Organizations need financial and economic stability if they want to support their communities long-term. While economic uncertainty remains outside their control, organizations can remain effective if they have resilient operations that support their mission-driven activities.
Leaders know that robust nonprofit IT solutions will play a vital role in that operational sustainability – that’s why 52% of organizations are prepared to increase their technology budget. When employees have appropriate and reliable technology, they can collaborate smoothly and use an organization’s resources efficiently to achieve its goals and drive long-term success.
Some organizations may struggle to build that technology resilience in-house. In that case, hiring a provider specializing in managed IT services for nonprofits will be immensely valuable.
Keep reading to discover four ways managed IT services for nonprofits can help your organization cut costs, improve efficiency, and drive mission success.
The Struggles Associations and Nonprofits Face in Ensuring Their Long-term Viability
Nonprofit organizations face various unique obstacles to operational sustainability, such as:
Funding variability
They typically rely on fluctuating funding sources, whether that’s donors and grants or membership fees and event revenues, which can be unpredictable and inconsistent. In 2022, charitable giving dropped by 10.5%, although experts predict that it will grow by 3.9% in 2025. This variability makes it challenging to operate steadily and plan long-term initiatives.
Staff turnover
Organizations also deal with staff turnover and executive departures that may disrupt their capacity-building attempts and hinder their ability to carry forward institutional knowledge and strategic direction.
Ineffective technology
As tools advance and digital workplaces rapidly evolve, organizations that want to meet their community’s expectations need to adapt and invest in the most effective IT infrastructure for nonprofits. Yet their limited funds often prevent them from upgrading outdated systems and successfully migrating their data and processes to more effective tools. As a result, nonprofit technology solutions struggle to keep up or avoid disruptions to their performance, whether from a software crash, system failure, or cyberattack.
That inefficiency ends up massively impacting their financial health. The organization wastes time, money, and staff energy dealing with issues, diverting resources from impactful programs and affecting operational viability. They will likely increase costs by spending more due to delays or fixing a mistake while reducing their potential revenue if the ineffectiveness deters people from supporting them financially.
How Managed IT Services Can Contribute to Longterm Organizational Sustainability
IT outsourcing for nonprofits can contribute significantly to organizational longevity. Let’s discuss a few ways that partnering with a managed IT services provider can be a strategic move for your organization’s financial future:
1) Improving Cost Efficiency and Savings
Working with an MSP will lead to an immediate cost reduction since you can eliminate the need for extensive IT infrastructure investments if they give you access to their data centers and virtual resources. Their subscription-based pricing model also means that you can rely on predictable IT budgeting with no hidden surprises.
MSPs that are experienced in nonprofit IT support typically have strong vendor relationships, meaning they can negotiate more favorable rates to deliver cost-effective IT solutions. Their in-depth knowledge about these technologies also supports better IT cost optimization, as they can help you make better decisions about resource allocation and consolidating or upgrading systems for improved long-term savings and performance. Their proactive approach to maintenance and monitoring will prevent costly downtime and unexpected repair expenses.
You will be better equipped to choose technologies that best support your team’s daily workflow, and you’ll be able to redirect your funds to core mission activities and reduce financial uncertainty as you work on preserving the durability of your operations.
2) Enhancing productivity and performance
A managed IT services provider who understands the barriers to IT modernization for nonprofits will help boost your productivity.
An MSP has the deep knowledge to smoothly integrate advanced solutions and artificial intelligence into your existing infrastructure, helping you automate the routine tasks and processes that take away resources from your vital programs.
A skilled provider should also follow a standardized approach to incident management, leveraging best practices to solve technical issues faster and minimize disruptions to your workflow. They will also engage in IT resilience planning and implement permanent solutions to prevent recurring problems that waste your time repeatedly. This improved efficiency will let you optimize your resources and maximize output without increasing operational costs.
Take the cancer foundation who partnered with designDATA to oversee its digital transformation. With our strategic IT planning support, the organization could modernize its previously outdated infrastructure and now operate with stronger disaster recovery capabilities. They are confident that they can continue supporting their community with fewer disruptions.
3) Reducing risks and maintaining compliance
A managed IT service provider will offer comprehensive solutions that bolster cybersecurity for nonprofits, protect you against rising cyber threats, and reduce your risk of experiencing a data breach.
They will conduct security assessments to help you identify the potential vulnerabilities compromising your organizational sustainability and then build a security roadmap to address these issues. On an ongoing basis, the provider monitors your systems 24/7 to manage threats and develops an incident response and disaster recovery plan to deal with any significant problems when they pop up.
They will pair these advanced tools with security awareness training so your employees can have the skills and knowledge to act as a human firewall to actively mitigate threats.
These tactics simplify regulatory compliance, as data privacy is typically central to industry regulations. Some providers will even provide specific compliance solutions, helping you perform or prepare for an audit.
4) Providing Strategic IT Planning Support
Beyond the short-term cost savings, your organization will also optimize its funds long-term when your managed IT services provider builds you a high-performing, future-proofed, secure environment leveraging sustainable IT practices.
Their proactive approach and consistent oversight will minimize downtime and financial ramifications from the resulting lost productivity. They will also reduce the need for your organization to spend heavily on reactive problem-solving, emergency repairs, or disaster recovery, as their experts will tackle issues before they escalate.
Your provider will typically conduct a strategic technology assessment to ensure you invest only in technology that aligns with your organizational goals. Successful IT scalability for nonprofits requires prioritizing modern tools capable of supporting your needs as they evolve. If you work with a provider who knows how to scale a nonprofit’s infrastructure, they can drive you forward with fewer resources and more sustained operational efficiency.
Implement sustainable IT practices with designDATA
Today, organizations operate in a drastically different economic and social context than even just a few years ago. To successfully advance their mission and sustain their operations, they need a sustainable governance model and sufficient technological resilience to support them as they face change.
Their technology infrastructure will be instrumental in achieving that goal. When your organization partners with designDATA for our managed IT services for nonprofits, our experts will take actionable steps to set you up for success. We will help your organization build an IT infrastructure that can weather any storms it might encounter.
Let’s connect to discuss how designDATA can help you use your technology to achieve long-term organizational sustainability.
