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In pt 1 Gozi and Hugo discuss the role of the “accidental techie” in nonprofit organizations and explore three bridges to transform your career: Skills, Relationships, and Projects. In pt 2 they finish up the fourth bridge: Communications, and take questions from the webinar audience.
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You never applied to a tech job, but somehow you are the person everyone turns to for tech help and assistance at your nonprofit. Learn how to transform your experience as a problem-solver into a professional career as a nonprofit tech leader from two people who have lived it.
This webinar walks you through the transformation from firefighter to strategic advisor. Hugo and Gozi share what separates reactive problem-solvers from strategic technology leaders, and give you practical frameworks for repositioning yourself professionally. You’ll discover how to communicate your value differently, build the right relationships, and choose projects that showcase your strategic thinking.
You’ll hear from peers facing similar challenges and leave with concrete tools including assessment frameworks, communication scripts, and a clear action plan for your next career moves.
Perfect for anyone managing databases they inherited, coordinating systems they never chose, or just tired of hearing “you can do that, right?”
As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.
Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic, and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.
Hugo Castro never planned to work in technology, but somehow became the person everyone called when systems broke. Over 15+ years at organizations including TAG, Groundwork Collaborative, and Democracy Fund, he transformed from reluctant troubleshooter to strategic technology leader, managing operations and technology for nonprofits ranging from $400K to $40M budgets.
Hugo led digital transformations, Salesforce implementations, systems migrations, and emergency remote transitions while training staff on systems he had to learn quickly. He’s a Certified Practitioner of Human-Centered Design who finally realized this journey from “accidental” to “intentional” was worth documenting.
He now writes The Accidental Techie Newsletter, helping nonprofit technology professionals make the same transformation without the trial and error. Hugo very recently launched Flourish Collective to help nonprofit organizations co-create operational systems that help their mission and people thrive. Hugo is always happy to discuss career paths from accidental to intentional nonprofit tech leader.
Ngozika Egbuonu, DBH-C, MA, MS is a certified behavioral health leader and versatile doctoral candidate skilled in bridging analytical insight with strategic communication. With advanced degrees in Psychology and Medical Humanities and Bioethics, Gozi brings a unique dual‑perspective to roles that require both quantitative rigor and creative thinking. Her experience spans project management, fundraising, event coordination and planning, program direction and leadership, research, and volunteer leadership—equipping her to drive initiatives from conception through execution.
Passionate about fostering inclusive environments and empowering teams, Gozi thrives on leveraging data, storytelling, and collaboration to deliver meaningful impact to patients, communities, and all in need. She was happy to participate in this conversation and presentation on moving from being an accidental to an intentional nonprofit tech leader, a career path she knows well from her own lived experience.
Carolyn Woodard: Welcome everyone to the Community IT Innovators webinar on the accidental to intentional nonprofit tech leader. If you’ve never applied for a tech job, but somehow you became the person that everyone turns to for tech help and assistance at your nonprofit, then this is the right webinar for you. We’re so glad you’re here today. Today we’re going to learn how to transform your experience as a problem solver into a professional career as a nonprofit tech leader from two people who have lived that journey.
My name is Carolyn Woodard. I’m the outreach director for Community IT. I’ll be the moderator today. I’m very happy and excited to hear from our experts, but first I want to go over our learning objectives. We’re going to talk today about how you go from fixing things to being asked for strategic advice. We’re going to learn the four bridges for transformation from accidental techie to intentional techie. I’m really excited to hear more about that. We’re going to talk about how you translate your work into mission impact. This is a perennial problem, and it is exciting to get some insights into how you can make that case that technology is important for your mission. Then we’re going to leave with what you are going to learn and talk about one action that you will take this week to start building the bridge that speaks to you of the four bridges that we’re going to learn about.
With that, I’m going to turn it over to our speakers. Hugo, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hugo Castro: Welcome. I’m Hugo Castro. I spent the past 15 years becoming really, really good at a job that I never applied for. My first big project when I started working at Democracy Fund, a private foundation, as an operations manager, was bringing in a managed service provider to transition all of our tech infrastructure from a family office to the foundation. That’s how I came to know Community IT. Community IT became our MSP, and I managed the MSP while I was at Democracy Fund, which sounds pretty straightforward until you’re the person coordinating network installations, AV systems, and email migration. Thankfully, through an MSP, we were able to do that.
