Nonprofit Technology Audit: Assess Your Tools and Processes
Ready to take your tools, people, and processes to the next level? Learn the steps to undergo a nonprofit technology audit with experienced professionals to reach higher efficiency.
Vicki Burkhart
Ready to take your tools, people, and processes to the next level? Learn the steps to undergo a nonprofit technology audit with experienced professionals to reach higher efficiency.
The struggle is real. Limited resources, overwhelming workloads, and a growing demand for services are ever-present throughout the nonprofit sector.
Yet in an age when robust tools, including data, process, and software, are available to help organizations achieve greater effectiveness, too few are taking full advantage of them. If that scenario sounds familiar, you might want to consider a nonprofit technology audit.
Determining your organization’s digital maturity will help your team envision and pursue a technology plan that goes beyond supporting your program goals to helping you advance them.
This article provides an in-depth look at how a nonprofit technology audit can lead to an optimized system that works for you, and not against you.
The laws of nature aside, it seems the world is turning a little faster every day.
Nonprofit organizations often face significant challenges, as their leaders and small teams (if they have teams) are burdened with numerous responsibilities and urgent demands, all while addressing the increasing needs of their community.
It would be easy to think that nonprofit technology is at least one answer to an organization’s quest for greater effectiveness.
After all, in its 2022 Nonprofit Trends Report, Salesforce noted that organizations that reached digital maturity are “4X more likely to achieve their goals.” Sadly, the same report pointed out that only “12% of nonprofits are digitally mature.”
Harnessing the power of today’s technology trends is more important than ever. Demand for services continues to rise, often without a concurrent increase in resources. In fact, many organizations are experiencing reductions in resources while trying to address growing community needs.
At its best, nonprofit technology helps organizations increase internal efficiency while promoting external engagement. At its worst, technology can gum up the works, becoming a roadblock to operational efficiency and effective communications with stakeholders.
That’s where a nonprofit technology audit comes in.
An audit is the ideal first step on the road to a stronger organization with the help of technology.
Whether your nonprofit considers itself tech savvy or you are in technology denial, your organization can benefit from a proper assessment conducted by nonprofit technology experts. Here’s why:
A thorough nonprofit technology audit will dive into your mission and current operations to align your team’s goals and capabilities with the right nonprofit technology to help you achieve greater impact in your community.
When it comes to assessing your nonprofit tech stack, having a professional auditor provides an objective perspective that can make clear suggestions based on your team’s needs. While you can attempt to audit your technology yourself, this third party also provides expertise from helping organizations like yours through this process in the past.
Here, we’ve outlined six steps nonprofit technology auditors will take when you work with them to optimize your tools and systems.
Prepare to begin with a review of your mission and vision, as well as a discussion about your audience and the value you bring them. This information will allow auditors to better understand what the organization does and how it does it, including who it serves and how it funds itself.
This includes getting into the weeds to understand your organizational structure. They will want to review your programs and services and how you deliver them. Your revenue mix – where your funding comes from and how you approach fundraising and relationship building – will also be on the list. They will look at the data you are collecting and how you are using it for analysis and reporting.
Finally, they will examine the tools you use and how you use them.
Next, you’ll need to compile and review an inventory of all the tools that make up your systems, and let the auditors know whether they work well or not.
Tools include data, communications, processes, templates, and any software related to these areas. Auditors will document the purpose of each tool, who uses it and how they use it, and who else has access to it. You’ll also want to document current software costs and contract terms.
For example, if your organization uses Donorbox to fundraise and Mailchimp for marketing, you should add both to your inventory along with an explanation of what each does, who uses them, how much they cost, and any contract terms to keep in mind.
What are your team’s priorities, and what actions do they currently need to take to achieve them? What changes to the system would smooth out their processes?
This step isn’t about specific technical feature requirements; it’s about understanding what work should look like so that the auditors can recommend the best tools to achieve the desired results.
For example, when incoming gifts are recorded, does important information such as an increase in gift size flow automatically to the donor management system to alert the fundraising team to the need for follow up? Do donor gift designations inform email marketing and auto responses?
Auditors will look under the hood of each tool, documenting what seems to be working toward the desired outcomes and any areas where tools aren’t performing.
Gaps between what exists and what is needed will be noted, as will opportunities to make adjustments to get better results.
A good nonprofit technology assessment will evaluate how data moves between tools and identify gaps, inefficiencies, and duplication in data entry. The audit will also look for a lack of integrations, and situations where manual processes might be automated.
Additionally, auditors will assess the organization’s current internal skillset and appetite for change to get a complete picture of what’s possible.
The assessment’s recommendations will close the gap between where the nonprofit is and where it wants to be with its technology.
Recommendations might include cleaning up data, adjusting current tools, migrating to different tools, and creating new tools. In most cases, the report will include a combination of all the above.
The audit team will research potential new tools and their costs, ensuring that their recommendations are feasible for your organization. They will also prioritize changes in a way that minimizes disruption.
Ideally, the audit report will suggest no more than three recommended paths forward, ranking them on their level of impact and feasibility.
Once the audit team has presented their findings, it’s up to you to choose your path!
You can either partner with experts to guide you through your system transformation, or you can choose to move forward on your own.
By the end of this process, you should have a better sense of how your optimized system of tools supports a more effective workflow – and ultimately a more impactful organization.
Not sure where to get started? Here are a couple of tools to help!
The More Than Giving Co. provides a Nonprofit Systems Optimization service to help organizations operate more efficiently and grow in their effectiveness through technology.
After an NPSO audit, nonprofits report a better understanding of their tools and processes, cleaner and more accurate data, better integrations, and stronger alignment between their systems and their growth trajectory.
Every NPSO audit is unique. At The More Than Giving Co., we learn what you want to be able to do, assess how you currently work, and make recommendations to close the gap.
We review the tools you have, including data, communications, processes, templates, and any software that supports these areas. As we are not a technology company, we perform an objective audit with no preference for particular tools or approaches.
We choose the tools to support people, not the other way around.
And because our NPSO team includes fractional professionals, we can remain engaged to adjust your tools based on the recommendations and provide ongoing training to ensure that your staff has the knowledge and skills to use the tools well. An NPSO partnership also includes check-ins over time to keep the tools working and aligned with your organization’s growth.
Learn more about our NPSO audits here.
The TechSoup Digital Assessment Tool (DAT) is a great resource to help you begin thinking about nonprofit technology assessments. This free, web-based application can help you assess your technology needs and provide customized recommendations.
While the DAT is a good place to get recommendations for technology tools to optimize your workflow, ultimately it doesn’t do a great job of breaking down your systems to better understand your needs.
When you’re ready to get down to brass tacks, you will likely want a hands-on partner – like The More Than Giving Co. – to dig into your specific nonprofit technology needs and goals.
In 2025, digital maturity is crucial to just about any endeavor. But it’s especially crucial when it comes to running a healthy and successful nonprofit.
A nonprofit technology and systems audit is an excellent first step toward improving your nonprofit’s effectiveness in serving the community. Optimization of digital tools and systems will lead to greater efficiency, growth, and mission success.
Ready to get your tools, people, and processes in order? Learn more about More Than Giving’s NPSO service.
For more fundraising tips, check out the rest of our Nonprofit Blog.
Vicki Burkhart is the founder and CEO of The More Than Giving Co., a nonprofit fractional
staffing firm providing nonprofits with affordable, on-demand staffing solutions to supplement
the bandwidth and skillsets of their current team. Our Nonprofit Systems Optimization (NPSO)
professionals possess the nonprofit technology expertise necessary to ensure that your
organization has the right technology, and the staff to operate it.
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