Fractional CTO for Nonprofits
Most nonprofits cannot fund a full-time chief technology officer, and most do not need one. They need someone whose job is the technology and product agenda, who sits with leadership, decides what gets built, bought, or retired, and is still there next quarter to see the decision through. Without that person the decisions get made anyway, by whoever is available or by whichever contract renews next, and the CRM, the website, and the data workflows drift a little further out of agreement.
This engagement is that seat, held month after month. It comes with three things. A CTO who stays and sits with your leadership team. Support that keeps the lights on: helpdesk and administration of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the CRM, the website, and the data, plus vendor management. And continuity through turnover, with systems documented and credentials held outside any single staff member, so a departure does not reset the organization.
It is the standing version of a Mission Surface Review. Discovery finds the surfaces. The retainer keeps them useful and builds the next one. We are based in Philadelphia and work with organizations across Greater Philadelphia and remotely.
01Signs this is the work
- 01Technology decisions stall until a board meeting, because nobody on staff has the standing to make them.
- 02One person holds the passwords, the vendor relationships, and the history, and you already know what happens when they leave.
- 03Someone fixes what breaks. Nobody decides what to build next.
- 04Your CRM, website, forms, and spreadsheets each hold part of the picture, and keeping them in agreement is nobody's job.
- 05The board asks what technology costs and what it produces, and the answer takes a week to assemble.
02How the engagement runs
- 01
Onboarding and systems inventory
The first weeks go to finding out what you run: accounts, subscriptions, integrations, contracts and renewal dates, who administers what, where supporter and program data lives. Credentials move into a vault the organization owns. You end with the first version of the systems map. - 02
The monthly leadership seat
Standing time each month with the executive director and whoever else owns the decisions. What gets built, bought, or retired is settled there, and the roadmap is re-sequenced against what changed. Budget consequences get named before a renewal date, not after. - 03
Support and documentation, kept current
Between sessions the core stack is administered and supported, directly on the tiers that include it or through your existing provider under our direction. Every change lands in the systems map and the runbooks the same month. That is the only way documentation stays true. - 04
Quarterly review and continuity check
Board-ready reporting on what was spent, what changed, and what is next. The roadmap re-cut against budget and program plans. And a deliberate check on what would be lost if a given person, including us, stopped being available.
03What you get
- A living systems map of accounts, vendors, integrations, and owners, updated every month
- Credential and vendor custody held outside any one staff member, in a vault your organization owns
- A sequenced technology roadmap with budget implications named before the renewal
- Board-ready technology reporting: what was spent, what changed, what comes next
- An exit package: the map, the documentation, the credentials, and the vendor relationships in your hands whenever the engagement ends
04Questions
- Is this managed IT?
- No. A managed IT contract sells a working device fleet, a patched network, and a ticket queue, measured on uptime and response time. This engagement sells decisions: what your technology should do for the mission, what to build, what to buy, what to retire, in what order. Support can be part of the arrangement, but it is the second layer. If a helpdesk contract is what you need, you want a managed service provider, and we will help you hold one to its scope.
- Do you take helpdesk tickets?
- On the tiers that include support, yes: password resets, mailbox and permission changes, the thing that stopped working an hour before a board meeting, handled by a desk under our direction. On the Partner tier your existing provider does, and we manage that relationship. Either way the patterns in the tickets come back to the monthly session. A recurring ticket is usually a systems problem in a support problem's clothes.
- We already have an IT provider. Does this replace them?
- Usually not. The support layer and the leadership seat are different jobs, and there are three honest arrangements. Keep the provider you have on the Partner tier, and we coordinate them and hold the contract to its scope. Add a subcontracted desk under our direction on Partner + Support, the right shape when nobody inside owns IT. Or bring support in-house once size and needs warrant it. The support arrangement can change as the organization does. The partner seat is what persists.
- When should we bring IT support in-house?
- The signals are qualitative: program delivery that depends on technology a shared desk cannot learn, a staff count that keeps growing, support volume that no longer fits between other work, or a real need for someone on site. The retainer is built so the move is not disruptive. The living systems map, the credential custody, and the vendor documentation are what an in-house hire inherits on day one. Support moves inside. The leadership seat stays.
- What are the tiers, and what does this cost?
- Three, by name. Partner is the CTO seat on its own, for organizations that already have a managed service provider or internal IT. Partner + Support adds the support desk and administration of the core stack. Embedded adds a standing build allowance for mission-surface work, the integration or reporting view that keeps getting deferred, and a seat in board technology reporting. We do not publish figures, because the right tier depends on the size of your stack and the support load under it. Send the contact form and we will scope it against what you run. It belongs on the professional services line, with legal and accounting, not on the technology line with your subscriptions.
- What happens when our technology person leaves?
- Less than you would expect. Credentials live in a vault the organization owns. Vendor relationships are documented with terms, renewal dates, and who to call. How each system is configured, and why, is written down and refreshed monthly. A departure becomes a hiring problem instead of an archaeology project. The same holds if the engagement with us ends: you keep the map, the documentation, the credentials, and the vendor relationships.
- How is this different from a CRM implementer or a web agency?
- An implementer configures the system you already chose. An agency builds the site you already scoped. Both answer a question somebody else decided to ask. This seat decides which question is worth asking, brings in those specialists when they are the right answer, holds them to a scope, and stays accountable afterward. We do not resell platforms or take referral fees.
Further reading
05Related engagements
- Mission-Ready Technology StrategyNonprofit Technology Strategy and CRM PlanningA clear definition of what each system is responsible for, made on mission terms rather than vendor terms.
- Mission Surface ReviewNonprofit Website and Digital Experience AuditA structured review of the website, forms, donor journey, program touchpoints, and technology behind them.
Not sure this is the right starting point?
Most organizations sit across two or three of these at once. A short conversation usually surfaces which one to start with — and it is fine to arrive with the problem rather than the engagement.