But I also was onboarding five to 10 people every couple of months. We were a growing foundation, revamping our contracting process, and moving our approval processes from email to an actual system. There were a lot of different things going on. Then came an office move and implementing PGP encryption. I became the admin for Okta, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Meraki, CrowdStrike, and just about 15 other systems. Eventually, we hired our first in-person IT staff to really help get all this stuff in place.
My next role was at a fiscally sponsored growing organization with about 14 people, where I did another office move and I leaned into what it is like to be the IT person on top of everything else that you’re supposed to do as a director of operations. This was also around early 2020, which seems like 100 years ago. We did an office move, and literally two weeks later, we had to go fully remote because of the pandemic. We had to quickly pivot and figure out how we do that work: Zoom meetings, webinars, all that kind of stuff.
Most recently, I worked as a director of operations at TAG, the Technology Association of Grantmakers, where I did a complete digital transformation, moving our association management system from a legacy platform to Salesforce and a WordPress deployment. That’s where I met Gozi. After 15 years of this, I realized two things. One, this journey from accidental to intentional is something that almost everyone in nonprofit tech and operations goes through. And two, nobody should have to figure it out by yourself. Now I also run Flourish Collective, working with nonprofits to enact these kind of technology transformations. I also write the Accidental Techie newsletter, which is basically me documenting everything that I wish somebody would have told me when I started on this journey 15 years ago. Gozi, would you want to introduce yourself?
Gozi Egbuonu: Thank you for that. I’m really excited to be joining you. I’m Gozi Egbuonu, the director of programs at the Technology Association of Grantmakers, otherwise known as TAG. As Hugo shared, that’s where we met.
But my career as an accidental techie actually began not in the philanthropic sector, but in the fashion, copy, and copywriting world in terms of e-commerce. In those early days of e-commerce, moving to getting all of your things shipped to you as opposed to going into the brick and mortars was my opportunity to really see what it was like working in this fast-paced startup world. Of course, we were just learning as we were going.
As my career continued to grow, I started to really understand that there is this technical component that you need to have. I never was trained in SEO, but I had to learn it in order to support a lot of the copywriting expectations. That was my foray into technology, and then I ultimately continued to do that in fashion, but on the promotion side. I had to handle the promotions for global events that we would do and had to be really, really good at checking my emails to make sure I didn’t set anything on sale that shouldn’t have been on sale. I also realized the technical components that go into when something bad does happen on a website, when you have to refresh it.
From then on, I definitely continued in that kind of role of trying to learn these technologies and then ultimately went into working for a SaaS company now known as Bonterra. That’s actually how I got introduced to TAG, working at this space where we were really trying to encourage growing the technology infrastructure for nonprofits through investments in their technology infrastructure. That was how I got to learn a lot about TAG and there was a similarity there.
Taking all of these really important things about technology and technology infrastructure and being able to talk about it fluently has been really beneficial to my work, but ultimately I needed to go deeper. Hopefully, I’ll be sharing a little bit more about how I started to do that process. It takes time. Sometimes it doesn’t all come clearly to you at the beginning, but by the end, you start to see some ways to help yourself and ultimately grow your career. I’m excited to talk to you all today.
Carolyn Woodard: Thank you so much, Gozi and Hugo, for being here. I am really excited to hear about your journeys and get people in the audience as well to start sharing.
Before we begin, if you’re not familiar with Community IT, I have to tell you a little bit about us. We’re a 100% employee-owned managed services provider. We provide outsourced IT support. We work exclusively with nonprofit organizations, and our mission is to help nonprofits accomplish their missions through the effective use of technology. We are big fans of what well-managed IT can do for your nonprofit. We serve nonprofits across the United States. We’ve been doing this for 25 years. It’s our 25th anniversary year. We are technology experts. We are consistently given the MSP 501 recognition for being a top MSP, which is an honor we received again in 2025 for the eighth year in a row. We believe that we’re the only MSP on that list serving nonprofits exclusively.
I want to remind everyone that for these presentations, Community IT is vendor agnostic. We only make recommendations to our clients based on their specific business needs. We never try to get a client into a product because we get any kind of benefit or incentive from that. But we do consider ourselves a best-of-breed IT provider. It’s our job to know the landscape, what tools are available, reputable, and widely used, and we make recommendations on that basis for our clients based on their business needs, priorities, and budget.
We’re going to leave as much time as we can for Q&A with our experts at the end. Please submit your questions through the chat feature anytime today. We got a lot of good questions at registration, so we’re going to try and answer as many of those as we can. Anything we can’t get to, please join us and our experts today in our community on Reddit at r/nonprofitITmanagement. We’re going to continue to answer some questions over there about 30 minutes after the webinar, until about 4:30 Eastern.
