October 28, 2026
At a recent conference, an executive told me that every Salesforce decision, bill, and problem landed on her desk. Every time Salesforce pushed an update, something broke. She would stop what she was supposed to be doing, research the error, call the vendor and make a fix she wasn't sure was right. Her only test was whether the error went away.
I told her Salesforce was a contact sport. She laughed, then said it was the first time anyone had described it that way. "I feel heard," she said.
When I suggested she hire a Salesforce administrator, she said they didn't have the budget. I understood. I run a small business, and I can name three hires that would make my week easier. I haven't made any of them.
That's the real problem. What is the value of my time? What is the value of hers? Executive time and staff time don't generate revenue directly. For a consultant like me, revenue comes from clients. For a nonprofit leader, it comes from donors and funders. So technology work gets treated as overhead, and overhead falls to whoever happens to be available.
Some organizations solve this by hiring. Better-funded nonprofits often have someone in a dedicated role : a Director of Technology, a senior systems administrator, or an IT lead. That helps, but the role alone doesn't solve the problem. One person can keep the system running, yet the decisions about what to change, what to fund, and what to measure still get made in rooms where that person isn't sitting.
Technology decisions belong to the whole leadership team. That doesn't mean every executive needs to understand APIs. It means technology can't be separated from the work leaders are already accountable for: the KPIs you're trying to hit, the programs you're trying to scale and the impact reports you owe funders and donors. A new donor database isn't just an IT project. It changes how you measure outcomes, how you build fundraising reports and how staff spend their days.
When the leadership team owns these decisions, the question changes from "Who fixes this?" to "Who decides this, and when?" That's where a roadmap and governance come in.
- A roadmap sets the sequence: what you're changing, why it matters now and what it will cost in money and time.
- Governance sets the path: how one staff member’s frustration becomes a leadership decision, who signs off and how often you review the tools you already pay for.
Here are a few questions to ask your leadership team this week:
- Which technology decisions did we make in the last year, and who made them?
- When a system breaks or changes, who hears about it first, and who decides what happens next?
- Which of our KPIs or funder reports depend on a system no one on the leadership team has looked at recently?
- If our technical lead left tomorrow, what would we lose?
If those questions are hard to answer, the problem isn’t just people or budget. You have an ownership gap. Hiring can close part of it. A shared roadmap and clear governance can close the rest.
A Salesforce administrator can do the work. The leadership team still has to decide what the work is for.
If your leadership team is ready to build that roadmap and governance, our Nonprofit Tech Strategy Blueprint is designed for exactly that. In six weeks, we map your current tech stack, assign clear ownership and produce a board-ready plan.
