Budgeting for ICT

LASA has a guide to ICT budgeting for VCS organisations. Blackbaud also has useful pointers for budgeting for ICT in the voluntary sector.

Here's a rough guide to ICT budgeting taken from Leading the way to ICT Success:

• ICT running costs, including upgrades and ICT-related staffing, should be part of the organisation's core budget.
• The budget for hardware maintenance, repairs, software upgrades (including anti-virus updates) and ongoing costs such as software support can be fairly modest. We suggest as little as £250 per workstation per year if the equipment and system are fairly new. This figure should, however, be seen as a minimum.
• Taking a round figure of £20,000 a year salary costs for someone to support 50 users, the budget for each user must therefore be £400 towards ICT salaries.
• Organisations should be prepared to pay a minimum of £1,000 - £2,000 a year for network support (obviously more for larger organisations). If they can get a satisfactory level of service for less, well and good, but before installing a network it is important to be sure that the money for support will be available if necessary.
• The organisation must have a realistic training budget, in which ICT training for individual staff is an option, and with training costs built into major developments.
• Before bidding for major ICT projects, organisations must have their budget checked. We were told of organisations that had received money for projects, then found that, because they had under-estimated the costs, they had to revise their spending plans after the event.