You can find all of the videos, podcasts, transcripts, and articles on our website. We don’t have a paywall. It’s all freely shared information. We hope some of those past webinars also will be useful to you.
A little bit more about us: as I said, our mission is to create value for the nonprofit sector through well-managed IT. We also identify four key values as employee owners that define our company: trust, knowledge, service, and balance. We seek to always treat people with respect and fairness, to empower our staff, clients, and sector to understand and use technology effectively, to be helpful with our talents, and we recognize that the health of our communities is vital to our well-being and that work is only part of our lives.
With that said, I want to hand it over to you, Hugo, to share your presentation with us and let you and Gozi take it away.
Hugo Castro: Thank you so much, Carolyn. I just want to thank you and Community IT for the invitation for Gozi and me to come and share this framework.
That’s what we’re here to talk about today. How do you go from being the person who accidentally became the tech person to being intentional about where your career goes? I did this the hard way. I learned by trial and error across different organizations.
What Gozi and I realized is that there’s actually a framework to this transformation. You don’t have to just stumble your way through it like I did, and that’s what we’re going to be doing today.
Before we go any further, I want to hear from you in the chat. Tell me how you ended up in your tech role in three words or less. It can be “my boss,” or whatever. Yeah, “no one else will do the job.”
Hopefully, you’re seeing a pattern here. You’re not alone in this. “IT Director retired,” 100%. Usually, that happens. Perfect, folks.
Let me ask you a few more questions really quick to see if you’re truly an accidental techie.
Question number one: Did you ever apply for a job with the words technology, IT, or systems in the title? If you say no, you might be an accidental techie.
Question number two: Has anyone ever said to you, “This should be pretty simple, right?” and then they proceed to describe something that was absolutely not simple? If you’re cringing right now, you’re definitely an accidental techie. A Salesforce implementation or doing a quick website update, right?
Question number three: Have you ever trained someone on a system application that you learned about 48 hours earlier and you hoped they wouldn’t ask a question you couldn’t answer? Yes, 100%.
Welcome to the club, folks. Here’s what makes you an accidental techie: You found yourself in this role by chance, not by choice. You became the tech person because you figured something out that one time, because someone quit, or because you were the only one that could make the database work. Now you spend most of your time reacting to immediate needs: password resets, system crashes, and quick questions that turn into three-hour troubleshooting sessions.
But here’s what I learned after 15 years and hundreds of conversations with people just like you: this doesn’t have to be your story forever. The shift from reactive to intentional isn’t just about your personal growth, though that is important. It is about organizational impact.
When you move from being the person who fixes things to being the person who shapes technology strategically, your whole organization benefits. Better decisions get made, resources get used more effectively, and technology actually starts supporting your mission instead of getting in the way.
That transformation is what we’re here to talk about: going from an accidental to an intentional leader, from reactive to strategic. It’s absolutely possible.
Here’s the question that drives everything that we’re going to be talking about today: How can someone transition from being a fixer to a strategic advisor for leadership? This session is going to focus on that journey, emphasizing that it requires a genuine shift in self-positioning, relationship building, project selection, and communication.
This approach we term the four-bridge framework. I want to be honest with you, this is not a quick fix. It’s not that by the end of the week, you’re going to be a strategic leader. It’s not a rebranding exercise. It’s not just “speak more in meetings.”
It’s a genuine shift in how you position yourself, how you build relationships, what you choose to work on, and how you talk about what you do. We call it the four-bridge framework.
The way we’re going to do this transformation is I’ll talk about each of the bridges, and then Gozi is going to explain from her experience how she was able to see that in her own work.
Here’s how I think about this transformation. There are four bridges you need to be able to get from the accidental shore to the intentional shore: Skills, Relationships, Projects, and Communication.
You don’t have to build all four at once. That’s probably a recipe for doing nothing. You pick the one that fits where you are right now and you start there. Gozi and I are going to talk through each one. I’ll set out the shift you need to make, and she’s going to share what it looked like in her work at TAG and before then. We’ll give you concrete actions that you can take this week, not someday, but this week. Gozi.
Gozi Egbuonu: What I love about this framework is that it respects that we all come in at different places. I came to TAG with a background in community organizing and program development and a deep interest in ethical technology. My path through these bridges looks completely different from someone who came up through IT operations. That’s the point. This is about where you’re going, not where you started.
