Custom platform · Nonprofit
This national nonprofit coordinates volunteers and homeowners across states, holding personal data on a public platform with no security program and no internal IT. intSignal delivers the platform, the security and the support — so donations fund the mission, not a server room.
The problem
Coordinating volunteers and recipients across states with no fit-for-purpose system.
What we did
Cybersecurity program covering the platform and staff.
The outcome
Purpose-built CRM/ERP replaced multiple overlapping SaaS subscriptions.
The challenge
Coordinating volunteers and recipients across states with no fit-for-purpose system. Personal data of volunteers and homeowners with no security program around it. A public platform exposed to the internet without protection or monitoring. No internal IT function to run any of it.
The approach
Cybersecurity program covering the platform and staff. Custom CRM and ERP, plus a custom website platform with CDN and hosting. Microsoft 365 administration and management. Full MSP IT support so the nonprofit doesn't need an internal IT team.
The thinking
A national public platform holding personal data needed to scale on demand without a permanently oversized bill, and to be defensible from day one. We built custom and put it behind a CDN on infrastructure we manage — public-cloud economics where traffic is spiky (content delivery), private control where it isn't (the data and the application). Choosing per-layer rather than defaulting the whole thing to one model is what kept cost predictable as the organisation grew across states.
Why it works
The quieter win is accountability. When a custom platform, its hosting, its security and its phone system come from four different vendors, the gaps between them are where things break — and no one owns the gap. Building and running it as one means a single team is answerable for the whole, the systems are unified by design rather than integrated after the fact, and there's one relationship to manage instead of a switchboard of suppliers. For a small team, that unification is the difference between technology being a tool and being a second job.
Outcome
Volunteer and recipient data is protected and monitored, the public platform is hardened behind a CDN, and the whole environment runs under full MSP support with no internal IT hire. Purpose-built CRM and ERP replaced a stack of overlapping subscriptions, consolidating cost as the organisation scaled nationally.
CDN and efficient hosting kept costs predictable as traffic grew nationally. Outsourced MSP support avoided hiring internal IT the mission couldn't fund. Consolidated vendors into one relationship with one bill.
How these figures were derived
Effort and outcomes are reconstructed from production systems of record — ticket histories, call detail records, dispatch and SOC/NOC telemetry — read end to end rather than sampled. Cost comparisons are indexed to a baseline, never a fee or rate. Where a figure is modelled rather than measured it is labelled as such, and the model is documented and available to defend on request.
Customer
Shown on request. Some engagements remain confidential by contract.
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