Make sure your new technology choices are really the solutions you need.

By David Mckenna

“Some nonprofits have been convinced to over-buy software products that are overly big and complicated in proportion to their giving program,” Masaoka says. “You can have a big giving program and a small nonprofit, and vice versa.”

A good consultant likely will recommend software packages in the $500 to $10,000 range for nonprofits with small giving programs. Intermediate packages might cost from $15,000 to $50,000. The most elaborate software packages — “the 500-pound gorillas,” as Jackson calls them — are in the $100,000-plus range and are best suited to the enormous giving programs at nonprofits such as United Way of America.