Hugo Castro: Let’s talk about the first bridge, the skills bridge. This is your ticket from fixing chaos to crafting mastery. In accidental techie mode, usually you’re being the firefighter for tech disasters. Something goes wrong, you learn just enough to patch it up, and then it’s off to the next crisis. You move from crisis to crisis.
In intentional mode, you become the maestro of your own career. You choose the skills you want to be famous for and you hone them with purpose. For me, when I was at Democracy Fund, that was systems thinking and change management. I pursued a human-centered design certification because I kept seeing technology implementations stall a little bit because we were doing a lot of different things at once and we needed more change management to help people really take on the new technologies that we’re using.
It wasn’t that we were bad at technology; we just needed better change management. I also attended the NTC conference every year. I joined a group of tech decision makers in DC, and that was really helpful for me as well.
How do you get your strategic skill development?
Gozi Egbuonu: My skill bridge for strategic skill development was pursuing my doctorate in behavioral health while I was working at TAG, and more recently completing a program in AI and healthcare through Johns Hopkins.
These weren’t required for my role. I pursued them because I believe the future of philanthropy and technology is inseparable from our understanding of human behavior and ethics. At TAG, that meant I could lead conversations about tech adoption from a people-first lens, not just a systems lens.
I became the person on the executive team who could bridge those worlds more comfortably. The skill I chose wasn’t a technical certification; it was depth—the kind of thinking that lets you see technology decisions in their full human context. That choice shaped every single program and will continue to influence how we look at our publications and reports moving forward.
Hugo Castro: Before we talk about which skill to develop, I want to share a framework that I came across from Gay Hendricks in a book called The Big Leap. In this book, he identifies four zones where we operate. Three of them keep us stuck, and one unlocks everything.
The zone of incompetence is things that you don’t enjoy and aren’t good at. You know the feeling: you’re frustrated, you wish somebody else was doing this—somebody else absolutely should be doing that.
Then comes the zone of competence. These are things that you can do just fine. Here’s the thing: others can do them just as well, usually faster and better. This is maintenance work; it’s fine, but it’s not strategic.
Then comes the zone of excellence. This is where most accidental techies get stuck. You’re good at this work, maybe better than most people. It’s comfortable, you know how to do it, but it drains you. Your passion dies the longer you stay here. That’s a warning sign for you.
I want to talk about the zone of genius. This is where time disappears. You’re doing what you’re uniquely gifted to do. It feels effortless to do it. It looks like magic to everyone else. This is your zone.
Here’s what happens when you are building your skill bridge: You stop developing skills in your zones of incompetence and excellence. You start asking what skill will move me into my zone of genius. That’s the strategic skill gap. Define not what I need to learn to fit the next problem, but what I would need to be excellent at the work I’m doing.
Nowadays, if you’re in tech, everything is about AI. I highly suggest folks learn more about it, but use your genius. You don’t have to be coding everything. You can learn how your organization can implement artificial intelligence.
There are a ton of different skills that you can think of. These are the action steps for you: This week, you pick one strategic skill—not a “fix-it” skill, but a skill that moves you toward where you want to be in your career. Ask yourself: “If I could be known as the expert in one thing in my organization, what would create the most value?” and start there.
In the next 30 days, take one course, join a community of practice like NTEN or TAG, and document what you learn. Do it in teaching language. Write a Slack post, run a lunch and learn, or share it with your manager or ED. Teaching cements expertise and builds visibility at the same time. Take a course not just for the sake of taking it, but to teach others what you learned. Anything you want to reinforce on this, Gozi?
Gozi Egbuonu: I just really wanted to add that you shouldn’t assume that your employer will fund a lot of this work. Even at TAG, I’ve seen members invest in their team’s professional development and the return is real and very impactful. But if the budget isn’t there, there are free resources. Think of NTEN, TechSoup, and community forums. I used a lot of Google and Coursera. I highly recommend folks leaning into those resources as well. Do not get stifled by the fact that it isn’t being invested in at your organization in some formal way.
Hugo Castro: Let’s talk about the relationships bridge. This is about moving from being the go-to fixer to becoming the trusted advisor.
Usually in accidental mode, people call you when things break. You’re helpful, but you’re invisible in strategic conversations. In intentional mode, you’re in the room before decisions are made. Before that CRM gets chosen, you’re in the room—before you have to figure out how to implement that CRM that somebody decided to buy.
For me, it looked like setting up meetings across all departments to talk about how we were serving them. At Democracy Fund, we became a mission-driven operations team. That means we were serving leaders. We were asking how we might be able to be in service of the mission of the organization.
