Meeting Nonprofit Needs
Southwest Florida IT provides nonprofits with the power of a fully staffed IT team so they
can stay focused on their mission rather than their technology. SWFIT includes access
to a help desk that clients can call when they have questions or need technical support
for their PCs or the back-end servers that power their organization.
Nonprofits can be hesitant to devote much, if any, of their budget to technology. They
tend to rely on volunteers, friends, family, board members, and on-staff “accidental
techies” to keep their IT up and running. According to NTEN’s 9th Annual Nonprofit
Technology Staffing & Investments Report, released in 2015, the median technology
budget of a nonprofit is between 1 and 2.2 percent of its total operating budget.
Nonprofit Challenges
The problem is that although nonprofits should be spending more to keep their
technology better maintained, often what happens is either
- The costs associated with having an in-house technology team is financially out of
reach, or - The in-house IT staff members may not have all the knowledge they need to
maintain a diverse technology infrastructure.
Each additional in-house IT staff member means more funds being devoted to salaries,
benefits, vacation, and sick days. It’s already expensive to maintain a staff in addition to
the costs of upgrading and maintaining the organization’s existing technology.
In fact, the average national salary for an IT professional is $85,460, based on a
comparison of 252 salaries for IT professionals by Glassdoor with an average minimum
salary of $46,000 and maximum of $121,000. So it’s understandable that many
nonprofits rely on volunteers, friends, and family to keep their IT services up and
running.
However, not having a dedicated technology team can cripple an organization’s
operations and lead to unexpected expenses associated with repairing the damage.
