The systems behind your service, your giving and your donor records, kept running by whoever actually shows up, not just whoever was trained on it.
The clock moves depending on the program, but the pressure is the same shape: a grant report due Friday, a board packet due before Tuesday's meeting, a donor database that has to be right before the annual appeal goes out, a program that has to run on schedule whether or not the technology behind it cooperates.
We understand how a small team can end up with one person who knows how it all connects. A donor database, an event or program platform, a grants management tool, and a giving or donation platform can each be set up at a different time by a different person, with the map of how they connect living in someone's head rather than anywhere written down. Whether that person is a long-time volunteer or the one staffer who has been there since the founding, the risk is the same if that person moves on.
We understand how member, donor and program data can end up spread across more systems than anyone planned. A member or constituent database, a giving or dues processor, a grants management tool, an email platform, and the spreadsheet that started as a workaround and never stopped being used. Access can accumulate over years of staff, board and volunteer turnover if nobody is assigned to clean it up.
We understand how the devices behind the mission end up owned by no one in particular. That can show up as a program laptop, a shared drive nobody has audited, or a grant-funded device that outlived the grant. Some of it belongs to the organization, some belongs to whoever brought it in, and if a piece breaks at the wrong moment, there can be no one whose job it was to prevent that.
Giving and dues typically move through a card processor, an app or an online form, which puts payment handling and card-processing rules in the picture the same way they would be for any business that takes payments, even when the card data itself never touches your own systems. Member and donor records carry names, addresses, giving history and sometimes household information that a departing volunteer or former board member should not still be able to see years later. Grant-restricted financial records and program data raise the same question from a different direction: access should follow the current role, not everyone who ever held it.
We configure and manage the accounts, permissions and device security for the systems included in an agreed engagement. We do not decide your organization's data-retention policy, interpret a specific donor or grant agreement, or set board-level access rules. That stays with your board, your finance team or your attorney.
A backup that only covers the office computer misses the presentation and media files, the member or donor platform, and the program and grant records that actually run the organization day to day. We keep backups isolated from what they protect and test restores rather than trusting a green light.
Recovery also means knowing what has to come back first, whether that is a program deadline, a reporting deadline, or the phones. That order is worth writing down before a bad week rather than working out during one, and it is worth revisiting when leadership changes.
Send us one question about your organization's IT and we will give you a straight answer, at no charge, with nothing to sit through afterwards. We do this because the question somebody asks us today is usually cheaper than the mess we would be called about later. If the honest answer is that somebody has to look at it, we will tell you that too.
This is an answer to a question, not troubleshooting, system access, or ongoing support.
Some questions cannot be answered honestly from the outside. When that happens we may offer to come and look properly: a read-only review of the systems we agree on, and a written summary of the sampled findings and our recommended next steps within the agreed scope. These take real hours, so reviews are subject to availability, and we will confirm any date in writing.
Asking does not book a review. We confirm the scope and the date in writing before anyone touches a system. Printed material does not reserve an appointment. One review per organization.
A review is a point-in-time sample of the systems named in the written scope. Items outside that scope are not evaluated and have not passed.
Ask us about it before the next program, board meeting, or grant deadline.
Call (817) 265-5000 or email info@bdunn.com. Arlington, and we answer our own phone.
Ask us your question