Beyond CRM – Areas To Consider When Developing your IT Strategy & Roadmap

Nonprofits often focus heavily on their CRM system when developing their IT Roadmap, which is understandable given the importance of CRM systems. However, by putting too much emphasis on CRM, nonprofits risk leaving out important areas that support their mission delivery. This post aims to help nonprofits broaden their IT strategy beyond CRM and cover the other systems they need to consider.  

Later in this series, I will share the non-technical considerations you should keep in mind to ensure that your IT Roadmap can be implemented successfully.

As you think through your IT Strategy, please consider these areas.

1.       Impact Measurement: Understanding your organization’s impact is key to demonstrating your effectiveness to stakeholders and ensuring that your resources are used effectively.

2.     Volunteer Management: Volunteers are a crucial part of many nonprofits, and it's important to ensure that your IT systems support a positive volunteer experience.

3.     Survey and Assessment tools: These tools help nonprofits understand their stakeholders' needs, measure their programs' impact, and gather feedback from all their constituents.

4.     Case Management: An effective case management system is essential for nonprofits that provide direct services to individuals or communities.

5.     Collaboration and Communication: With many nonprofits operating in a hybrid work environment, having systems supporting seamless collaboration and communication is not optional.

6.     Data Management and Analytics: What is the point of collecting all of this data if we are not going to use it in meaningful ways?

7.     Accounting and Financial Management: These systems are improving at a rapid rate, does your system meet your needs?

8.     Accessibility: With an increasing number of individuals with special needs relying on technology to participate in everyday activities, ensuring that all systems and tools used by a nonprofit are accessible is crucial.

9.     Cloud Computing: Moving as much of your IT infrastructure to the cloud can help simplify management and reduce costs.

10.   Cybersecurity: This is the #1 topic raised by senior executives and board members, do not be caught asleep at the wheel.

11.   Mobile Technologies: How mobile-centric do you need to be?  The answer is probably, “more than you are now?”

12.   Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery: Advances in technology have made this challenging function more accessible to nonprofits.

13.   Automation: Automating repetitive tasks can help nonprofits be more productive and focus on what matters.

14.   Integration: Integrating different systems can be challenging, but advances in technology have made it easier to connect different systems and automate workflows.

I hope this list has given you some food for thought as you develop your IT Strategy and Roadmap.