The Operational Gap Holding Nonprofits Back — and How to Close It

Jason Sutton, VP of Global Operations, Operation Smile; and Heather Venard, VP of Corporate Responsibility at Smartsheet

The nonprofit sector is at an inflection point. Demand is rising, funding is tightening, and expectations from donors and partners are higher than ever. Organizations are being asked to do more with less while managing growing operational complexity.

We’ve seen this firsthand, through our work expanding care globally and partnering with hundreds of nonprofits facing similar pressures. What we've learned is that the organizations best positioned to weather this pressure aren't always the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones that have built the operational infrastructure to execute consistently, under pressure, in real time.

And the data reflects this pressure sector-wide: a 2025 survey from the Nonprofit Finance Fund found that 85% of organizations expect service demand to increase, while 84% of those receiving government funding anticipate cuts. Financial problems go beyond the government, too; the Center for Effective Philanthropy reports 70% of nonprofits have experienced a reduction in funds across sources, including foundations and individual donors. In this environment, execution determines how far resources go, making operational discipline essential. 

Complexity Has Outpaced How Nonprofits Operate

While the growing demand we’re seeing in the nonprofit sector is a sign of success, it introduces another challenge: operational complexity. Many organizations aren’t equipped to manage this transition.

At Operation Smile, we've spent decades mobilizing thousands of volunteers across dozens of countries to provide quality cleft care, training and strengthen health systems in resource-constrained environments. This means coordinating more than 6,000 volunteers from over 60 countries in the 40+ countries we have a presence in — a scale that makes alignment across teams, data and decisions increasingly difficult. 

For years, we relied on manual processes including spreadsheets, emails and reporting to piece together information. While it technically worked, it drained staff time and left leadership making decisions based on outdated information. We needed a consolidated, real-time view of programs, volunteers and risk across every country we operate in.  The answer wasn't more tools, but fewer, better-connected ones. 

Many nonprofits aspire to be “data-driven,” but without the right solutions in place, that’s an impossible goal. It's a pattern we see across organizations of all sizes: the aspiration is there, but the infrastructure to support it often isn't. The gap between intent and execution is largely an operational one.

What Changes When You Actually See What’s Happening

Closing that gap starts with integrated workflows that connect programs, data and people without adding complexity. For organizations operating in dynamic, high-stakes environments, visibility isn’t a luxury; it’s the foundation for consistent execution.

At Operation Smile, programs depend on tight coordination across the globe. Political instability, health alerts and logistical issues are part of the reality. But with the right platforms and workflows, we’re now better able to predict and mitigate these obstacles. By tracking risk signals early and adjusting operations, we can support teams on the ground and ensure consistent, high-quality care. 

Moving to a centralized, near real-time view of operations powered by Smartsheet provided our team with critical opportunities. Teams can now track programs continuously, respond to issues in real time and coordinate resources more effectively. The impact is tangible: planning timelines have been reduced by approximately 50%, while our ability to actively monitor and adapt program implementation has significantly improved. 

Across the hundreds of nonprofits that Smartsheet works with, we see the same pattern: replacing manual, fragmented tracking with connected, real-time systems doesn’t just improve efficiency. It builds confidence, enabling teams to act on their data.

The smoother our operations ran, the more we could also focus on program impact, strengthening our ability to deliver on our mission.

How Internal Efficiency Builds External Credibility

There's a common assumption that operational investment competes with program investment — that dollars spent on systems are dollars not spent on mission. In reality, they are deeply connected. How an organization operates directly shapes the impact and how clearly it can demonstrate that impact to others. 

As expectations evolve, the ability to clearly demonstrate impact is becoming increasingly important.  Donors and partners increasingly expect transparency, accountability and clear evidence of results. They want to understand what happened, why, and how organizations will improve. That requires a reliable view of operations past and present.

When workflows are fragmented, reporting is incomplete and trust erodes. For nonprofits, eroded trust has a direct cost: donors consolidate their giving around organizations that can demonstrate accountability, and funding relationships can uncoil quickly when reporting is inconsistent or delayed. But when workflows are connected and data is integrated, organizations can provide a continuous, credible picture of their work. What’s happening, what’s working and where adjustments are needed.

Organizations that invest in operational discipline — connecting their workflows, centralizing their data, building systems that can scale — consistently find that internal efficiency and external credibility move together.

A More Durable Path to Scaling Impact

Across the globe, nonprofits are delivering services that communities depend on — from healthcare to food security to education — often under significant operational strain. 

But scale doesn’t come from a mission alone. It comes from the ability to execute that mission reliably, again and again. How far funding can go depends on the strength of that operational foundation.

The organizations that will lead in this next era will be the ones that built the operational infrastructure to support those programs. They invest in visibility early, connect data before crises and treat operational discipline as a leadership priority — not an IT project. 

No sector has more at stake when it comes to delivering on its mission than the nonprofit world. The operational infrastructure they build today is what will determine how many people they can reach tomorrow.