Humanities North Dakota: MIP Accounting Success Story

Since 1973, Humanities North Dakota has offered opportunities for lifelong learning through affordable classes and events to North Dakota residents. Ken Glass, Associate Director of Humanities ND, joined the organization in 1986 and has been in the middle of it all, with MIP Accounting® at his side.  

Humanities ND switched to MIP in 1985 after an auditor recommended the organization replace its paper books that consisted of long ledgers and multiple columns. It wasn’t until Glass arrived that Humanities ND, dove into the program and began to optimize its finances for the digital age using the MS-DOS version of MIP, one of the first versions of the software. 

“Back then, your computer had two disc drives. One for the operating system, and one for whatever program you were running,” Glass said. “We had to use these big floppy discs to run the program.”  

“Even from the beginning, MIP worked for our needs. It worked really well because we received large federal grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and those grants are open for as long as five years. We needed a system that could manage those grants.” 

Challenge & Solution

Budgeting, especially for grants, is a large portion of Glass’ job. With MIP, he could easily account for grants over a five-year period and appreciated how MIP lets him compare Humanities ND’s budget to actual spending.  

MIP also allows Glass and Humanities ND to account for various types of funding like state funding, foundation grants, gifts and donations, restricted gifts, and so many others. When it comes to budgeting, Glass likes how MIP can track each funding source with its own budget. 

“[Grantors and organizations] want to know how their money was spent,” said Glass. “[With MIP], we’re able to produce a report for a single foundation, but we can also do reports for the whole project budget and for programs across various funding 

“MIP was the only system that worked really well,” Glass said. “….And that’s why we’ve stuck with it for so long.” 

Many Humanities ND grants have a cost-matching element where the organization must match each grant dollar-for-dollar as the money for the grant is allocated and spent. The organization also receives donations to offset the spending. Glass created a special fund, which he refers to as the “Cost-Share Fund” to track the cost-share from each of these grants and ensure the organization meets the cost-sharing requirements. 

“For-profit bookkeeping systems have all these extra spreadsheets trying to keep track of prior years, budgets, and all this business,” Glass said. “[MIP] makes it much easier to see [your organization’s fiscal picture] all at once. You print out just the reports you need for that year or for the last three years, or if you need to look at just one source of funds … you can do that as well as looking at 

“It’s the all-in-one accounting solution for us,” Glass said.  

Results

The last 38 years have been great for Glass, but he’s preparing to retire, and his son Nick Glass, Fiscal Operations Assistant, is preparing to take over. “He decided that it’s time to move past DOS,” Ken Glass joked. With Nick Glass’ encouragement, Humanities ND decided to move into MIP Cloud—the time-tested MIP platform in an always-connected, modern interface. 

Humanities ND is excited at the prospect of allowing multiple people to look at their finances simultaneously and can’t wait for the opportunity to access MIP remotely. 

The organization is also taking its payroll paperless with MIP’s Payroll Module, moving away from a manual operation after 38 years. 

“We currently process payroll on a spreadsheet,” Ken Glass said. “It’s time to move on from that too.” 

As Ken Glass retires and Humanities ND moves to MIP Cloud, they’re ready to keep spreading the love of lifelong learning to North Dakota residents for years to come, and MIP is ready to keep accounting for their future. 

About Momentive Software   

Momentive Software amplifies the impact of over 30,000 purpose-driven organizations in over 30 countries. Mission–driven organizations and associations rely on the company’s cloud-based software and services to solve their most critical challenges: engage the people they serve, simplify operations, and grow revenue.   

Built with reliability at the core and strategically focused on events, careers, fundraising, financials, and operations, our solutions suite is bound by a common purpose to serve the organizations that make our communities a better place to live.