IT consulting for nonprofits and small businesses

The situation

Nonprofits and owner-run businesses carry the same risks as a large company with a fraction of the staff. Email still holds donor, customer and payroll data. The bank account still gets targeted with fake invoices. The difference is that the IT knowledge often sits with one person: an office manager, a volunteer, a relative who set up the network, or the owner. When that person is busy or leaves, nobody knows the passwords or which subscription does what.

Budgets are tight, so decisions get made on whatever is free or already bundled, and that's often reasonable. What goes missing is the plan: which accounts exist, what each service costs every month, what happens if a laptop is stolen or the bookkeeping file is encrypted by ransomware, and which of the tools being pitched are worth the money.

What we do here

We size the work to the organization. That usually means getting identity and email under control with multifactor authentication and one place to manage accounts, setting up backups that someone has actually restored from, and cancelling subscriptions nobody uses. Laptops and phones get encrypted and managed, so a lost device is an inconvenience rather than a breach. For nonprofits, we check the technology discounts and grants offered to eligible organizations, such as Microsoft's nonprofit programs, before anyone buys a license at full price.

We write things down in plain language so the next person can pick them up. If you need an application connected to your accounting system, a simple database to replace a stack of spreadsheets, or an honest opinion on an AI tool, we can build it or review it. If the job doesn't need a consultant, we'll tell you that too.

Where to start

Start with a fixed-price discovery, scoped to what you actually run. For a small organization the scope is usually smaller: a review of accounts, email, backups, devices and subscriptions, followed by a written read-out that says what to fix first, what it costs, and what can wait. You decide in writing what happens next, and many clients carry out the simple fixes themselves. Every engagement is led by a senior architect, with specialists from our bench brought in when the work calls for them.