IT Support and IT Consulting for Nonprofits
Staff, volunteers and outside partners often share a mission without needing the same access. NetSys supports nonprofit systems with clear account ownership, device management and recovery priorities. Start with the services people rely on and the technology responsibilities your team can realistically own.
The short answer
Nonprofit IT consulting and support cover the planning and the day-to-day running of an organization's technology: Microsoft 365 and nonprofit licensing, a help desk for staff and volunteers, donor-database access, security and tested backups. NetSys provides both under one per-user monthly agreement, month to month, with projects such as a tenant rebuild quoted separately. For a nonprofit providing developmental disability services, we built a SharePoint intranet for 120 employees with departmental document libraries, permission controls and staff onboarding resources.
Sound familiar?
- Donor and member records spread across a CRM, spreadsheets and a former employee's inbox
- A grant agreement that requires written security controls nobody on staff has time to draft
- Microsoft nonprofit licensing claimed years ago and never configured beyond email
- Volunteers and departed staff who still have access because offboarding was never assigned to anyone
- Donation forms and event payments that fall under card-data rules the board has never heard of
- A backup that lives on the same server as the finance system it is supposed to protect
What we deliver for nonprofits
A Help Desk Sized for a Lean Team
- Staff and volunteers call a help desk that puts an engineer on the phone
- Onboarding and same-day offboarding for staff, interns and board members
- A dedicated account manager with a real cell number, so the executive director has one person to call
- Program sites, remote workers and the main office covered under one agreement
Donor and Member Data, Protected
- Multifactor authentication and attributable logins on the donor database and accounting system
- Managed endpoint detection on every laptop, including the ones that go to events
- Email defense tuned for the fake-invoice and executive-impersonation lures aimed at finance staff
- Donation and membership payment flows kept within card-data rules
Grant and Insurance Evidence
- Written security policies that answer what funders and cyber insurers ask
- Retention of grant records for the period each award requires, with backups to match
- An annual risk review the board can read in one sitting
- Vendor access tracked for every platform that touches donor or client data
Microsoft 365 and Automation, Finished Properly
- Microsoft nonprofit licensing verified, claimed and configured beyond the mailbox
- SharePoint and Teams structured so program, finance and development files stay separate
- AI automation for gift acknowledgments, intake forms and funder reports where it fits
- Immutable backups of Microsoft 365 and the donor system, with restores timed
Nonprofit compliance: the rules that follow donor and client data
Tax-exempt status does not exempt an organization from data-security law, and funders add terms of their own. Your counsel and grants staff confirm what applies; we put the technical controls in place and document them.
NY SHIELD Act (GBL §899-aa and §899-bb)
The Act covers any organization holding New York residents' private information, nonprofits included. A small organization (fewer than 50 employees, under $3 million in annual revenue or under $5 million in assets) can scale its safeguards to its size, and notice to affected residents is due within 30 days of discovering a breach.
Federal awards: 2 CFR 200.303(e) and 200.334
Recipients of federal grants must take reasonable cybersecurity and other measures to protect personally identifiable information and other sensitive data. Award records are generally kept for three years from the final financial report, so backups and retention settings have to reach that far.
Card donations: PCI DSS v4.0.1
Online giving, event tickets and membership dues taken by card bring the organization under the card brands' data security standard. A donation page hosted by the payment processor keeps your share small; a form built into your own site widens it. The standard's future-dated requirements became mandatory on March 31, 2025.
Health and social services: HIPAA (45 CFR Parts 160 and 164)
A nonprofit clinic or counseling program that bills health plans electronically is a covered entity, and one handling PHI for a covered entity is a business associate. Either way, client records need Security Rule safeguards and an agreement with every vendor that touches them.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with counsel.
Nonprofit software we support around
Donor databases, membership platforms, email marketing and accounting systems each hold part of the supporter record. We keep sign-ins and access tied to each staff or volunteer role, protect the devices and backups around them, and deal with the vendor when a fault is inside their platform.
