Cryptocurrency and the charitable contribution conundrum

Of all the changes that came with the sweeping Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in late 2017, none has prompted as big a response from our clients as the changes TCJA makes to the qualified parking deduction. Then, last month, the IRS issued its long-waited guidance on this code section in the form of Notice 2018-99. 

We've taken a look at both the the original provisions, and the new guidance, and have collected the salient points and things we think you need to consider this tax season. For not-for-profit organizations, visit my article here. And for-profit companies can read here.  

IRS Notice 2018-67 Hits the Charts
Last week, in addition to The Eagles Greatest Hits (1971-1975) album becoming the highest selling album of all time, overtaking Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the IRS issued Notice 2018-67—its first formal guidance on Internal Revenue Code Section 512(a)(6), one of two major code sections added by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that directly impacts tax-exempt organizations. Will it too, be a big hit? It remains to be seen.

Section 512(a)(6) specifically deals with the reporting requirements for not-for-profit organizations carrying on multiple unrelated business income (UBI) activities. Here, we will summarize the notice and help you to gain an understanding of the IRS’s thoughts and anticipated approaches to implementing §512(a)(6).

While there have been some (not so quiet) grumblings from the not-for-profit sector about guidance on Code Section 512(a)(7) (aka the parking lot tax), unfortunately we still have not seen anything yet. With Notice 2018-67’s release last week, we’re optimistic that guidance may be on the way and will let you know as soon as we see anything from the IRS.

Before we dive in, it’s important to note last week’s notice is just that—a notice, not a Revenue Procedure or some other substantive legislation. While the notice can, and should be relied upon until we receive further guidance, everything in the notice is open to public comment and/or subject to change. With that, here are some highlights:

No More Netting
512(a)(6) requires the organization to calculate unrelated business taxable income (UBTI), including for purposes of determining any net operating loss (NOL) deduction, separately with respect to each such trade or business. The notice requires this separate reporting (or silo-ing) of activities in order to determine activities with net income from those with net losses.

Under the old rules, if an organization had two UBI activities in a given year, (e.g., one with $1,000 of net income and another with $1,000 net loss, you could simply net the two together on Form 990-T and report $0 UBTI for the year. That is no longer the case. From now on, you can effectively ignore activities with a current year loss, prompting the organization to report $1,000 as taxable UBI, and pay associated federal and state income taxes, while the activity with the $1,000 loss will get “hung-up” as an NOL specific to that activity and carried forward until said activity generates a net income.

Separate Trade or Business
So, how does one distinguish (or silo) a separate trade or business from another? The Treasury Department and IRS intend to propose some regulations in the near future, but for now recommend that organizations use a “reasonable good-faith interpretation”, which for now includes using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) in order to determine different UBI activities.

For those not familiar, the NAICS categorizes different lines of business with a six-digit code. For example, the NAICS code for renting* out a residential building or dwelling is 531110, while the code for operating a potato farm is 111211. While distinguishing residential rental activities from potato farming activities might be rather straight forward, the waters become muddier if an organization rents both a residential property and a nonresidential property (NAICS code 531120). Does this mean the organization has two separate UBI rental activities, or can both be grouped together as rental activities? The notice does not provide anything definitive, but rather is requesting public comments?we expect to see something more concrete once the public comment period is over.

*In the above example, we’re assuming the rental properties are debt-financed, prompting a portion of the rental activity to be treated as UBI.

UBI from Partnership Investments (Schedule K-1)
Notice 2018-67 does address how to categorize/group unrelated business income for organizations that receive more than one partnership K-1 with UBI reported. In short, if the Schedule K-1s the organization receives can meet either of the tests below, the organization may treat the partnership investments as a single activity/silo for UBI reporting purposes. The notice offers the following:

De Minimis Test
You can aggregate UBI from multiple K-1s together as long as the exempt organization holds directly no more than 2% of the profits interest and no more that 2% of the capital interest. These percentages can be found on the face of the Schedule K-1 from the Partnership and the notice states those percentages as shown can be used for this determination. Additionally, the notice allows organizations to use an average of beginning of year and end of year percentages for this determination.

Ex: If an organization receives a K-1 with UBI reported, and the beginning of year profit & capital percentages are 3%, and the end of year percentages are 1%, the average for the year is 2% (3% + 1% = 4%/2 = 2%). In this example, the K-1 meets the de minimis test.

There is a bit of a caveat here—when determining an exempt organization's partnership interest, the interest of a disqualified person (i.e. officers, directors, trustees, substantial contributors, and family members of any of those listed here), a supporting organization, or a controlled entity in the same partnership will be taken into account. Organizations need to review all K-1s received and inquire with the appropriate person(s) to determine if they meet the terms of the de minimis test.

