Nick B. Nicholaou is an information technology consultant and president of Ministry Business Services. He is author of Church IT: Strategies and Solutions (ChurchLawAndTaxStore.com). Recently he was interviewed by Bobby Ross for Church Law & Tax Report, and offered these ideas:
Hire a help-desk person.
Church leaders tend to think they need a network administrator or engineer, and network engineers are really only needed when you’re designing a network or doing major updates at the server level and configuration level. What most churches need is a help-desk person, someone who can answer, Why can’t I print? or Why can’t I connect to this webpage? The annual salary is between $20,000 and $25,000 lower for a help-desk support technician.
Buy for two years, not five.
Don’t buy equipment thinking, In the next four or five years, we’ll be at that level, because technology is going to go down in cost by then. Plus, some technologies may move in a different direction.
Get charity licenses for software.
If a church is paying retail for its software licenses, it’s most likely significantly overpaying. Microsoft offers charity licensing, as do a number of other companies. Microsoft Office, which might go for about $350 per license at retail, costs only about $50 with charity licensing.
Bring your own device.
Maybe we’re a church that only allows Windows machines, and we’ve just called you as a pastor, fresh out of seminary. You’ve done everything in your computing life on a Mac. Should we care if you use a Windows machine or a Mac? With today’s technology, it doesn’t have to matter. We should focus on how to make you optimally productive.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) makes many IT people nervous, but it makes for a happier user community and can save the organization money. There are policies to have in place, though, defining “What is the organization responsible for and what is the user responsible for?” The organization should also require that the user’s machine run the organization’s preferred antimalware solution.
Go deeper on how churches can use Information Technology well in Nick Nicholaou's book, Church IT: Strategies and Solutions, available on ChurchLawAndTaxStore.com. Adapted from interviews in Church Law & Tax Report and Church Finance Today. Learn more at ChurchLawAndTax.com.