Salesforce- Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
- Bloomerang
Wild Apricot
Mailchimp
QuickBooks
Product names are their owners’ trademarks. We manage the devices, accounts and access around these applications and work with each vendor’s support. A listing here doesn’t mean we resell an application or partner with its maker.
Managed IT for a nonprofit with four programs and one overworked operations director
The specific engagements behind this profile are under NDA, so it is written as a generalization rather than a named client. Our published, client-approved outcomes are in case studies.
The organization ran three program sites and a small central office. Donor records lived in a hosted CRM, but exports sat in a shared drive anyone could open, and two former development staff still had working logins. A new state grant required a written information security policy before the first drawdown. The Microsoft nonprofit grant had been claimed years earlier, and nobody had turned on multifactor authentication or backups since.
- An access review that removed departed staff, moved every remaining login behind multifactor authentication and gave the finance lead a privileged account separate from her daily one
- The Microsoft 365 tenant rebuilt with conditional access, Defender for Business and a SharePoint structure that separated program files from donor and finance data
- Immutable backups of the donor CRM exports, accounting data and mailboxes, with a restore performed and timed
- A written information security policy, an incident response plan and a training record, packaged to the grant's own language
- A Power Automate flow that files gift acknowledgments and logs them against the donor record, which took a weekly chore off the development team
The intended result is a grant security attachment backed by evidence instead of promises, an operations director who is no longer the help desk, and a one-page security summary for the board each quarter, written in plain English.
Work we have done for nonprofit clients
- Nonprofits
Nonprofit providing developmental disability services
SharePoint intranet for 120 employees, departmental document libraries, permission controls, and staff onboarding resources.
Client names are withheld. Each card is the scope of a real NetSys engagement, as delivered.
Nonprofits IT FAQs
How should a nonprofit manage volunteer access?
Use named accounts with the minimum access required for the role, an approval owner and an end date. Decide whether personal devices are permitted and what information may be stored on them. Include an offboarding check so access does not outlast the volunteer assignment.
How can a nonprofit compare IT costs without missing essential work?
Give each provider the same list of users, devices, locations and applications. Separate ongoing support and security from one-time migrations or equipment purchases. Verify licensing eligibility and vendor support independently, then identify the operational consequences of deferring each proposed project.
Do you provide managed IT for nonprofits with fewer than twenty staff?
Yes. Small organizations are most of our nonprofit work. A team of eight with three program sites carries the same exposure as a much larger one: donor records, bank access, a public reputation and no dedicated IT person. The agreement covers help desk, 24/7 monitoring, security, backups and Microsoft 365 management under one monthly fee, and it scales up or down as staffing changes, which matters for organizations whose headcount moves with funding cycles.
How much does managed IT for a nonprofit cost?
Pricing is per user per month. The monthly fee covers the help desk, monitoring, cybersecurity, privileged access management and disaster recovery planning, so those are not separate line items, while projects such as a tenant rebuild, hardware and software licenses are quoted separately. We do not publish rates because the number depends on headcount, sites, the systems involved and on-site needs, but a short call produces a written quote. Eligible organizations also cut software cost through Microsoft's nonprofit program, which we help you verify and claim.
Can you help us get Microsoft 365 nonprofit licensing?
Yes. Microsoft offers granted and discounted licenses to eligible nonprofits through its nonprofit program. Eligibility runs through a verification process, and the specific offers have changed more than once, so we confirm what your organization qualifies for at the time rather than promise a particular plan. Once granted, we configure the tenant properly: multifactor authentication, conditional access, email protection, backups and a SharePoint structure, which is where most grant-claimed tenants were never finished.
Our funder is asking for a cybersecurity policy. Can you write it?
We write the policy and, more to the point, implement the controls it describes so the document is true. Funders and cyber insurers increasingly ask for multifactor authentication, endpoint protection, backups, staff training and an incident response plan. We put those in place, document them and keep the evidence current, so the next grant application or renewal is a matter of attaching files rather than starting over.
