Why digital maturity is now a survival issue for Canada’s nonprofits

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

For Canada’s nonprofit sector, it’s an era of hard choices.

Donations are falling, costs are climbing, and a new report from Carleton University and Imagine Canada found that nearly 88% of organizations say financial uncertainty is their biggest threat. Limited and declining resources are also leading to staff burnout.

Leaders are being forced to confront a difficult reality: sustainability now depends on how efficiently they can operate, not just how generously people give.

No wonder the report is called Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Findings show a precarious equilibrium. Nonprofits are carrying more of the country’s social and economic burden, yet many still rely on short-term project funding that leaves them scrambling to cover core operations. Outdated systems and scattered data add to the strain, consuming the time and resources that should go toward mission delivery.

Across the country, nonprofit Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and technology leaders are responding by treating digital maturity — how well an organization uses technology and data to work smarter, move faster, and stay resilient — as a condition for survival. Efficiency, data visibility, and smarter use of technology have become the only realistic ways to serve growing demand with limited means.

Modernizing starts by fixing what’s already broken. Years of piecemeal systems, legacy databases, and manual processes have left many charities struggling to manage their own information, let alone scale it. The first step toward sustainability often begins with cleaning up the data foundation itself.

Consolidating for efficiency

Much of the sector’s inefficiency begins with fragmented data. Organizations of all stripes still juggle multiple donor, volunteer, and program databases, each managed separately. The result is duplication, inconsistent records, and lost opportunities to engage supporters effectively.

At the Canadian Cancer Society, Lesa O’Brien, CanadianCIO CIO of the Year in the not-for-profit category, saw firsthand how these legacy systems slowed progress, when the nonprofit merged with the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation in 2017.

*Lesa O’Brien is recognized as the CanadianCIO CIO of the Year in the not-for-profit category during the CIO Association of Canada awards ceremony — Photo by Scott Ramsay for Digital Journal*

It got a little messy in the beginning.

“How do we get down from 17 database CRM systems to one or two,” she said, recalling what the team faced. “How do we [get] two websites down to one? How do we make sure that our brand is aligned?”

Unifying those systems allowed the organization to streamline data, reduce costs, and build a single, reliable view of donors and participants. For nonprofits operating under tightening budgets, consolidation is becoming a financial imperative as much as a technological one.

Shifting from support to strategy

As organizations evolve, many are rethinking how technology fits into their structure. For digital change to succeed, IT can no longer be seen as an internal service desk. It has to be part of the leadership conversation.

“I prefer a culture where technology teams are seen as strategic business partners and not as support or order takers,” she said. “At CCS, that’s the role my team plays.”

This mindset shift reflects a broader pattern across the nonprofit sector.

The Status of Canadian Fundraising 2025 report from the Ontario Nonprofit Network found that charities with higher levels of digital maturity are more likely to report income growth and improved donor retention. Across the sector, 66% of organizations said their income either increased or held steady over the past year, a trend closely linked to their level of digital capability. Yet the average digital maturity score remains just 5.4 out of 10, suggesting most nonprofits are still early in their transformation journey.

The same report found that 83% of organizations have started using AI tools, a substantial rise from 67% the year before. Leaders see these technologies as essential to closing the capacity gap and freeing up staff to focus on mission delivery. For many, that progress depends less on tools and more on governance, creating the structures that let technology leaders operate as equal partners in strategic planning.

The link between digital maturity and mission impact

For many executives, the challenge is cultural as much as technical. Investing in technology, specifically cloud-based systems, can feel risky when every dollar is scrutinized, but the potential payoff is clear. According to a 2025 NetSuite analysis, nonprofits that invest in integrated digital systems (e.g. enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for automating day-to-day processes and data management) often see improvements in efficiency, collaboration, and donor engagement

Digital maturity helps organizations manage complexity, allocate funds more strategically, and reach more people without increasing costs. This analysis highlights that technology adoption, when paired with clear planning, can strengthen decision-making and organizational agility.

A unified data environment allows nonprofits to understand their communities better, spot patterns in demand, and tailor programs accordingly. It also enables real-time performance monitoring, data funders increasingly expect. As reporting and compliance requirements become more demanding, this kind of visibility is a prerequisite for trust.

The payoff is cumulative. Each investment in data and systems compounds the next, creating operational discipline that strengthens mission impact. The more digitally mature an organization becomes, the better equipped it is to sustain progress when external conditions shift.

A national question of digital capacity

Nonprofits account for more than 8% of Canada’s GDP and employ over two million people. They are a massive, and overlooked, economic driver for the country.

Yet, as another Carleton report from April found, 66% of charities report a sustained increase in demand since the pandemic. 72% say they cannot meet current demand, despite 55% having expanded their capacity in recent years.

When nonprofits are efficient and adaptable, they influence far more than community programs. They shape how well the country responds to economic shifts, public health crises, and social challenges.

As other sectors accelerate their digital transformations, the nonprofit system risks becoming the slowest link in Canada’s economic and even innovation chain. If charities can’t modernize, the impact ripples outward: slower service delivery, weaker data for policy decisions, and missed opportunities to align public and private investment.

Digital maturity has become a question of national resilience. It determines whether social programs can adapt as demand rises and whether Canada’s broader innovation agenda includes the community sector that underpins it.

The organizations that see technology as shared infrastructure, not as a competing cost, are building the foundation for sustainable impact, trusted partnerships, and a more responsive social economy.