The biggest mistake I see with grant-funded technology is treating it like free technology. The grant may pay for the laptops, the software, the network upgrade, or the new system today, but somebody still has to support it, secure it, replace it, and pay for anything recurring after the grant ends. I would rather see a non-profit buy slightly less technology and have a realistic plan to maintain it than spend every available grant dollar on equipment it cannot support three years later.
Why year four is harder for a small Rhode Island non-profit
The arithmetic of year four is the same in any state. What is different here is the margin for error. Most of the non-profits we work with in Rhode Island are small enough that there is no IT director. The executive director is the IT department, in between everything else. On a budget that size, a recurring technology cost that shows up after the grant closes is not a rounding error. It competes with a program or a position.
The other thing about a state this small is that the funders are a short list and you will see them again. A technology budget that shows the ongoing cost already planned for reads as credible. Coming back in year four to ask for operating money to keep a previously funded system alive does not.
A lot of grant-funded technology around here also lands in older leased space, in Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and the converted mill properties that a lot of organizations rent. The grant budget says twenty laptops. The building says the wiring and the wireless need attention before twenty laptops will be usable. Somebody has to physically walk the space to know that, and the cheapest time to find out is before the application goes in, not after the money is already committed to a specific shopping list.
The line items most technology budgets leave out
When a non-profit asks me to help with the technology line of an application, the gap is almost always the same. The budget is a shopping list. Buying the equipment is the easy part. I push for the costs nobody gets excited about:
- Installation and configuration, not just the purchase price
- Security: endpoint protection, email security, multi-factor authentication, and whatever your insurance carrier or funder contracts require
- Backup for whatever the new system creates or stores
- User training, so the thing actually gets used the way the grant described
- Ongoing support and a help desk your staff can reach
- Warranties, and who holds them
- Replacement at end of life
The application should also answer a question that is not about money: who manages those twenty laptops once they are handed to employees? If there is no answer in the budget, the answer defaults to whoever on staff is least able to say no.
For a three-year grant, buy hardware or pay subscriptions?
People want me to pick a side on this and I will not. For a three-year grant I would not automatically favor hardware over subscriptions. I would look at what happens in year four. A subscription that becomes a $10,000 annual expense the organization cannot absorb is a problem even if the first three years were fully funded. Hardware has the same problem in a different shape: it does not renew, it ages out, and a fleet bought all at once needs replacing all at once.
So the real question is not the asset type. It is whether the executive director and the board know the ongoing cost before accepting the grant instead of discovering it when the funding disappears. If that ongoing number is something the operating budget can carry, either structure can work. If it is not, buy less and support it properly.
Before the board accepts donated or discounted equipment
Donated does not necessarily mean useful. Before anyone signs for a pallet of someone else's computers, I would ask five things:
- How old is it?
- Is it still supported by the manufacturer, and for how long?
- Can it run a current operating system that still gets security updates?
- Who owns the warranties and any licensing that came with it?
- What will it cost to manage and secure alongside the equipment you already have?
Sometimes a non-profit ends up spending more supporting someone else's five-year-old computers than it would have spent buying appropriate equipment in the first place. A refresh from a local company that keeps its machines current can be a genuinely good deal. It can also be a disposal problem with a thank-you letter attached. Those questions tell you which one you are being offered.
Who owns it when the grant money runs out
The non-profit should own the technology operationally from day one, even if a grant paid for it. Before the funding is accepted, there should be a clear answer to four questions: who manages it, who pays the recurring costs, who replaces it, and what happens when the grant ends. Those answers belong in front of the board while the decision is still reversible.
Discounted non-profit programs deserve the same scrutiny. We got it through TechSoup does not mean there is no future cost, because a lot of those programs still carry annual fees or subscription renewals. The whole point of settling this up front is to move the ongoing expense into the normal operating budget while the grant is still paying for it, so year four is a line item somebody already approved rather than a surprise.
None of this is an argument against grant-funded technology. Grants are how a lot of good work gets paid for in this state. It is an argument for writing the unglamorous half of the budget, the support and security and replacement and ownership, into the application while you can still change the numbers. If you have an application in progress and you want someone to look at the technology line and tell you honestly what year four costs, get in touch. That conversation is worth a lot more before the budget is submitted than after.
