The problem
The platform handling donations and donor records had been built by a single volunteer developer who was no longer available. Nobody on staff could safely make a change, dependencies were years out of date, and the organisation had no way to plan technology spend beyond "hope nothing breaks."
What we did
- Stabilise first. Audited the codebase and infrastructure, patched the security issues that mattered most, and moved deploys onto a repeatable, documented process instead of one person's laptop.
- Managed retainer. Took on ongoing maintenance — monitoring, patching, and a defined response time for anything donation-critical — sized to the organisation's budget rather than a standard commercial rate.
- Advisory. Gave the board a plain-language technology roadmap so future spend is a planned line item, not an emergency.
The outcome
The platform has run without a missed donation-processing incident since the retainer began, security and dependency patches now ship on a predictable monthly cadence, and the board has a roadmap it can actually budget against instead of an unknown risk.