NTEN

Abstract

This capstone paper presents an exploratory analysis of nonprofit technology adoption and management, leveraging NTEN’s Tech Accelerate self-assessment dataset and a structured literature review. The study examines technology readiness across five domains, leadership, infrastructure, engagement, organizational culture, and emerging technologies, using data from over 1,200 nonprofit organizations. Key findings reveal that participants who complete multiple assessments tend to show improving technology risk levels, and cohort organizations in NTEN’s Nonprofit Tech Readiness program have outperformed peers since 2024. Self-assessment scores declined across all questions post-2021, for unclear reasons that could warrant further inquiry. The analysis identifies organizational characteristics, including staff size, budget, technology investment, and founding decade, as strong predictors of technology risk, with smaller and newer organizations facing greater challenges.

Recommendations include further investigating indicators that the Tech Accelerate instrument can help organizations improve technology management practices, expanding data collection, enriching organizational metadata, evolving the assessment instrument, and leveraging the curated literature catalog to inform future NTEN programming. The literature review contextualizes findings using academic and practitioner sources related to questions with the highest and lowest risk flag percentages in each category. The paper concludes that nonprofit technology adoption requires integrated approaches that align digital tools with mission.