People Before Platforms — Real Talk from UnTangled

Nonprofit tech is messy. I don’t care how shiny the demo looked when you bought that CRM, or how much your team swears “this new platform will change everything.” At the end of the day, the tools don’t do the work. People do.

That theme has been front and center in a couple of recent UnTangled episodes with friends and brilliant colleagues Maureen Wallbeoff and Sade Dozan. Both conversations came back to the same truth: if we put the tech ahead of the humans, we’re sunk.

Maureen’s 5 Tips for Managing the Tech Mess

When Maureen and I sat down at the end of July, we laughed (a little too knowingly) about how most nonprofit staff are thrown into managing complex tech with exactly zero training. “Other duties as assigned” is real. One day, you’re hired because you care about animals or climate justice, and the next, you’re expected to master a CRM and run sophisticated email segmentation.

Good luck with that.

Maureen came with practical advice to survive (and maybe even thrive) in the tech mess:

1. Stop hating your tools. You don’t have to love them, but raging at a CRM won’t fix anything.
2. Make a pain-point list. Write down all the things that drive you nuts. Nine times out of 10, the issue is process or setup, not the platform itself.
3. Make friends with your vendors. You’re already paying them. Use the training and support that comes with it.
4. Share the load. Don’t let one person hoard all the knowledge. Spread out ownership so your organization isn’t one resignation away from chaos.
5. Use AI to make life easier. It can’t solve your people problems, but it can draft checklists, troubleshoot, or speed up training.

The bottom line: your tech stack will never be better than the people and processes behind it.

Watch the full UnTangled episode with Maureen Wallbeoff:

Sade’s Call to Keep People at the Center

Then in mid-August, I talked with the amazing Sade Dozan, who lives and breathes relationship-centered fundraising. And she reminded us of something too many folks forget in the rush to adopt the latest tools: relationships come first.

She left us with two mic-drop takeaways:

• If your CRM crashed tomorrow, could you still pick up the phone and call your top 10 donors? If not, you’ve got some relational work to do.
• Measure success by the quality of your relationships, not just revenue. That means building culture and values into how you use tech—not the other way around.

Sade also raised something we don’t talk about enough: bias. Algorithms are not neutral. If you’re not careful, they’ll reinforce inequities instead of helping dismantle them. We must be aware of that if we’re serious about building more equitable organizations.

Watch the full UnTangled episode with Sade Dozan:

My Take

Both conversations brought me back to what I know in my bones: people must come first. Always. Tools are just tools. They can make our jobs easier, but they can’t do the actual work of building trust, creating connections, or sustaining relationships over time.

The real heart of nonprofit work has always been about people—telling authentic stories of impact, showing why the work matters, and connecting with supporters on a deeply human, emotional level. That’s what motivates action. That’s what inspires people to donate, volunteer, and keep showing up.

And once someone raises their hand to say “yes, I care,” the stewardship of that relationship is everything. That’s what turns a one-time donor into a lifelong supporter who will stick with you through thick and thin. No CRM, no AI tool, no automation will ever do that for you.

That doesn’t mean tools don’t matter. They do. They should help take grunt work off your team’s plate, enable personalization at scale, and make it easier for staff to focus on what they do best. The best use of technology is when it frees up time and energy so the humans in your organization can do more of the deeply human work—listening, storytelling, relationship-building, and showing up with care and authenticity.

At the end of the day, the mission moves forward because of relationships. Tools can help, but they will never replace the heart of this work: people caring about people.

Want to catch the full conversations? Check out both episodes of UnTangled above and drop me a note, or let’s schedule a call and talk about what resonated.