Nonprofit IT staff fall into two common roles, the IT manager and the accidental techie. An IT manager is a staff member with an IT support background whose primary job responsibilities include IT support for the organization. This role is responsible for most IT decision making. An accidental techie is a staff member with basic IT skills, but whose primary responsibilities are not IT-related. Often the accidental techie participates with management to make IT decisions rather than taking sole responsibility for those decisions.
Not everyone is cut out for a tech role. When deciding on how to staff IT roles look for someone interested in technology; not necessarily a "gear head" but someone who doesn't mind digging into technical issues and who gets some enjoyment out of problem solving. As important, and often more important, are communication skills. One of the functions of a technical person is explaining technical issues to non-technical people, and understanding non-technical people's technology questions. Rather than looking for someone to address all the technical issues that might arise, look for someone who can listen and explain technical issues to both technical and non-technical people.
We have included sample job descriptions for both these roles in Appendix 3.
Regardless of whether you provide in-house desktop support or not, it is important to have some sort of tech representative on staff. This is the person who can help shepherd the HSC process, manage consultants, and arrange (and possibly provide) training. You may already have staff with specific technology responsibilities, perhaps a person to help restore backups, perhaps a person to be responsible for calling the consultant. The key is to identify these roles, and not let them just be ad-hoc positions.
Some sample internal technology roles and responsibilities:
- IT management (budgeting, decision-making)
- Network troubleshooting
- Desktop troubleshooting
- Database administrator
- Backup administrator (running backups; performing restores)
- Website updates
- Email account changes
- Software license tracking