Good developers prefer working for charities

Executives in charities often see developers as hard to attract and retain. Coming from the corporate world, I've noticed developers bored with making minor improvements in profit-driven companies and preferring purpose-driven work. Most developers I've known would rather work in a for-purpose start-up than a traditional for-profit one. This mismatch in perceptions is interesting: while executives think developers are hard to attract, developers actually prefer working for charities.

Let's look at the challenges of attracting talent into a charity. I've identified a couple of easy-to-address issues. Firstly, for-purpose organisations tend to be thriftier on salaries than their corporate counterparts. This is a false economy. Paying someone less than they are worth is not only a barrier to attracting talent; it is also a good reason to leave once they have gained a few skills.

To remove this obstacle, I educate my customers on the value a single developer can bring to their organisation. In any organisation with over 100 people, a good mid-level developer can, within one year, create enough integrations and streamlined experiences to avoid hiring at least four people annually. This is true whether the charity has growth ambitions or aims to improve efficiencies with stable funding year-to-year. By building automations to eliminate manual workarounds, the average saving can be around $60,000 per year across management and administrative resources. Often, increased operational costs arise due to system inefficiencies, requiring more team leaders and impacting budget and strategic goals.

Avoiding the hire of four of these resources, including managers, translates to about a quarter of a million dollars per year, which adds up to $1 million saved over four years. Thus, quibbling over $20,000-$30,000 in incremental salary is a false economy.

Another aspect of this thriftiness is political. Many charities trying to attract their first developer will lean towards hiring a senior developer. These developers often command salaries higher than those of the executives, which is a hard challenge to overcome, even in the corporate world. The obvious solution is to avoid aiming for the top of the developer market. The work itself is not groundbreaking from a technical perspective, but from an organisational automation perspective.

For general automation, including integrations and new streamlined experiences, top-notch developers are overkill. The safest bet is to look for developers with a solid track record (this is where references are very important) but with perhaps 2 to 5 years of experience. With the advent of generative AI, I'd recommend leaning towards the lower end of this range, as long as the developer has experience with generative AI. Feel free to reach out for tips on hiring these people.

The second area where charities struggle to attract talent is due to management's avoidance of technologies that would attract developers. The right technologies to use are license-free open-source frameworks that run on modern cloud services, rather than licensed products deployed on outdated cloud infrastructure. When a developer considers joining an organisation, whether it's a charity or a for-profit, they look for opportunities to acquire skills in the most modern and ubiquitous technologies. This opens up their future job prospects rather than limiting them.