Clear thinking about charity tech

Hi, I’m Chris.

I’ve worked in the charity sector for 14 years, first in frontline roles and then working on the software organisations rely on. In my experience, whether software works for an organisation is rarely a technical question. In my experience, software rarely succeeds or fails for technical reasons. It succeeds when someone has properly understood the organisation and the problem it’s trying to solve, and when the people affected have been brought along with the change.

I’m not tied to any one platform or piece of software. I’ve worked a lot with Salesforce as a CRM system, but I’ve also recently built custom web platforms with Bubble and helped an organisation develop a sophisticated report dashboard in Power BI. When nothing off the shelf fits I can write the code myself.

I originally taught myself Salesforce out of necessity, to help the charity I worked for cope with growing. Since then I’ve cared most about two things: giving charities software they can understand and maintain, and making sure their own staff can run it once I’ve gone. More about me and how I work.