When systems stall, who owns the outcome?
You hope you’ll never need that answer.
But when you do, it decides whether the day is a speed bump—or a shutdown.
- Online donations fail during your biggest campaign push.
- A CRM update breaks pledge tracking the week before a grant report.
- Volunteer check-in locks out staff an hour before the event.
In the moment, it feels like the day is over.
With leadership owning technology, it’s manageable.
Here’s why:
- Response has a captain. When an exec owns uptime, decisions happen fast—priorities, comms, go/no-go—so programs keep moving.
- Risk is pre-paid. Cadenced refresh, tested restores, MFA everywhere—the coverage is built before the bad day.
- Workflows don’t fight each other. Programs, Development, and Finance share one checklist and one rollback plan—less thrash, faster recoveries.
- Vendors execute, you decide. MSP, CRM, donation platform—all pointed at one outcome you set (donor trust, program delivery, audit-ready).
- Confidence compounds. Pilot → prove → scale replaces big-bang bets. Boards and funders back what ships.
Tech problems will happen. That’s normal.
What’s not optional is who owns the outcome when they do.
Because the truth is: this isn’t “IT work.”
It’s leadership—protecting revenue, program impact, and tomorrow’s audit.
When the next bad day hits, who’s your named owner for uptime—and what’s on their 30-day plan?
This content was originally posted on LinkedIn.