🧠 What Nonprofit Fundraising and Grant Teams Wish Their CTOs (and IT Teams) Knew
- beatriz5700
- Aug 7
- 4 min read
How empathy (and one unified platform) can save the mission from death by silo.
Author: Beatriz Ayala | CMO threshold.world
Do your organization's fundraising, grants, and tech/it team feel connected?
Absolutely!
Sadly, no.
We don't even have a tech team. Help!
No, but we want to
“Our tech is like a Frankenstein monster—beautiful intentions, stitched together with duct tape, and always one spark away from chaos.” — Anonymous fundraiser at a national education nonprofit
Let’s talk about the awkward family dynamic in too many nonprofits: fundraising, grant, and program teams on one side, IT on the other, and a lot of love lost in between. If we had a dollar for every time we heard “our systems don’t talk to each other,” we’d fund your next campaign.
This post isn’t a blame game. It’s a bridge. A human-first reality check on what fundraising and grant teams wish their CTOs, CIOs, and tech leads understood—and how a platform-first approach, powered by Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit and the Common Data Model for Nonprofit, is the way forward.
🧩 1. Aligning With Your IT and Tech Teams
Most fundraisers aren’t allergic to tech. They’re allergic to duct-taped systems and digital whack-a-mole. Every toggle between siloed tools—Salesforce over here, Excel over there, Blackbaud lurking somewhere in the mix—is a micro-tax on time and morale. The same goes for the IT resource or teams supporting them in the labyrinth of potentially connected data and incompletely pieced-together workflows.
“I had to copy-paste notes from our CRM into an email, Slack a colleague for their program update, then manually track the grant deadline in Asana. That’s 30 minutes I wasn’t spending with our funder.” — Director of Institutional Giving, climate nonprofit
How we solve this: At threshold.world, everything we build is grounded in the Common Data Model for Nonprofit, which means your CRM, grant management, marketing, case tracking, and program impact all coexist on the same map. When your data speaks the same language across tools, magic happens: automated workflows, integrated dashboards, improved collaboration, increased security, and no more “Hey, where’s that file?” emails.
It’s not just a system upgrade—it’s a stress downgrade.
🪄 2. Unified Data From Nonprofit Fundraising = Stronger Relationships
Nonprofits run on stories. But too often, the story of impact is fragmented between systems—and people. If fundraisers can’t see the program’s data behind the outcomes or quickly find relevant metrics for a donor meeting, they’re pitching a half-painted picture.
“We knew we’d doubled program participation, but the report lived in another system. We couldn't find it on our own... By the time we pulled it in, the donor had moved on.” — VP of Development, health nonprofit
How we solve this: Our AI-powered fundrAIsing app delivers real-time, integrated intelligence - from campaigns to results. Built on the Microsoft Power Platform, it combines a fundraiser portfolio, a unified gift batch, donation import, Power BI analytics, and AI-enabled fundraising intelligence offering donor insights, engagement history, and more —all in a straightforward interface. Plus all four AI capabilities to automate tasks like a Fundraising Proposal Assistant, Donor Profile Summary Assistant, Gift Acknowledgement Assistant, and a Grant Requests Summary Assistant.
Fundraisers get a unified view of every donor relationship, the data to support their asks, and steward their funder relationships.
No more hunting. Stronger relationships with purpose.
🔍 3. Field-Level Empathy Is a Strategic Advantage for Nonprofit Fundraising
Let’s talk legacy tech. Many nonprofits are juggling tools built in a different era—SharePoint 2010, custom Access databases, email chains pretending to be systems. They “work,” but they don’t work well. The result? Burned-out staff, missed opportunities, and inefficiencies that slowly drown the mission.
“We were duct-taping five tools together and calling it a strategy. It wasn’t.” — Grant Lead, education nonprofit
How we solve this: Whether you’re working with deeply entrenched legacy systems or starting from a clean slate, we leverage the Common Data Model for Nonprofits to design integrated data architectures that speak the same language. And with this foundation, we configure white-glove solutions in Microsoft Power Apps. Plus, it’s all grounded in human-centered design. We sit with your teams, understand their processes and needs, and build tools that don’t just look good —they work for real humans doing hard things. And because AI powers them, they learn from how your teams work—streamlining routine tasks, reducing manual entry, and helping you get smarter with every interaction.
⚙️ 4. Integration Is Impact
You’re not just building tech infrastructure. You’re building the very foundation that holds fundraising, programs, compliance, and impact together. A platform-first approach with Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit means you can:
Centralize data across departments
Automate workflows
Improve forecasting and donor targeting
Give stakeholders the real-time info they need
Scale without creating digital chaos
Unlock the potential of your data with AI to empower decision-making and reduce cognitive load.
And yes, we can integrate your old systems into this smarter future—step by step, without losing your data (or your mind).
🧭 5. You're a Mission-Critical Storyteller
CTOs, CIO's, IT teams, this is your rally cry: you are not “the tech person.” You are a mission enabler. You are the one who can turn fragmentation into clarity, noise into signal, and chaos into coordination.
You don’t need to know the difference between LYBUNT and SYBUNT or hard credits and soft credits. But you do need to know that with the right platform—designed with humans in mind—you unlock time, trust, and transformational impact.
✨ Final Word
The future of nonprofit tech isn’t more point solutions. It’s a data-powered platform-first strategy that connects the dots from donor to doer, from idea to impact. The Common Data Model for Nonprofits is the Rosetta Stone, and we’re your translator. Whether you’re cleaning up a tech mess or building new systems from scratch, we’re here to help you make it matter—without burning out your team in the process.
Let’s unify, simplify, and humanize your tech because your mission is too important to be lost in a swivel chair.