NTEN's 2006 Nonprofit IT Staffing Report

A great report about nonprofit IT staffing practices.

Our friends at NTEN recently published the results from a wide-ranging survey of nonprofit information technology staffing they conducted during 2006.  Their first-of-a-kind study generated some great baseline data, and it's well worth a read if your organization is considering how to make IT staff investments, or wondering how your organization compares with other nonprofits.  Here are some of their key findings:

● Salary and budget expenses: Nonprofits’ IT salary and budget investments varied widely.
They didn’t just differ from smaller organizations to larger ones, but between organizations of
the same size. Larger organizations not only had more IT expenses, but invested more per
employee as well.

● Technology adoption and investment: Technology “Early Adopters” and “Fast Followers”
invested substantially more in all aspects of their IT infrastructure.

● Nonprofit IT staffing levels: Nonprofits on average had about one staff member with some
IT responsibility for every five organizational staff members. Smaller organizations had more IT
staff per employee than larger ones.

● IT within the organization: Where does the responsibility for IT live in nonprofit
organizations? Small nonprofits most frequently answered that they had no one with official IT
responsibility. Large organizations most typically had a separate IT function. It was also
common to consider IT part of general operating functions, or part of the finance department.

● Staff time across functions: Nonprofit IT staff spent the most time on desktop and
application support, but they devoted significant time to management and strategic issues as
well.

● The understaffed perception: The majority of organizations felt they were understaffed in
the IT area. While larger organizations were slightly more satisfied with their staffing level,
there was not a substantial gap between large and small organizations. Organizations with
higher turnover or lower salaries were more likely to feel they were understaffed.

● Salary baselines: The survey provides some baselines for typical salaries. Some positions,
like CTOs, paid a wide range of salaries, while others, like Webmaster, were fairly low for
everyone. The salaries were not significantly different by level of education, issue area, or
geographic region.

● Outsourcing: Nonprofits tended to outsource fairly technical things the most – the most
commonly outsourced functions were website hosting, telephone services, and custom software
development.

● Organizational digital divide: Smaller organizations appear to be notably behind on the IT
adoption curve – indicating a substantial organizational digital divide.

http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/NTEN_ITstaffing_survey.pdf