One of the things that I did there is I implemented a program where once a month staff would get paired randomly with someone from another team to have coffee chats. That broke down silos. We were able to bring out any issues before they became big issues because people were meeting from different departments that usually wouldn’t often meet. Gozi, how do you become a trusted advisor?
Gozi Egbuonu: At TAG, my role is really built around relationships with members, sector thought leaders, and practitioners. But the bridge I had to build wasn’t just external; it was internal. When I joined TAG, I had to earn my seat as a strategic thought partner. That didn’t happen because of my title. It happened because I was consistently showing up curious, not just as a program implementer. I asked questions about the “why” behind technology decisions, not just the “what.” I facilitated conversations between members and subject matter experts and created space for people to think out loud.
Over time, that made me someone people wanted in the room. That coffee chat principle translates everywhere. I’ve helped build partnerships that brought in at least 100K in investment by first understanding what a funder cared about, not by pitching. Relationships built on listening compound over time. I really think active, deep listening is one of the critical skills people should invest in.
Hugo Castro: 100%. Listening is key. As accidental techies, we like to explain a lot of things. At some point, we have to just shut up for a second and listen to the needs of the other person or programs.
These are the action steps for you: This week, schedule one conversation that has nothing to do with fixing something. It’s a 20-minute “listen.” Take a program director out for a Cuban sandwich—a cubano and coffee. Don’t go in with solutions; go in with questions. Ask them, “What is one technology challenge that’s slowing down your team?”
In your next meeting, maybe offer a perspective instead of waiting to be asked. Start building your peer network. Talk to your peers, like this webinar right now. There are 30 or 40 other people here who are accidental techies just like you. People doing your job at other organizations are an invaluable resource for you.
Gozi Egbuonu: I would push on the peer network piece. The sector is small. The relationships you build now will follow you. It is really critical to understand how to nurture those relationships from authentic places in ways that enrich you, the sector, and the work that you’re doing.
Hugo Castro: When we talk about the third bridge, the project bridge, we want to focus on transforming chaos into strategic achievements.
When you are operating in accidental techie mode, your project list usually resembles a collection of unresolved issues and persistent complaints: the latest update, a broken laptop, or a leak in an application.
In intentional mode, you become the missionary conductor. You’re proposing projects that not only captivate but also propel your organization forward. You’re not waiting for challenges to arise; you are identifying unique opportunities before anyone else notices.
This bridge represents a monumental transformation, particularly when your schedule is already packed. This is where you create what I call “win-for-all” solutions. A win for you, a win for the other person, a win for the organization, and a win for the whole.
Here you need to be documenting everything so you can teach it and pass it on. I think that’s one of the things with accidental techies—we are moving from firefighting to firefighting so fast that we forget to document. You almost want to work yourself out of the job so you can focus on the strategic stuff. By documenting things, eventually somebody else can take over some of the fires you’re putting out.
One book I highly recommend is Indistractable by Nir Eyal. This book has really good, down-to-earth frameworks on how you can better use your time to free you up. It’s about saying no to a lot of different things—distractions like phone notifications or Slack. For me, it looked like working on projects that save organizational time so we could focus on mission development and fund development.
For example, I moved our contracting system from email approvals to a minimum viable product, which was a Trello board. That saved us about 10 hours a week. Eventually, it became a formalized dashboard. When somebody needed an answer, they didn’t have to come to me; they could find the information themselves. Think about these kinds of projects and how you can lead strategic initiatives. It’s going to look different for everyone.
Gozi Egbuonu: For me, this bridge was about co-developing publications and content that showcased member innovation. That’s not just content creation; it’s a strategic project that builds reputation and positions us as a thought leader.
The project I’m most proud of is how we’ve been responsive in our program development. For instance, when we learned of attacks on nonprofits and DEI work, we reimagined what that looks like under those circumstances and with the expansion of AI.
Hugo’s point about documentation is critical. I contribute grant writing for TAG, and securing funding requires translating program impact into language that funders care about. That same skill applies internally. If you can articulate what your project accomplishes in terms that a leader cares about, you will get to do it again next time. It’s not as easy as it looks, but those coffee chats help you understand how to best approach these initiatives to ensure you have champions who support the work.
Hugo Castro: These are the action steps for choosing and leading successful projects:
One thing you can do this week is audit your time. Spend 20 minutes writing down everything you did last week, then label each: Was this a reactive or a strategic use of my time? Does it drain or add energy? Most people are shocked by how little time they spend on anything they actually initiated. That is your starting point for figuring out how to use time blocks in your calendar.
