Education, Healthcare, and Nonprofit Technology Strategy

Having the right technology strategy is essential for amplifying your impact. At Heller Consulting, we understand the unique challenges your organization faces and work with you to create a forward-looking technology plan that is easy to use and aligns with your goals.

Our experts empower you with the right tools and strategies so you can focus on what matters most—your mission.

TRUSTED BY TECHNOLOGY LEADERS AT

Our Strategic Technology Services

AI Strategy Assessment

Ready to implement Artificial Intelligence? We help you identify infrastructure gaps and opportunities to better serve your mission. You receive a comprehensive AI Strategy Roadmap that includes:

Risk management support to ensure responsible AI use
AI projects you can start immediately without additional funding
A prioritized shortlist of AI initiatives and a pilot integration plan

We understand the vision behind your mission and how to reflect it in your nonprofit technology strategy. For nearly three decades, we’ve worked exclusively with nonprofit, education, and healthcare institutions, giving us unique insights into mission-driven technology.

Technology Roadmap

To align your CRM strategy with your mission, Heller creates comprehensive Technology Roadmaps by evaluating your ecosystem to determine what to keep, replace, and enhance. This process provides:

An actionable blueprint with specific project phases, activity sequences, expected timeframes, costs, and change management considerations.
An audit of necessary functionality and a plan for how to achieve your future state.

You can then partner with our experts to execute the strategy or implement the roadmap internally.

Fractional Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Heller can serve as your nonprofit’s Fractional CIO, providing the expertise and bandwidth needed to make informed decisions without the overhead of a full-time hire. This partnership helps you confidently build and manage data governance frameworks, information security, and IT budget management.

Change leadership

Heller supports your team’s adaptation to new technology by understanding your unique dynamics to ensure successful adoption. Our approach includes:

Establishing internal change management advocates and teams
Training and troubleshooting
Facilitating widespread adoption post-implementation

Technology selection

Team Heller breaks down vendor demos, system comparisons, and project planning using selection methodologies and templates, supplemented with our decades of experience and knowledge of the best practices in nonprofit tech. Plus, our platform-agnostic approach means you can be confident that you’re choosing the best solution.

I was kept up to speed of the project progress, that project management was solid with good communication, the scope and purpose was understood by the Heller team, and were clear with the methodology used to get to the recommendations.

Enterprise wildlife nonprofit

Senior VP for Operations and Technology

Nonprofit technology consulting success stories

HealthPartners

As the largest consumer-governed nonprofit healthcare organization in the U.S., HealthPartners had a myriad of system needs related to properly storing and acting on data. Plus, of its eight hospital foundations, all of them use their own CRM. To unify this data in one system, Heller collaborated with the organization’s steering committee and prioritized system requirements to create an ideal technology vision. HealthPartners now has a clear technology vision in place for its family of hospital foundations.

ASHRAE

Faced with an internal ban on Artificial Intelligence that led to unregulated “shadow AI” use among staff, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) partnered with Heller Consulting to safely explore how the technology could benefit their members without risking proprietary data. Heller guided the organization through a governance-first approach, helping them establish clear AI guiding principles, an Acceptable Use policy, and a phased rollout plan utilizing tools they already had access to, like Microsoft Copilot. As a result, ASHRAE successfully transitioned from a state of hesitant exploration to confidently implementing a secure, actionable AI roadmap focused on enhancing member services and improving data integration.

Canadian Cancer Society

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) approached Team Heller with a big challenge: unifying siloed healthcare databases across its 10 locations into one large organizational database. Plus, CCS had bilingual records and legal data requirements unique to Canada. To address these challenges, Heller worked closely with CCS to build a technology solution that met their new needs after their restructuring. Thanks to Team Heller, CCS finally had a single platform and data source to rely on.

Environmental Defense Fund

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is a leading environmental organization with a whopping 1,000 employees who champion environmental causes in 29 countries. The organization faced its largest technological challenge yet—completely migrating from Blackbaud to Salesforce in only 14 months. By working with Team Heller, EDF completed a smooth transition with six weeks to spare.

What sets Heller Consulting apart

Platform-agnostic services

Whether you need Salesforce, Microsoft, Blackbaud, or something else, Heller’s strategies are crafted to ascertain and build a tech stack that works for you. We prioritize flexibility and accessibility, ensuring our approach and recommendations adapt to your mission through periods of change.

Tried-and-true guiding principles

We don’t rely on guesswork—we follow proven frameworks. Our Technology Guiding Principles offer a structured path for selecting and implementing tech, customized to your values, growth stage, and risk tolerance. And we’ll be there every step of the way, providing expert guidance.

Technology know-how and sector experience

FAQs about Heller’s technology strategy services

What is a nonprofit technology consultant?

A nonprofit tech consultant acts as a specialized guide to help mission-driven organizations make the most of their digital tools. They provide full-service strategic support, from assessing your nonprofit’s readiness to implementing a software solution to ensuring long-term adherence.

When does a nonprofit need a technology consultant?

If your tech starts feeling more like a roadblock than a shortcut, it might be time to revamp your tech stack. Some other signs that it’s time to take a second look include:

Lack of scalability
Overreliance on clunky manual processes
Lack of integrated data and reporting across departments

Why choose Heller’s tech strategy services?

You need a partner that understands how to address your specific challenges. Team Heller has worked exclusively in nonprofit, higher ed, and healthcare tech for three decades. We know what actually works and will find the setup that fits your budget, culture, and goals perfectly—no pressure or strings attached!

What other services does Heller offer?

Once the strategy is set, we roll up our sleeves and put it into motion. We handle full Salesforce, Microsoft, Blackbaud, and Kindsight Ascend implementations. We can also step in to manage your IT day-to-day if your team is stretched thin, or help clean up your data so you can actually trust the numbers you’re looking at.

Ready to Get Started?

Your mission deserves the best nonprofit technology strategy. Tell our experts more about your project.