Is it really free?
Yes. No card, no trial, no catch. You give me an email address and I give you the checklist.
Free checklist for charities
What your board should be asking about technology, in 29 questions
A free checklist from a digital consultant who is also a serving charity trustee. No jargon, no sales call, just the questions worth asking before the money is committed. Every one of them can be asked and answered in plain language.
- Seven sections, twenty-nine questions, no technical knowledge needed
- Each question comes with the answer that should reassure you and the answer that should not
- Built to take one section per board cycle, straight into the minutes
Read the whole thing free, right now, with nothing to fill in. The form is only if you would rather have the formatted version for a board pack.
Get the formatted version
Three fields, then it's yours. No sales call.
Charities get sold digital they don't need
A website nobody can update. A system built by an IT company that fights the people using it. A review that comes back as a single useless page.
None of it looks like a mistake on the day you sign. It looks like a mistake eighteen months later, when the money's gone and the problem's still there.
This checklist is the set of questions that catches it before you spend.
What's in it
Twenty-nine questions across seven sections. Here are four of them, so you can see the shape of it. The whole checklist is free to read on the site.
Ownership and oversight
If a technology decision went badly wrong tomorrow, who would answer for it?
Suppliers carry contractual liability. Trustees carry accountability, and those are not the same thing.
What you spend
Can anyone produce a single list of everything we spend on technology and what each item is for?
The most revealing question in the document. Most organisations cannot answer it, and the reason is never carelessness.
Suppliers and dependency
Can we get our data out, in a usable form, and has anybody tested it?
Confidence based on the contract rather than on a test is not confidence. I have seen exports that technically existed and produced something nobody could use.
Artificial intelligence
What decision would we never let an AI tool make on its own?
A boundary in people's heads is not a control. It has to be written down.
Ownership and oversight
4 questions
What you spend, and what it does
4 questions
Data and the people you serve
4 questions
Suppliers and dependency
4 questions
Artificial intelligence
5 questions
Accessibility
4 questions
If the key person left tomorrow
4 questions
Who it's for
Written for the people who have to sign off the spend and answer for it later. If that's you, this will save you a meeting or two.
Trustees
You're being asked to approve a spend you can't easily assess. These questions give you something concrete to ask in the meeting.
Chief executives
You'll carry this decision for years. Worth ten minutes now to know the proposal in front of you stands up.
Ops and marketing leads
You'll be the one living with whatever gets bought. This is the case for getting it right, in language a board will accept.
Why listen to me
- More than thirty years in digital, working with charities, law firms, financial services and housebuilders.
- Trustee at Harrogate Neighbours, so I have sat on the board side of the table, not just the supplier side.
- Digital projects and tenders delivered for Devon Wildlife Trust, DementiaNet and a Tees Valley community foundation, to Charity Commission value-for-money standards.
50 to 80%
Email open rates on DementiaNet, a platform I led from research through to launch. The sector norm is nearer 25%.
Charity work includes
Devon Wildlife Trust
DementiaNet
Harrogate Neighbours
Get the formatted version
All twenty-nine questions, laid out for a board pack, in your inbox in the next minute. No sales call, no follow-up chase. Or just read it on the site.
Questions you might have
Will you spam me?
No. You'll get the checklist straight away, then a short, useful email every couple of weeks. Unsubscribe whenever you like, no hard feelings.
Do I need to be technical to use it?
Not at all. It's written for trustees and charity leaders, not for IT teams. Every question is in plain English.
What happens after I sign up?
The checklist arrives immediately, by email and as a direct download on the confirmation page. That's it.
Will you try to sell me something?
Not through the newsletter. If you read the checklist and decide you want help, you know where I am. If you read it and do the work yourselves, that's a good outcome too.