First, think about improving processes. Don’t think about overhauling the entire tech stack right now; identify one key area where you can enhance efficiency. Make things work smarter, not harder.
Next, document the impact. Communicate your results clearly to stakeholders. It’s not just about the numbers; it’s about telling the story of your success.
Finally, propose a small pilot project. This is your chance to experiment and learn. Keep it manageable but valuable. Educate your peers about the outcomes. This positions you as a resource and a collaborative leader. By taking these steps, you contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and shared success. Gozi, any reinforcements?
Gozi Egbuonu: These are such great steps to get you on the path of dissecting how you work so you can make improvements. It is a great metaphor for how we should be looking at all of our processes, from grant making to professional development. I am excited to do my own. Thanks, Hugo.
We are getting to the last bridge: the bridge of communication. This bridge is about moving from being a technical explainer to being a strategic translator. Usually in accidental mode, you describe your work in terms of tasks and systems. In the intentional mode, you translate your work into mission impact. This is more of a mindset shift as much as a language shift. This is probably the bridge that makes all the other bridges more visible to the people who matter at the organization that are going to help you expand and grow in your career.
I want to use the chat really quick for you all. Either type A, B, C, or D: how do you currently describe your role to a new colleague? Somebody came to your organization and says, “So what do you do?” Be honest. Pick the one that sounds most like what you actually say when somebody comes in to work at your organization.
Here’s what the poll results are telling us. If most of us describe our role in tasks—”I manage systems” or “I fix problems”—that’s not a failure; that’s the accidental pattern. You’re describing what you do, not necessarily what you are accomplishing. The shift here is simple to understand and takes practice to execute. Instead of “I manage the database,” it is “I help our team make data-driven decisions.” Instead of “I do IT support,” it is “I solve tech problems so staff can focus on serving our community.” It’s the same work; it’s just completely different positioning. One describes a task; the other describes a contribution to the impact of your organization. You’re not making stuff up; you’re just changing the language so it’s mission-driven instead of task-driven.
Gozi, how have you translated this work into mission impact at TAG or previous organizations?
Gozi Egbuonu: For me, it was about the communication, honestly. That is where I feel most at home. I want to say something really important about it. This is not just about spin or making things sound fun. This isn’t about making it sound like something that it isn’t. It’s about finding the accurate story that connects what you do to what your organization cares most about. It’s not just the task; it goes deeper.
For me at least at TAG, I facilitate conversations between subject matter experts, practitioners, and sector thought leaders. But when I describe that work internally, I don’t say I run panels. I say I create conditions for philanthropy to interrogate its relationship with technology. That’s accurate. It’s also strategic. It positions the work and, by extension, me as essential to the mission, not peripheral to it. That’s really important because, while we know that anyone can certainly do a certain job, there’s a unique quality that we all bring to the work. I think this is the way that you’re able to try to define it by communicating it in terms of how it aligns with the mission of the work.
Hugo Castro: 100%. The shift here was realizing, at least for me, that my job wasn’t to be technically accurate. Really, my job was to be clear strategically. For the leaders of our organization, it didn’t matter all the tech behind the scenes; it mattered how that helps solve problems that people were experiencing.
For example, for me it became, instead of saying, “We need to implement SSO,” I started saying, “Hey, we need to make it easier for staff to securely access our tools. That way they won’t have to remember 15 different passwords.” At every job over the past 10 years that I have had, I have successfully advocated for operations time during all-staff meetings. This could look like updates that you’re making about things that are happening in operations that are going to be affecting or improving the lives of people. It could be lunch and learns that you’re doing about a new software that you’re rolling out. It could be upcoming changes or projects. It could be feedback from staff—taking time to actually get live feedback about how the operations are being run, how the technology is being run, and what are some of the pain points going on.
This is just information data that you need to help you build all those other bridges. But it shows that you’ve been strategic about how you’re approaching this work. When you think about the action steps that you have—and sorry if you thought that you weren’t going to have homework during this webinar—I’m giving you homework.
This week, your job is to rewrite how you describe your work. You can take your job description or even just how you answer what you do and rewrite it in terms of mission impact, not tasks. Think about outcomes, not systems; think about the people that you serve. Share that new version with one person and see how it lands. It can be your best buddy or somebody else at the organization. Do it at your next networking event.
