For trustees and charity leaders
Most charity technology advice assumes one of two things. Either that there is no money at all, so the answer is whatever is free. Or that a charity is a small business with worse funding, so the answer is a cut-down commercial system. Neither is right, and having sat as a director and a trustee rather than advising from outside, I can say why.
Written by
Brian Schur, director and trustee
Reading time
About 9 minutes
Last reviewed
August 2026
Four differences, none of them about budget size. They are structural, they interact with each other, and a supplier who has only worked commercially will not have met any of them.
Accountability
A commercial board that approves a poor system has made a bad decision. A trustee board that approves one has a duty of care question to answer, potentially to the Commission, and unpaid volunteers carry that. It changes the level of assurance a board should reasonably ask for, and most suppliers do not understand why the questions are so persistent.
Funding
In a business, a project that runs over draws on reserves and somebody has an uncomfortable quarter. In a charity, restricted funds cannot be moved, so an overrun does not become a financial problem, it becomes a stalled system and a grant report that cannot be written honestly. Stage the work so that each stage is independently useful.
Data
Case notes, safeguarding records and beneficiary details often sit in a system selected eight years ago for reasons nobody present can recall, by somebody who has since left. The sensitivity is higher than most commercial data and the institutional memory is thinner. That combination deserves naming before anyone proposes a migration.
Capacity
Almost every charity has one person who understands the database. When they move on, the knowledge goes with them and the system becomes something everyone is slightly afraid of. Any proposal that assumes a permanent internal owner is assuming something the organisation cannot promise.
Six questions for the next board meeting where technology appears on the agenda. None require technical knowledge, and a supplier who cannot answer them clearly has told you something useful.
One
Not a hypothetical. Ask which funding would absorb it, and whether that funding is restricted. If the answer is that there is no answer, the project needs breaking into smaller stages before it is approved.
Two
A named role rather than a named enthusiast. If the honest answer is nobody, the right choice is usually the simpler system that fewer people need to understand.
Three
Beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, staff. Which categories, in what country, under whose contract, and who else can see it. A supplier should answer this without needing to check.
Four
Charity capacity is the binding constraint, not money. Any new system consumes staff attention that is currently spent on something else, and naming that something is part of approving the work.
Five
Ask at the point of purchase, when it is an administrative question. In what format, at what cost, and how long it takes. Answered vaguely, it is a lock-in you have not priced.
Six
The most useful question in the set. It reveals whether the proposal has been sized to the need or to the funding available, and it gives the board a stage it can approve with confidence.
The questions above are the short version. The full checklist runs to seven sections and twenty-nine questions, covering oversight, spend, data, suppliers, AI, accessibility and what happens if the key person leaves. Each one comes with the answer that should reassure a board and the answer that should not.
It is free to read in full, with nothing to fill in. Take one section per board cycle.
This is currently the area of charity technology receiving the worst advice, and it mostly arrives as enthusiasm about efficiency from people with something to sell. It deserves a more balanced answer than either the enthusiasm or the alarm.
The benefit is real. Organisations with no spare capacity gain the most from anything that removes administrative work, and drafting, summarising and first-pass reporting are genuinely quicker. A small team can reclaim hours a week, and in a charity those hours go straight back into delivery.
The obligations are also more serious than in a commercial setting. When the data concerns vulnerable people, a careless choice about which tool gets access is not a compliance irritation, it is a safeguarding matter, and the accountability sits with trustees personally.
A one-page policy covering what may be used, on what data, and who signs off is enough for most charities. It is a governance question, and it is answerable in an afternoon.
Director and trustee experience, and charity engagements from the outside as well as the inside.
Case study
Digital strategy for a care home charity, sized to what the organisation could actually run.
Case study
Journey mapping for a conservation charity, from first visit through to membership.
Case study
Building internal capability so the knowledge did not leave with one person.
What happens if this costs twice the estimate, whose funding covers it, who inside the charity will run it when the enthusiastic person leaves, whose personal data goes into it, and what we stop doing to make room. None of those questions require technical knowledge.
Sometimes, where the system directly delivers the restricted purpose, but it cannot be moved to rescue an overrun elsewhere. That inflexibility is the single most important difference between charity and commercial technology decisions, and it should shape how projects are staged.
For some administrative work, cautiously, yes. The efficiency gains are real for organisations with no spare capacity. The obligations are also more serious than in a commercial setting, because the data frequently concerns vulnerable people and the accountability sits with trustees personally.
Independent digital and AI counsel for boards and trustees, before the spend rather than after.
Seven sections, twenty-nine questions, free to read in full. Take one section per board cycle.
Long reads on the decisions people get stuck on. Free, and they sell nothing.
I advise trustee boards independently, and the honest answer is frequently that the proposal is sound and the board simply needs somebody to confirm it.
Thirty minutes will usually establish which situation you are in.
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