What happens to donor data if we get hit with ransomware?
If backups are immutable and restores have been practiced, the organization comes back from a clean copy and the incident becomes a bad week rather than a closure. NetSys has handled more than 30 ransomware incidents in three years with full recovery in every case, and the clients who had a disaster recovery plan in place were back within 24 hours. Donor notification obligations depend on state law, and we work through them with your counsel.
Do you require a long-term contract?
No. Nonprofit agreements run month to month like every other NetSys agreement. Boards and finance committees tend to prefer that, since it avoids a multi-year commitment that outlives a funding cycle. If we stop earning the work, you can leave with notice and take your documentation with you.
What is nonprofit IT consulting?
Nonprofit IT consulting is the planning side of technology: deciding what to buy, move or retire, and in what order, within a budget a board will approve. It covers Microsoft nonprofit licensing, donor database choices, grant security requirements and a yearly technology plan. Ongoing support then keeps those decisions running day to day.
What does IT support for nonprofit organizations cover?
It covers the people, devices and data behind the mission: a help desk for staff and volunteers, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace administration, managed laptops, security, backups and access that ends when a role ends. For a small organization with no IT staff, it retires the operations director's second job as the office's tech support.
Can you support our donor database, such as Raiser's Edge NXT or Bloomerang?
Yes, around the application. We manage who can sign in and at what level, enforce MFA or single sign-on where the platform supports it, protect the devices staff use and keep exports backed up. Configuration, data questions and bugs inside the database stay with the vendor, and we join the call when needed.
Do federal grants come with cybersecurity requirements?
Yes. Under 2 CFR 200.303(e), recipients of federal awards must take reasonable cybersecurity measures to protect personally identifiable information, and award terms or a pass-through agency can add more. Expect questions about MFA, encryption, backups and an incident plan, and keep award records for the retention period, usually three years after the final report.
Does the SHIELD Act apply to a nonprofit?
Yes. New York's SHIELD Act covers any person or business holding New York residents' private information, and nonprofit status is not an exemption. Smaller organizations may scale their safeguards to their size, but they still need them, and the notice duty after a breach applies in full. Donor, client and employee records can all qualify.
How does onboarding work for a nonprofit?
Discovery comes first: staff and volunteer accounts, devices, program sites, the donor database and other platforms, Microsoft licensing and admin credentials, written down with the risks ranked. Admin rights then move to named accounts, monitoring and backup tools go on every covered device, and the first fixes follow: departed staff and volunteers who still have access, MFA gaps and backups that have never been restored. A tenant rebuild or grant-funded project is quoted separately and scheduled around program deadlines.
Who handles support and escalations for staff and volunteers?
NetSys engineers answer the help desk seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern, so staff and volunteers working evenings and weekends can reach someone, and monitoring and emergency service run 24/7. The executive director or operations lead has a named account manager as the escalation route, and the agreement states response times by severity. Problems inside the donor database go to its vendor, and we join the call when needed.
Guides for nonprofits leaders
- Separate recurring nonprofit support from project costs
- Define a role for internal staff alongside managed support
- Managed IT for Nonprofits: Questions Boards Ask
- Microsoft 365 Management
- Cyber Insurance Readiness
- Free Cybersecurity Assessment
- PCI DSS compliance for online donations and event payments
- SHIELD Act safeguards for donor and client records
- Phishing training for staff and volunteers
- Backup for a nonprofit's Microsoft 365 tenant
- SharePoint intranets for program, finance and HR teams
- SharePoint intranet examples for staff onboarding
- Password and permissions management for nonprofits
Nonprofits IT by area
Other industries we support
Services behind this work
Set priorities around the services your organization delivers.
Tell us your staff and volunteer setup, key applications, locations and budget-planning constraints. Request a call about scope and the responsibilities that need coverage first.