You should have a developer at your tiny non-profit

I’m convinced that having a capable web developer/s on the team at non-profit organisations – even tiny ones – is an excellent idea. Good for feature development, general advice, and evaluating the value of external contractors.

Maybe I’m over-estimating the value of my own skillset, but hear me out. Tiny and small non-profit organisations usually don’t have any internal staff with a wealth of technical knowledge, and I’ve seen many good orgs struggle to keep up with digital demands and expectations, especially post-COVID when there was a major acceleration of expectations from digital and online services across the board.

On top of that, many non-profits (especially small ones) were already behind the curve when it came to their online presence and digital services before global lockdowns.

External contractors

I think one of the biggest impacts a good dev can have at a small non-profit is gauging the value of work done and services provided by external contractors.

I shudder at the thought of what I’ve seen some organisations pay for severely sub-par web work, and the associated ongoing hosting. And I’ve been surprised by the fact that no one on the team has batted an eye at the prices on the invoices.

Maybe I’m jaded from my years in agencies, but I think it’s really difficult and rare to find external contractors that don’t take advantage of the lack of technical knowledge of their clients. It’s the nature of the business. We’re all feeling the squeeze in 2024 and have to put food on the table somehow.

I just think the incentives are much better aligned for in-house devs than external ones at small NFP orgs. If you as a dev can save a bunch of money and provide better work than the external characters, the organisation does well and your job becomes more secure.

Agencies are simply too expensive, or are spread too thin to give their full attention and best work to their clients. You tick the box, you get the bag. The economics just don’t add up.

I’ve seen similar behaviour from some IT support companies, adding very healthy margins for themselves on top of every hardware procurement, charging hundreds for one-line DNS updates, and the like.

Hurts my soul.

Feature development

Devs develop things, and that’s really cool! In my experience, every NFP org has 10,000 good ideas just waiting to be built, without the means or budget to implement any of them.

A stray thought here – I think a decent portion of the problem is that so many orgs are built on very shaky digital infrastructure. That in itself is another story for another time though.

So the general gist of my point here is to bring in a dev, get them to save a chunk of change, then put them to work building out all the great ideas. Depending on the situation, an org could deliver new features to their stakeholders/customers to help drive revenue, or just deliver new things for the same price to build good will with their stakeholders.

All of the business aside – I think NFPs launching well-built services is a pretty surefire way to make the world a better place for all kinds of people to live in.