There’s a saying that goes “A goal without a plan is a wish.”  With that in mind, does your organisation have an IT Strategy? Is it aligned with your board’s business plan?

The reason this is important is that it allows you to make better decisions and be more proactive with your IT investments.

Not-for-profits typically measure success differently to other organisations.  They look for impact on their community, and their stakeholder groups are broader.  Their boards are typically made up of volunteers with varying backgrounds but bound by a common purpose.

That means the IT strategy absolutely has to be aligned to the organisation strategy,.

An IT strategy asks three key things:

1) Where are we now?  

• What does your organisation look like now?
• What does your IT look like now?
• What are the good points and bad points?

2) Where do we want to go?

• What will your community needs be in the future, and
• What technology do we need to meet those needs?

3) How do we get there?  

• What technologies will help?
• How do we change things to meet our needs?

This is the core of your IT plan

Bear in mind that the plan needs to be flexible, to ensure that the technology remains relevant in an evolving business.

Every IT investment answers one of more of our three drivers – capacity, capability or risk.  This is the Kinetics “holy trinity” of IT investment. To get value for money, any IT investment/project/change should address at least one of these things;

1. Increase capacity:  Faster, more processing, less expensively.
2. Increase capability:  Allowing you to do something new that you didn’t do before.   (e.g a website that allows online ordering  – this could be the thing that gives your not-for-profit the competitive advantage over others.)
3. Reduce risk: make sure your critical equipment is covered under a warranty  or enhance your ability to deal with a disaster or failure – increasing redundancy, enhancing backups

If you are about to sign off on IT investment, ask yourself which of these are being addressed and are you getting bang for your buck?