Maybe in your next meeting where a tech issue comes up, try this: before you explain what’s wrong with the system, explain what it is costing the organization instead. That’s key. Leaders are going to understand return on investment. Instead of saying, “Our CRM has data integrity issues,” it becomes, “Hey, our team is spending three hours a week manually correcting the data that should be automated. That’s time that we can spend on donor relationships.” That’s going to speak to a leader of your organization instead of a data integrity issue.
For me, for example, when I worked at different organizations, I took onboarding as a way to bring all the information that was needed for someone to come in. We use Slack, so even before the person started working, they were getting Slack messages to their personal email about what it was going to be like the first week working there, creating a 30, 60-day plan, and working with the different departments to set up meetings for them. That way I was able to set myself as technology and operations being key to helping develop new people or helping the onboarding process so they can hit the ground running right away. Anything you want to reinforce here, Gozi?
Gozi Egbuonu: I think it’s going to be important to change the questions that you ask. “What features do you need?” is a task question. “What problem are we solving and who does it affect?” is a strategic question. The question you lead with signals the kind of partner you’re going to be.
Hugo Castro: Which bridge speaks to where you are right now? Skills, relationships, projects, or communications?
Gozi Egbuonu: It seems like a lot of folks are relying on communication. As Carolyn pointed out, it means you’re committed to your craft and continuous improvement is great. But that relationship piece is hard, especially in a digital world. I’m not sure how many of you are working in the office, too, but I think we had to relearn a lot of those communication and relationship-building skills once we went back to the office.
Hugo Castro: With the communications bridge, this is not about marketing yourself. You’re actually doing the work; you just slightly shift in how you talk about it. How you describe your work really determines who gets to participate in shaping it. You get to shape your own work. That’s super, super important.
I have one more thing for you all in the chat. This one is important; this one matters. In the chat, I want you to write one action that you’re going to take this week after this webinar—not someday, this week—and be specific. It can be “schedule a coffee chat or virtual coffee chat with our program director,” “sign up for one class,” or “rewrite your role description.” Type it out. When you write it down, even in a chat box, you’re more likely to do it. That’s the research talking.
Gozi Egbuonu: This is a great exercise because it removes the excuse of not knowing what to do next. You just told the room what you’re going to do. That’s accountability. If you’re part of any community like NTEN, TAG, or the Accidental Techie newsletter, share it there too. Community accelerates transformation. Having folks that can be there to be your accountability buddies to an extent is really critical. It gives you that extra push to get things done. They are your champions. If you have to change your deadlines or change things up a little bit, it’s good to have a community to express that and talk through how you can ultimately meet your goals.
Hugo Castro: I cannot emphasize enough that you’re not alone. Lots of people are going through this, and finding community on it is going to be super important.
Let’s be real about this transformation—what it is and what it isn’t. This is not a personality transplant. We’re not trying to become someone else that we’re not. It is not magically finding more hours in your day. I know some of you are running operations, training staff, handling IT, writing grants, and doing three other people’s jobs. I’ve been there. This transformation doesn’t require more time; it’s going to require different choices with the time that you have. It is small, consistent choices that you’re going to make over a period of time, one bridge at a time, and it compounds over months. The first thing you do this week is probably not going to feel significant, but the 37th that you do will.
Gozi Egbuonu: This transformation is also uncomfortable. It’s really going to stretch you. Deciding you’re worth investing in strategically, not just reactively, requires a kind of self-advocacy that many of us, especially in nonprofit culture, weren’t taught to do. We were taught to serve, and service is beautiful, but you can’t sustain service if you don’t also advocate for yourself. Those aren’t in conflict—advocating for yourself and also sustaining the great work that you do. As nonprofit technology professionals, you have the power to connect strategies and people. By choosing to be intentional in your actions, you can create lasting impacts within your organizations and your communities. Remember, the journey to becoming a leader starts with the choices you make today in service to your mission and to yourself.
Hugo Castro: Let’s talk about progress markers. How does it look like you’re making progress on this? Here’s how you know things are working. In 30 days, you say no to one thing that didn’t fit your strategic direction. That’s it, just one no. At 90 days, you have initiated one strategic project—not responded to one, initiated one. So you have one strategic project that you started yourself instead of somebody else initiating it for you. Maybe at nine months or so—give it three or four months into it—someone in leadership introduces you as a strategic partner, not just the tech person. That moment, that shift in how people describe you, that’s the signal that you’re moving from an accidental to an intentional tech leader. Even if you’re in the middle of the reactive grind, we just want to validate that. Does this ring true to you, Gozi?
