The Best Kept Fundraising Secret: Your CIO

This article is part of a series by members of the Okta for Good Nonprofit Technology Fellowship.

Chief information officers can be game-changers for fundraisers. As a technology executive with 17 years of for-profit experience, I’ve spent the past seven years transforming the role of technology leadership in nonprofits in order to scale impact. The pandemic accelerated this change with 70% of CIOs assuming leadership of high-impact initiatives and 80% of CIOs stepping in as digital leaders. Anyone can be a digital leader. It’s a mindset that craves newness, pushes boundaries, balances invention and imitation, and understands the importance of coping with adversity. Fundraisers can leverage this changing role and mindset of CIOs to increase revenue. Here’s how:

1. Develop a new kind of relationship with your CIO

When you talk to IT, it’s often to fix broken technology and not to build a relationship. To unlock the fundraising potential of your CIO, reach out to them for a different conversation. Get to know them and their changing role, their philosophy on a digital leadership mindset, and insights into how a stronger collaboration can drive business goals. As you build this new kind of relationship, you’ll be able to identify how you can help each other.

At Year Up, I collaborated with our fundraising team to raise money to centralize student enrollment across 27 locations in the United States. At Save the Children, I am partnering with our fundraising team to raise money to revolutionize how we use data to scale impact across more than 100 countries. These examples started with a conversation not about technology, but about getting to know each other and my approach to being a digital leader.

2. Align fundraising and technology strategies

It can be difficult to understand a technology strategy. Do not let that deter you. Aine McGlynn, an “accidental techie” with more than ten years of experience in the intersection of fundraising and technology, states, “We don’t typically think of databases, spreadsheets and CRMs as topics that demand emotional vulnerability, but maybe we should.” Leverage your relationship with your CIO and be vulnerable. Ask for help to understand their strategy. In turn, your CIO likely needs help to translate their strategy into outcomes that would interest funders, such as individual donors, corporate partners, foundations, and institutional donors.

At Girl Scouts of the USA, I helped our fundraising team understand our strategy to digitize the iconic $860 million Girl Scout Cookie Program for 2.1 million girls and adults. At Save the Children, I am helping our fundraising team to understand our strategy to connect data for impact storytelling to grow our nearly $1 billion for children. In both cases, the fundraising teams helped me translate my technology strategies into outcomes that resonated with funders and, ultimately, secured revenue. These results are the power of aligning funding and technology strategies.

3. Pitch outcomes, not technology, to funders

When talking to a company or donor in the technology industry, it would seem to make sense to pitch technology. However, that’s not what they want to hear. Companies are interested in how their resources will scale impact. Individual donors are interested in how their money will make a difference. Both conversations start with outcomes. Win them on the outcomes and then talk about the technology.

Recently at Save the Children, the fundraising team submitted a grant proposal to a well-known global technology company for something that by all accounts was a minor technology need. The proposal was not successful. We changed our approach to start with outcomes for children and are now in promising strategic conversations that have never happened before with the same company. Starting with the outcome and not technology made the difference.

Not all non-profit CIOs may be interested in fundraising. However, with a majority now stepping up as digital leaders and driving high-impact initiatives, following these tips may unlock a potential that they didn’t even know was possible. Take the first step and reach out to your CIO!

Sarah Angel-Johnson is a tiny yet mighty change agent, combining 17 years of for-profit and seven years of non-profit experience to drive social impact at scale that has been recognized by organizations such as InspireCIO and Fast Company. She is currently the CIO at Save the Children where she is inspiring breakthroughs in the way the world treats children.

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