What should a modern charity technical architecture look like?

The problem we see time and again

When we start working with a new charity, it can feel like opening up a messy control panel containing bundles of interconnected wires - each cable a different platform, each switch a different stakeholder need. While key systems like CRMs, content management systems, donation tools, analytics, and marketing platforms are doing their respective jobs, they're not always talking to each other properly. The signals aren't flowing where they need to.

This disconnection isn't just a technical inconvenience, it's a barrier to impact. When systems don’t talk to each other, valuable data remains fragmented across platforms. That means charities can’t build a full picture of supporter behaviour, campaign performance, or service outcomes. Without integrated data, it's really hard to generate the business intelligence needed to answer key strategic questions like these:

Fundraising: Which content drives higher-value donors?

Digital: How can we optimise forms or landing pages with high drop-off rates?

Communications: What storytelling works best with our audience?

Strategy: How are we tracking progress against mission-critical metrics?

If your current setup can't provide these answers, it's time to rethink your approach.

Setting foundational principles

Your digital ecosystem should be designed so that every step in a user's journey – clicking a social media ad, taking a quiz, landing on a webpage, signing a petition or making a donation – is tracked in a simple, centralised way that helps you progress your goals.

This means designing your architecture around five key pillars:

Unified data flow

Your CRM should be the single source of truth about users, with all platforms feeding data into it consistently. When someone fills out a form, makes a donation, or engages with content, that interaction should be captured and connected to their complete journey.

Once you’re capturing all this, a data warehouse (like BigQuery or Snowflake) will help you make data-driven decisions by ingesting and consolidating the information across all your platforms. This opens the door for machine learning to unlock new, sometimes surprising, insights. AI can help spot patterns across donation history, campaign performance, and supporter journeys that would otherwise remain hidden. In turn, these patterns enable predictive modelling, smart segmentation, and much more tailored engagement strategies.

Of course, not every organisation is in a position to start with a best-in-class CRM or overhaul their legacy systems overnight. And that’s okay! Perfection is often the enemy of progress. In many cases, pragmatic workarounds like middleware tools (e.g. Zapier, Make), lightweight data sync solutions, or focused data exports into a simple reporting warehouse can offer significant wins without a full rebuild. Focus on unlocking value incrementally, don’t wait for a future-proof utopia.

Measure, analyse and optimise

Your architecture shouldn’t just be about storing data, but making it actionable. Look for ways to embed business intelligence capabilities in the stack. If you can design pipelines that transform your raw operational data into simple, up-to-date dashboards, your digital, fundraising, and strategy teams will love you! Work on shifting from descriptive analytics (“what happened”) to predictive and prescriptive analytics (“what will happen and what should we do about it”).

Scalable content management

Your website’s Content Management System (CMS) needs to grow with your ambitions. It should be secure, maintainable, and friendly for your editorial team, and integrate seamlessly with your other systems (donation platforms, personalisation platforms, CRM, ecommerce platforms). Look for AI-powered features to support content creation and ensure consistency with your organisation's tone of voice, as well as provide future-ready mechanisms for users to interact with your content (like RNIB’s AI-powered ChatRNIB helpdesk service).

Streamlined data capture

Forms should be simple, accessible, and friction-free for users. Submissions should flow cleanly into your CRM, without manual intervention.

Future-ready technology

Your architecture should be prepared for emerging technologies, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt as your needs evolve. We often talk about ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ – designing systems so that the key parts can be swapped out without too much pain, when better alternatives appear.

Choosing the right tools

We've spent 25 years designing and building large, information-rich websites for world-leading charities. We've learned that the right tool choice depends on your specific needs, but here are key points to consider:

1. Prioritise security across the stack
   From your CMS to your donation tools, choose platforms that are secure by design. Look for minimal reliance on third-party plugins, strong data protection standards, and clear vendor accountability.
2. Balance cost and value
   Open-source platforms often deliver the best value for multi-user tools like CMSs. But in areas like analytics or email automation, commercial tools may justify their costs. Always consider the total cost of ownership, not just license fees.
3. Pick tools people will use
   Even the smartest system is useless if your team avoids it. Prioritise usability and workflow fit. Request demos tailored to your specific needs, to test real-world suitability.
4. Choose integration-ready platforms
   Every tool should play nicely with others. APIs, webhooks, and compatibility with middleware like Zapier or Make allow for clean data flow across your stack.
5. Favour modularity over perfection
   Avoid lock-in. Choose systems that can be easily replaced or extended without disrupting your whole ecosystem.
6. Use the right tool for the job
   Combine best-in-class tools across functions rather than a jack-of-all-trades platform:i

• CRM: e.g. Salesforce or Beacon
  
• CMS: e.g. Wagtail or Contentful
  
• Donations: e.g. GoDonate, Funraisin
  
• Email: e.g. Mailchimp, Dotdigital
  
• Analytics: e.g. BigQuery, Power BI
  
• AI tools: Use state of the art models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google for content, insight, and personalisation where appropriate or seek lighter weight, cheaper, more energy efficient models where possible.
  

Smart tool choices make your architecture more flexible, future-ready, and effective – without overcomplicating your stack.

Our philosophy: small pieces, loosely joined

We believe in 'small pieces, loosely joined'. Complex, monolithic applications can't easily adapt to changing organisational needs and often create expensive vendor lock-in, especially when charging strategies change as has been the case, e.g. with Microsoft ending its free software services for voluntary organisations.

Each component can be detached and replaced as requirements change or better alternatives become available. This approach provides both flexibility and cost control.

By thinking holistically and applying consistent principles, you’ll build a charity tech stack that’s not just future-ready, but also delivers real, sustained impact now.

The design principles I follow

Here are my core principles for designing a modern charity technical architecture:

1. Take a sensible approach to build vs buy, considering total cost of ownership
2. Use existing services if they support integration through APIs
3. Cloud-first for scalability and security
4. Prioritise interoperability and choose tools that integrate cleanly with other platforms to avoid data silos and reduce manual work
5. Validate assumptions early and adapt based on real user feedback
6. Choose open-source solutions for core platforms, commercial tools for specific needs
7. Prefer simplicity and maintainability over technical complexity
8. Ensure compliance with relevant security standards

Rank each architecture option in terms of effort and cost versus value.

How to get started

Start by auditing your current tech infrastructure: what's working, what needs rethinking, and how everything should connect. Then build your architecture around the principle that every system should contribute to your mission, not create barriers to it. Resist the sunk cost fallacy!

Remember, the goal isn't to have the most advanced technology, it's to have the right technology that grows with your organisation and serves your beneficiaries effectively.