Two Ways to Help Manage Your Nonprofit IT Budget

As a nonprofit, your company works to advocate for important social causes, helping better our society and communities. With accountability to donors, founders, volunteers, program recipients, and the community, there are numerous stakeholders and interests to manage. SysGen’s nonprofit IT support and services ensure core operations run smoothly while ensuring finances, donations, and accounting are managed appropriately with the right technology.

Your organization runs on core services, donations, grants, and government funding. We understand just how important every dollar is to further the mission of your organization.

SysGen has worked with many nonprofits over the years and recognizes the strategic importance of IT to streamline organizational processes while being cost-conscious. Technology is needed to help you do your job, however, the cost needs to be predictable and the investment needs to make sense to furthering the mission of your organization.

Here are two ways to help manage your nonprofit IT budget.

Technology Donations & Grants

The Technology Donations program with Tech Soup exists to assist charities, nonprofits, and libraries to achieve greater impact. They do this by connecting nonprofit organizations with affordable technologies, so they can invest most of their resources into what counts: their mission.

Qualified organizations can order donated and discounted software, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe, for a very low administrative fee. This is made possible through technology donor partners, such as Microsoft, Intuit, Adobe, and Cisco, and their commitment to helping the nonprofit sector.

How to get started? The process is quite straightforward, with TechSoup providing a step-by-step guide for a successful application. SysGen can also provide guidance on how to successfully apply for nonprofit pricing on technology and software. The catalog of products available is quite extensive, with products such as Windows, QuickBooks, Adobe, and the Microsoft Office Suite available.

Fixed Monthly IT Spend

While it may seem like the more affordable option is to pay for IT on an ad-hoc, as-needed basis, this thinking can be detrimental in the long-term. When the IT environment isn’t consistently managed and upgraded over time, failures are possible, and a massive upgrade may be required to make the IT system function again. This can cost thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses, not to mention the possible downtime to the business.

When an organization pays a recurring monthly management fee for consistent IT maintenance, the IT organization can be assured that servers and software are up to date, computers are replaced as required and business strategy is taken into consideration when making technology decisions.

With a fixed monthly IT cost, nonprofits can accurately report to the board of directors anticipated technology costs, as well as what future expenditures will be. Planning is the core tenant of managed IT services, and looking toward the future ensures that costs are managed over time.

Managing your Nonprofit IT Budget

Your organization acts as a pillar of the community, providing fundamental support for important social causes. As a nonprofit, your funds require allocation to the fundamental mission of your organization, and managing other costs is of utmost importance so your money can go where it truly manners. Through technology and software grants from vendors via the support of TechSoup, as well as a managed monthly IT spend, your nonprofit organization can accurately predict its nonprofit IT budget, as well as manage the future of your technology development and spend.

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