Around 40 per cent of charities do not have either employed or volunteer IT staff and most are over-reliant on advice from suppliers, according to a report published today.

More than half of charity respondents (62 per cent) cited cost as the main barrier to development and 42 per cent said that the cost of advice was a challenge.

Suppliers were the second most popular source of advice, after members of staff, with 64 per cent of respondents saying they obtained advice from an IT supplier. Some 82 per cent of larger organisations (income more than £5m) said that they obtained IT advice from their suppliers.

The report warns that: “Relying on suppliers for advice is an obvious high-risk strategy as suppliers will typically only be able to advise on their core expertise, which is the services they provide. This has an obvious potential for ‘supplier lock-in’.”

Collaboration afoot

The Charity Technology Trust (CTT), Lasa, IT4Communities, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and Adapta surveyed 140 organisations about their use of information technology in November 2012.

Richard Craig, chief executive of CTT, said: “This research project marks the beginning of what we hope will be a fruitful collaboration between all of our respective organisations. Together we can tackle the IT challenges the charity sector faces.

“We can help charities to transition the use of technology from a ‘nice to have’ element of their organisations to being a key part of their overall strategies, helping to support their day-to-day operations and to better achieve their missions.”

Terry Stokes, chief executive of Lasa, added: “We hope this report raises awareness of some of the great services available from Lasa and our partners that are there to help.”

Click here to see the full report.

The findings from the Charity Finance IT survey will be published in the February issue of the magazine and online. To read last year's survey click here (subscriber content).