managers need time to answer questions and two arrangements may run in parallel during transition. Contracts, insurance and exit costs also belong in the calculation.
Compare options for delivering a defined level of quality. Include retained internal work as well as the service fee. Treat staff time released for other work as capacity, not automatically as money saved. If nobody’s paid hours change, the organization may gain useful time without reducing cash expenditure.
Ascend’s September 2023 funding announcement makes the timing issue concrete. It reported a $750,000 award intended to enable expansion to four additional agencies over eighteen months, including hiring six employees before new partners joined. These were announced plans, not verified completed results. They show why shared-service growth can need investment before fees arrive.
Ask what happens if one participant leaves or a subsidy ends. Review whether the remaining members can afford the service and whether staff capacity can adjust without harming quality. Agree in advance on notice periods, final charges, records returned in usable formats and assistance with handover. A sensible exit makes cooperation less fragile.
Build a service worth continuing
The strongest case for shared capacity may be a report that arrives when it is needed, a supervisor who can obtain qualified advice, or a room that makes participation easier. None requires an invented savings claim.
Start with a real operational need. Check the service and the people providing it. Fund the transition, preserve each organization’s responsibilities and review the experience honestly. If a pilot adds complexity without enough benefit, change it or stop it. If it works, deepen the relationship at a pace the partners can manage.
Small nonprofits do not have to become alike to work well together. They need enough shared structure to support their differences and enough clarity to remain accountable for their own work.
If your organization can offer relevant expertise, training or suitable space, propose a defined contribution through Feel Worldwide Foundation’s partnership inquiry. Describe the need, location, contribution and limits of what you can provide, without including confidential records. An inquiry begins a discussion; it does not establish a shared-services program or guarantee a partnership.
To support the Foundation’s broader work, visit its donation page and review the available giving options and terms. A gift should not be understood as funding a particular shared-services arrangement unless that purpose has been expressly agreed.
