New website, prepaid ops, 120 free patterns, and who owns your tools

Hi there,

Some nonprofits don’t need an ops team, they need ops hours here and there. In this 5th month of our existence, we launch a prepaid model that works like that. We also launched our new website, shipped many handy tools in our app, hired another full-time Operations Lead, and as always start with a bunch of free policies, how-to’s and other patterns:

Free patterns

Every month we share a few free policies, how-to’s, templates and checklists across People, Finance, Legal and Tech:

• A script beats a gifted interviewer: ask for stories.
• You don't need a lawyer for an employment contract.
• Most accounting systems mishandle nonprofit VAT.
• Earmarked money isn't yours until you spend it right.
• Name every wiki page after the question it answers.

All 120+ free patterns

From our customers

Who joined Moral Fabric, what changed, who moved on.

…and eight more. All twelve organisations we work with →

Moral Fabric helped us take our financial administration to a new level in no time. The team is incredibly pragmatic and helpful, and is very pleasant to work with. Highly recommended, thanks Leonor and Ruben!

Moral Fabric feels like part of our team. For me, as the founder of a small but complex organization, that is a great reassurance. We started with the implementation of Asana, Slite, and Slack. And now that our needs are growing, Moral Fabric is growing with us by also taking over the payroll and financial processes.

New from us

You can now buy ops hours instead of signing up for a retainer. Prepaid blocks you draw down as you need them: a legal question one month, a payroll migration the next, nothing at all in August. A fixed model is coming for organisations that want a predictable monthly bill.

New in the app

• Check who owns your tools without leaving the app. One button on a supplier record runs a Fingerprint ownership check: useful when the European alternative turns out to be US-owned.
• Patterns come with ready-made tasks. Tick the tasks you want and they land in your Asana project in one click.
• Donations flow from Mollie into your mailing list, consent intact. Donors arrive with names, in the right group, with the real recurring amount and rhythm.
• GDPR: Delete someone’s data everywhere at once. A privacy request finds a person in every connected tool, shows where their data is and removes it on request, and drafts the confirmation.
• The first customer financial dashboards are live. Actuals against budget, straight from the bookkeeping, no spreadsheet in between. And a real-time cash-flow runway forecast without hassle!
• Role ratings. A five-second way for every team member to signal role fit, energy, and attention; role by role.

…and around twenty smaller fixes.

Worth reading

Three things we passed around the team this month.

• Owning the problem — Joshua Monrad: How few people work full-time on the biggest problems. Or: the cause area general manager.
• The value of tackling messy problems — Probably Good: Laura Clancy, of our customer the School for Moral Ambition, on early-career leadership and handling awkward conversations.
• The absorption problem — Nick Allardice: A large wave of philanthropic capital may be coming, and the sector isn’t built to absorb it well.
• Book: Incorruptible — Eric Ries: Money slowly pulls good organizations away from their purpose, so build in the protection!

Reply to this email with anything we should build or write next. We read every answer, and love being forwarded to (other) nonprofits, funders and operators! 🙏

Cheers, on behalf of Eva, Catarina, Leonor, Laura and Daan,

Ruben