For Volunteer-Supported Organizations
Most organizations don't think they have an IT problem. They think it's handled — by a volunteer, a board member's son, or whoever on staff is good with computers. Usually that person is capable and well-intentioned. The gap is somewhere else entirely.
It's that nobody is watching the things that don't announce themselves.
A capable volunteer fixes what's in front of them, and fixes it well. Printers work. The Wi-Fi reaches the back office. Email gets sorted out. From the outside, that looks like coverage.
What it isn't is continuous accountability. Nobody is checking whether the backup that runs every night can actually be restored. Nobody noticed that an administrator account still belongs to someone who left in 2022. Nobody would see a compromise for weeks, because nobody is looking.
That gap can't be closed by the volunteer being more capable. It requires someone whose job it is to watch — which was never part of the arrangement, and was never fair to expect.
Backups that run successfully every night and have never once been tested by an actual restore.
Accounts belonging to former employees, volunteers, and vendors that were never disabled.
Firmware and software running years behind on firewalls, switches, and servers.
Subscriptions and licenses still billing monthly for things nobody uses.
Contracts auto-renewing because the termination window passed unnoticed.
No documentation of how anything is configured, and no plan if the volunteer becomes unavailable.
The hardest part of changing this is usually not technical.
If someone has been handling technology for years — a parishioner, a board member, the office manager who has been proud to manage it — changing the arrangement is a social decision before it is a business one. Nobody wants to be the person who pushed out someone who helped for free.
They usually stay. They keep doing the part they're good at, with someone accountable above them, documentation behind them, and no obligation to carry risk they were never equipped to carry. What ends is the arrangement, not the relationship.
The same is true of vendors. If you'd rather keep the firm that installed your phone system or the contractor a board member recommends, keep them.
We'll scope the work, review the quote, hold them to it, and verify what was delivered. We don't need to be the ones doing it. Someone needs to be accountable for whether it was done right.
The usual assumption is that the only alternative to a volunteer is hiring someone. It isn't.
Organizations that decide the volunteer arrangement has run its course usually conclude they need to hire. That's a real number: a network, security, or infrastructure specialist in this market is a six-figure salary before benefits — and for most organizations that ends the conversation before it starts.
There's a third option. The same function, contracted rather than salaried, at a fixed monthly rate of $500–$2,100 depending on the size of the organization.
For most of the organizations we work with, that is less than the copier. Less than phone service for a handful of employees. Less than one after-hours emergency when a server fails on a Friday night and nobody has a current backup.
These questions aren't a test of the person. They're a test of the arrangement.
If the answers are good, that's genuinely worth knowing — and you can stop reading here. If they're hard to get, that's worth knowing too. See how the common options compare →
Most conversations start with a structured review of your current environment — what's running, what's exposed, and what's being paid for. Findings first, before anyone talks about an engagement.
See how the review works