Cost-of-fragmentation calculator

Estimate what an assembled financial stack costs your organisation each year.

A directional figure from your own numbers. A Discovery engagement re-derives the precise figure from your actual records.

All calculation is client-side. Nothing you enter leaves your device.

01 Giving and capital profile

Total annual giving or revenue (USD) Your organisation’s total annual giving or operating revenue.

Share that funds international or cross-border programmes (%) Roughly what portion of funds moves across borders to programmes. 30%

Number of currencies regularly handled Used to describe the shape of your operations — does not enter the dollar math.

02 Movement

Annual cross-border disbursement volume (USD) Funds moved across borders each year. We estimate this from the figures above; adjust if you know it.

Known blended cost of moving funds cross-border (%) optional If you know your blended rate — wire fees, FX spread, intermediary charges — enter it. Leave blank and we use a conservative band.

Number of separate payment providers or banking rails Descriptive only — does not enter the dollar math.

03 Operations

Finance / operations staff involved in reconciliation People who spend meaningful time reconciling financial records.

Total hours per month spent on manual reconciliation Across all those staff, combined monthly hours.

Weeks of staff effort spent preparing for the annual audit Combined staff-weeks of effort to assemble and prepare for the audit.

Number of separate systems holding financial or donor data Descriptive only — does not enter the dollar math.

04 Advanced (optional)

These lines are harder to estimate; they require inputs you may not have to hand. Off by default. When on, they fold into the headline range and are itemised in the breakdown.

Include idle treasury / float

Average funds in transit at any time (USD)

Average days in transit

Annual cost of capital (%)

Include failed / retried payments

Annual payment count

Failure rate (%)

Cost per failed payment (USD)

Estimated annual cost of fragmentation

$— to $—

Roughly — to —% of your annual giving.

This is a directional estimate, built from benchmarks and the figures you entered. It is deliberately conservative. The precise number — and the portion of it that is addressable — is established in a Discovery engagement, working from your actual records.

Component breakdown

Assumptions used

Cross-border rate band	1.5% – 4.0% (conservative institutional band)
Loaded hourly staff cost band	$60 – $95 (US mid-tier INGO, fully loaded)
Hours per staff-week	40
Soft inputs (left at default)	none
Cited context	The World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide global average (~6.36%, 2024) is documented context only — a retail remittance figure, not a default for this calculator.

What it means

Most of this cost is not a line item anyone chose. It is the price of holding separate systems together by hand. A governed financial operating layer reduces it by removing the seams — how much, for your organisation specifically, is what Discovery establishes.

Start a Discovery conversation →

Fill in the figures above and select Compute the estimate. The result appears here.