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Community IT CEO Johan Hammerstrom walks through how to think about your nonprofit IT budget at any time, but particularly if you anticipate facing steeper challenges and may have to scale back. What are the three “buckets” of your IT needs, and how can you best manage your costs while keeping efficiency and functionality? What is a nonprofit IT budgeting strategy that will work for you in 2026?
More extensive resource on nonprofit IT budgeting:
Discovering the Value of Your Nonprofit IT Budget webinar with Johan Hammerstrom.
In decades of assisting hundreds of nonprofit clients with putting an IT budget together – often coaching how to create and talk about the budget with stakeholders, executives, and board members – Community IT CEO Johan Hammerstrom has come to think of your nonprofit IT budget in three “buckets.” Every nonprofit has a different budget process, so take that into account when connecting your IT needs and priorities to your own process.
Remember that your IT budget is not a technology task. It is a technology + business needs task. You need to incorporate the big picture. And don’t forget that IT is just another strategic asset that you manage like your lease, your programs, your payroll.
Don’t make assumptions about what is “too expensive.” If you want to recommend something in your IT budget, make the case for it.
Licenses and subscriptions are non-negotiable. Luckily, licenses are usually predictable, fixed costs per seat.
Infrastructure needs to be current.
Cybersecurity is non-negotiable. Make sure your protections are following best practices. Use your financial auditing process and insurance checklists to update and upgrade your cybersecurity.
Staff training on using the IT available and cybersecurity to protect your organization, staff, and funds.
Laptop replacements. We recommend a 3-4 year replacement cycle – that is, you replace 1/4-1/3 of your laptops every year, so that no staff member is working on a laptop that can’t implement security patches and updates, or is holding back productivity because that laptop is so old and slow. This is specific to your organization, but we recommend not stretching this replacement cycle beyond a 5 year cycle.
Redesigning your website. Again, this depends on your business needs, which nonprofit staff and executives know better than anyone. Use that knowledge to weigh your options against your budget.
Older server replacement/moving to the cloud for all functions. Are your older servers doing anything crucial for your organization? Are they doing something that doesn’t have any alternative in the cloud? How much will the server cost to replace? What are the costs to the nonprofit if the old server goes down?
Everything that can be postponed should come down to a business decision.
Updating systems like a CRM or other software. Where there is no critical immediate impact of not updating, the organization can make a long term plan to do the updates relative to other, more critical and immediate needs, knowing that times and needs may change, costs may come down, and/or AI may change the software/system landscape entirely.
When facing difficulty with funding, you will need to prioritize immediate needs and long-term needs.
Having a relationship with your funder where you can talk about your planning and decision making can help. Having a nonprofit IT Roadmap is a big help.
Start with connecting your IT budget and systems to your business needs. If you can’t justify certain systems or software because they are crucial to your business, consider upgrading or eliminating those expenses.
Having a strong inventory of your hardware and software, and a good on-boarding and off-boarding system, so that you can present all of your expenses as essential to your staff and business will help.
The intangibles need to be part of the conversation too. Nonprofits bring resourcefulness and empathy to these decisions, so don’t discount those assets. Nonprofits have a deep knowledge of their business and their community. Use that to your advantage to learn from staff where they could find value in the nonprofit budget, where they could see an improvement that helped their workload and maybe frees up budget for other needs.
Community IT knows 2025 was very challenging to our nonprofit sector. With all of the budget challenges our friends and colleagues are negotiating, we hope we can help nonprofit IT be the least difficult to manage.
Johan Hammerstrom’s focus and expertise are in nonprofit IT leadership, governance practices, and nonprofit IT strategy. In addition to deep experience supporting hundreds of nonprofit clients for over 20 years, Johan has a technical background as a computer engineer and a strong servant-leadership style as the head of an employee-owned small service business. After advising and strategizing with nonprofit clients over the years, he has gained a wealth of insight into the budget and decision-making culture at nonprofits – a culture that enables creative IT management but can place constraints on strategies and implementation.
As CEO, Johan provides high-level direction and leadership in client partnerships. He also guides Community IT’s relationship to its Board and ESOP employee-owners. Johan is also instrumental in building a Community IT value of giving back to the sector by sharing resources and knowledge through free website materials, monthly webinars, and external speaking engagements. He has assisted hundreds of nonprofits over his decades of experience at Community IT and has been instrumental in assuring that all clients have access to strategic planning – a service that is uncommon at outsourced IT providers but that Community IT feels is an essence of what we can provide to nonprofit clients to help them be successful at their missions. Johan was happy to talk about nonprofit IT budgeting strategy with Carolyn.
Carolyn Woodard is currently head of Marketing and Outreach at Community IT Innovators. She has served many roles at Community IT, from client to project manager to marketing. With over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit world, including as a nonprofit technology project manager and Director of IT at both large and small organizations, Carolyn knows the frustrations and delights of working with technology professionals, accidental techies, executives, and staff to deliver your organization’s mission and keep your IT infrastructure operating. She has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Williams College.
She was happy to have this podcast conversation with Johan about a Nonprofit IT Budgeting strategy for challenging times, and hopes it is helpful to our nonprofit audience.
Community IT has been serving nonprofits exclusively for twenty years. We offer Managed IT support services for nonprofits that want to outsource all or part of their IT support and hosted services. For a fixed monthly fee, we provide unlimited remote and on-site help desk support, proactive network management, and ongoing IT planning from a dedicated team of experts in nonprofit-focused IT. And our clients benefit from our IT Business Managers team who will work with you to plan your IT investments and technology roadmap if you don’t have an in-house IT Director.
Being 100% employee-owned is important to us and our clients. It is an important aspect of our culture as a business serving nonprofits exclusively for almost 25 years. Your Nonprofit IT Budgeting strategy is important to Community IT. Unlike most MSPs, Community IT considers budgeting and strategic management a major part of our services to our clients.
We constantly research and evaluate new technology to ensure that you get cutting-edge solutions that are tailored to your organization, using standard industry tech tools that don’t lock you into a single vendor or consultant. And we don’t treat any aspect of nonprofit IT as if it is too complicated for you to understand.
We think your IT vendor should be able to explain everything without jargon or lingo. If you can’t understand your IT management strategy to your own satisfaction, keep asking your questions until you find an outsourced IT provider who will partner with you for well-managed IT.
More on our Managed Services here. More resources on Cybersecurity here.
If you’re ready to gain peace of mind about your IT support, let’s talk.
Photo by Donnie Rosie on Unsplash
Wednesday January 21st, 2026, at 3pm Eastern join our experts to explore trends in AI, cybersecurity, and essential IT for nonprofits.
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