Since the early 1900's, Elizabeth Gamble had been an active member in her Palo Alto, CA, community, and shared her strong love for gardening with those around her. Her gardens were well known in the area and became something she eventually wanted to give back to her neighbors. In 1971, Elizabeth decided to donate the Gamble home and her gardens to the city of Palo Alto with the understanding that she would live there for the remainder of her life.

Elizabeth died in 1981 at the age of 92, and shortly after, the City Council approved a plan to create a nonprofit community horticultural foundation that would run the estate, the Elizabeth Gamble Garden. The organization has restored the formal gardens to Elizabeth's original plans, laid out demonstration and working gardens and opened the estate to the public.

Joe Geist is the finance director of Gamble Garden, and has been with the organization for two years. Gamble Garden has seven employees and receives money through a number of sources including classes, facility use for rentals, memberships, special events, investment and donations.


The Challenge: A Solution Designed to Meet the Needs of Nonprofits

In previous nonprofit settings, Geist had used a Canadian-based business management system that was not only difficult to use, but did not interface well with payroll services and other software. He knew that with Gamble Garden's multiple donation sources and complex financial reporting requirements, he needed a system built specifically for the nonprofit industry. For instance, because Gamble Garden receives income from so many different sources, it requires one consolidated report of financial transactions, rather than the multiple statements that most accounting solutions offered. Geist also hoped to find a program that would interface with his Intuit Payroll Services.

Geist knew about Intuit's QuickBooks^® software from other users, and had heard that the solution would be easy to learn and use, but still doubted its ability to handle nonprofit requirements. So when Geist heard about QuickBooks^® Premier: Nonprofit Edition, he signed up to be a beta tester for the program.

"QuickBooks Premier: Nonprofit Edition could not have come at a better time," said Geist. "Nonprofit organizations need to be accountable to numerous funding sources, and detailed reports are essential to this process. We were thrilled that Intuit had designed a product specifically for this industry."


The Solution: QuickBooks® Nonprofit Edition 2003

Geist has been very impressed with the ease of use, functionality and integration with other programs that Nonprofit Edition offers Gamble Gardens. The conversion process was "a snap," and Intuit assisted him every step of the way. Among the benefits for the foundation are:

Designed Specifically for Nonprofits Because of the unique needs of nonprofit organizations, QuickBooks Nonprofit Edition makes it easy to extract the specific data that meets every user's requirements. For Geist, the ability to do comparisons between the current budgets versus the current spending was a necessity. "Gamble Gardens has twenty different committees, each of which have income and expense items," he said. "On a monthly basis, we must provide an update to each committee on budget tracking. Line items need to be specifically stated in reports separated into different funds. Intuit worked with us to make sure that this would be possible with the new solution." Geist can easily track income and expense items, by donor, using the Nonprofit Edition's Customer Lists.

Faster and Easier By using nonprofit terminology in the Navigator, Menu and Help features, QuickBooks Nonprofit addresses the concerns of nonprofit organization in ways that are easy to understand. Said Geist, "QuickBooks has a reputation in the industry for comprehensive and easy-to-use solutions that is well-deserved — QuickBooks Non-Profit 2003 definitely does not disappoint!"

Help Nonprofits Track Their Progress in Achieving Their Mission Nonprofit Edition offers easy budget tracking, grant/donor management and streamlined reporting to give the organization the greatest insight into their operations. Geist is now able to not only provide committees with statements with income and expense items; he is able to provide one comprehensive report with specific line items, which show exactly what each respective committee's expenses are. "For the first time in eighteen years, we now have a consolidated statement that includes the total activities for the foundation," said Geist. "We needed a product that could include operational performance, capital funds and endowment funds all on one statement and no other software was able to do that."

This case study represents the individual experience of one customer. Intuit does not guarantee that results will apply to all customers.

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