# How best to manage your IT department

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/04/27/how-best-manage-your-it-department/
- Published: 2011-04-27T07:56:02+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

![](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/files/images/news/niroo_rad_200.jpg)

You have a job to do — raising funds for your organisation — and as much as any 
job it depends on technology. Whether it’s the website, the database or just your
smartphone’s ability to connect you to a donor, effective technology lets you do
your job. But there’s one thing between you and the effective use of this technology:
the IT department.

Yours may be an exception, but unfortunately, IT departments do not have a great
reputation for being the most willing and helpful of colleagues. As self-appointed
gatekeepers, they control the sites you can browse on the Internet, the apps you
can use and even the degree to which you can “slice and dice” the data in your database.
Because they control the tools vital to organisations, they wield a power that is
disproportionate to their position.

The IT staffers don’t mean to be awkward — they have a tough job to do. They have
to manage a growing range of devices, operating systems and protocols, while making
technology reasonably secure from unwelcome attention. They also have to troubleshoot
and support many software applications and, let’s face it, a wide range of competence
among users. They might not even work for your organisation; if you outsource IT
support, they have to look after many organisations’ needs. So IT departments’ natural
tendency is to keep everything as simple and secure as possible, without too many
variations to remember.

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But they’re supposed to serve organisations’ needs, so if you’ve ever returned to
your desk in tears after a frustrating encounter with an IT team member, here are
a few tips for the next time you need his or her help:

• Work out your business case first. Most things in IT are possible, but that doesn’t
mean the IT department will make it happen for you. Some requests take moments to
ask but imply months of work to achieve. For example, “I want donors to be able 
to print their own tax receipts from our website.” That means a secure login, a 
giving history, a facility to produce PDF receipts and so on. Better to ask IT for
what it would take to do that; write a report showing the cost, the benefit and 
the potential return on investment; and if it’s compelling from a business point
of view, have executive

• Involve IT in your initiatives. When you’re planning a campaign, get IT involved
from the onset — you’ll need the department’s help at some point in the project,
and the team will be more positive when it realises it has a part to play in its
success.

• Appreciate them. OK, not outright flattery, but remind IT staffers of your gratitude
for that thing they did for you before and how it would be really helpful if they
could look at this new thing. IT people are humans, too, and respond to thanks, 
encouragement and even the odd challenge.

• Appeal to their career aspirations. If it’s interesting, they will be happier 
to take it on. Every techie likes to be one of the first to work on a new technology—
it’s great for their résumés and keeps it interesting for them. So asking them to
develop, say, an Android app for your cause might brighten their day and inject 
some enthusiasm.

**Niroo Rad is CEO and Managing Director of [ASI Europe](http://www.asieurope.eu)**

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