Gozi Egbuonu: It can feel like a lot when you’re in that grind, but six months of consistent intentional choices looks very different from six months of waiting for things to change on their own. Just reiterating the importance of starting this week, and six months from now, you will have a different story to tell.
Hugo Castro: Deciding that you are worth investing in strategically, not just reactively—that you deserve to be in those rooms before decisions are made—is key. That’s your expertise. Even if it arrived accidentally, it is real and has value beyond fixing things. I came into my career asking questions and building bridges between people, ideas, and systems. That’s what every one of you is doing, whether you have the language for it or not; you’re already the bridge builder in your organization. This framework just gives you a map for doing it more intentionally and becoming that intentional tech leader that you want to be. I really want to thank you all for being here.
Carolyn Woodard: Everyone put a question in the chat if you have questions for Hugo and Gozi. We have one: “Interested to hear about the choices we make when choosing what to outsource versus what to retain or bring in-house, especially with the limited resources that nonprofits have. Logic would say the stuff in incompetent and competent should go out, but often that costs more than executives want to invest.” I think that’s a really good question. It links with a question from registration where someone said there’s a risk to not hiring a professional. How do you pitch that if you’re also pitching yourself as the expert?
Hugo Castro: I think the logic says that in the short term. Long term, you want to pitch to the leaders what it is going to cost long-term not being able to work on more strategic projects or really incurring technology debt. I will venture to say that most of our nonprofit organizations are in tech debt. We haven’t invested in technology and we’re paying for it eventually. If you are early on and don’t want to have an MSP, you can probably learn a bunch of different skills about fixing computers. However, if you’re a more senior leader, I think you can make the case that you can either bring a part-time person or oversee an MSP that helps you with your literal shops so you accumulate less tech debt. That way, when new things come to fruition, like the pandemic or everything happening with artificial intelligence, you are prepared. Nonprofits right now are scrambling because they did not invest in the tech-forward things that needed to be invested in. That’s a decision where I would say, “Hey, the short-term solution makes sense, but long term, we’re going to be accumulating tech debt that is going to come bite us if we don’t take care of it now.”
Gozi Egbuonu: My only thing I would add is that these exercises are critical for nonprofits to start engaging in as well. Think about that gap between the technical knowledge and the funding gaps you have. Map it out and budget it out. The reality is that more organizations are willing to start funding that. With this step-by-step process of what we need to do, the gaps we have, the funding to make it happen, and the timeline we’ve gotten from reaching out to peers in our networks, you have an opportunity to make the case from a mission-aligned standpoint. For nonprofit folks, that’s saying, “If we don’t do this, we’re not going to be able to scale our impact. We’re not going to be able to keep our doors open if X, Y, or Z happens and we don’t have the technology to safeguard the work.” Have these long conversations about what it takes to build that infrastructure and try to work towards building it—taking what you know you can do in-house and then thinking through what would be out-house.
Hugo Castro: This has been a labor of love for me to do the Accidental Techie and the newsletters. I know that I wish I would have had this information. I might be doing a six-week pilot cohort taking this framework and doing a lot of work into that. If you’re interested, let me know in the chat.
Carolyn Woodard: I’m so sorry to have to start bringing this to a close because I feel like we could keep talking for another couple of hours. Thank you so much to everyone in the chat for sharing. I know that can be uncomfortable. I want to make sure to go back over our learning objectives. I think we hit them all brilliantly. Moving from the person who fixes things to the person who is asked for strategic advice, the four bridges for transformation, and translating your work—a lot of people put in the chat that they were going to work on communications. Then we went over an action that you will take this week for accountability.
Before people go, I want to mention our webinar next month. We’re going to turn back to cybersecurity at nonprofits. We’ll have our chief technology officer and cybersecurity expert Matt Eshelman here with his annual report on the trends he sees in the thousands of endpoint users we have over the course of 2025. He can see new patterns, new scams, and what that means for your nonprofit. Of course, he’ll be talking about the changes that AI tools are making, both in new scams and in new protections. You can find that on our website at communityit.com.
I want to thank you, Hugo and Gozi, for joining us today. This was just such an amazing conversation. For everyone in attendance, we know that your time is a gift. You chose to spend an hour with us today. We’ll be back here next month with another webinar. Thank you.
Hugo Castro: Thanks, everyone. Have a good one.
Photo by Gilly Tanabose on Unsplash
Wednesday April 15th at 3pm Eastern join Matt Eshleman to to learn the trends from 2025 and tips for 2026 cybersecurity.
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