Cloud Computing is at the top of the list for almost all organizations looking for their next fund accounting and donor management and fundraising systems – and for good reason. Cloud computing is the most revolutionary technology development since application software (once only available for mainframe computers) became available for personal computers and landed on the desktops of end users.

There are several hugely compelling aspects to cloud computing – in many cases it comes with:

• a lower cost of ownership
• significantly faster implementation
• full feature sets
• hassle-free upgrades
• enhanced security, up time, and disaster recovery
• can be available anytime, anywhere on a variety of devices.

But what is it? In a cloud computing environment, your software solution is hosted 'in the cloud' and access via the web, rather than on a server (owned by you) that is housed at your location (on premise).

Chances are you began using cloud computing before you were aware of it. The first book you ordered from amazon.com was done via the cloud. If you pay your bills through online banking, you're operating in the cloud. Every song on your iPod or iPhone was a download from the cloud.

Now you can run your nonprofit business solutions from the cloud – fund accounting, fundraising, donor database, email, payment processing, etc.

At AccuFund, we provide nonprofits with fund accounting and fundraising solutions that can be hosted on premise or from the cloud. Whichever technology you prefer, we can accommodate.

While making a wise choice with regard to what technology best suits your organization, it's far more important that your choice of solutions is developed with nonprofit organizations in mind. Commercial accounting solutions don't work well for nonprofits, because they're not designed to collect and organize your data and provide the reporting output your organization requires.