Control Test
If an organization is not able to pass the de minimis test, you may instead use the control test. An organization meets the requirements of the control test if the exempt organization (i) directly holds no more than 20 percent of the capital interest; and (ii) does not have control or influence over the partnership.

When determining control or influence over the partnership, you need to apply all relevant facts and circumstances. The notice states:

“An exempt organization has control or influence if the exempt organization may require the partnership to perform, or may prevent the partnership from performing, any act that significantly affects the operations of the partnership. An exempt organization also has control or influence over a partnership if any of the exempt organization's officers, directors, trustees, or employees have rights to participate in the management of the partnership or conduct the partnership's business at any time, or if the exempt organization has the power to appoint or remove any of the partnership's officers, directors, trustees, or employees.”

As noted above, we recommend your organization review any K-1s you currently receive. It’s important to take a look at Line I1 and make sure your organization is listed here as “Exempt Organization”. All too often we see not-for-profit organizations listed as “Corporations”, which while usually technically correct, this designation is really for a for-profit corporation and could result in the organization not receiving the necessary information in order to determine what portion, if any, of income/loss is attributable to UBI.

Net Operating Losses
The notice also provides some guidance regarding the use of NOLs. The good news is that any pre-2018 NOLs are grandfathered under the old rules and can be used to offset total UBTI on Form 990-T.

Conversely, any NOLs generated post-2018 are going to be considered silo-specific, with the intent being that the NOL will only be applicable to the activity which gave rise to the loss. There is also a limitation on post-2018 NOLs, allowing you to use only 80% of the NOL for a given activity. Said another way, an activity that has net UBTI in a given year, even with post-2017 NOLs, will still potentially have an associated tax liability for the year.

Obviously, Notice 2018-67 provides a good baseline for general information, but the details will be forthcoming, and we will know then if they have a hit. Hopefully the IRS will not Take It To The Limit in terms of issuing formal guidance in regards to 512(a)(6) & (7). Until they receive further IRS guidance,  folks in the not-for-profit sector will not be able to Take It Easy or have any semblance of a Peaceful Easy Feeling. Stay tuned.

Do you know what would happen to your company if your CEO suddenly had to resign immediately for personal reasons? Or got seriously ill? Or worse, died? These scenarios, while rare, do happen, and many companies are not prepared. In fact, 45% of US companies do not have a contingency plan for CEO succession, according to a 2020 Harvard Business Review study.  

Do you have a plan for CEO succession? As a business owner, you may have an exit strategy in place for your company, but do you have a plan to bridge the leadership gap for you and each member of your leadership team? Does the plan include the kind of crises listed above? What would you do if your next-in-line left suddenly? 

Whether yours is a family-owned business, a company of equity partners, or a private company with a governing body, here are things to consider when you’re faced with a situation where your CEO has abruptly departed or has decided to step down.  

1. Get a plan in place. First, assess the situation and figure out your priorities. If there is already a plan for these types of circumstances, evaluate how much of it is applicable to this particular circumstance. For example, if the plan is for the stepping down or announced retirement of your CEO, but some other catastrophic event occurs, you may need to adjust key components and focus on immediate messaging rather than future positioning. If there is no plan, assign a small team to create one immediately. 

Make sure management, team leaders, and employees are aware and informed of your progress; this will help keep you organized and streamline communications. Management needs to take the lead and select a point person to document the process. Management also needs to take the lead in demeanor. Model your actions so employees can see the situation is being handled with care. Once a strategy is identified based on your priorities, draft a plan that includes what happens now, in the immediate future, and beyond. Include timetables so people know when decisions will be made.  

2. Communicate clearly, and often. In times of uncertainty, your employees will need as much specific information as you can give them. Knowing when they will hear from you, even if it is “we have nothing new to report” builds trust and keeps them vested and involved. By letting them know what your plan is, when they’ll receive another update, what to tell clients, and even what specifics you can give them (e.g., who will take over which CEO responsibility and for how long), you make them feel that they are important stakeholders, and not just bystanders. Stakeholders are more likely to be strong supporters during and after any transition that needs to take place. 

3. Pull in professional help. Depending on your resources, we recommend bringing in a professional to help you handle the situation at hand. At the very least, call in an objective opinion. You’ll need someone who can help you make decisions when emotions are running high. Bringing someone on board that can help you decipher what you have to work with and what your legal and other obligations may be, help rally your team, deal with the media, and manage emotions can be invaluable during a challenging time. Even if it’s temporary. 

4. Develop a timeline. Figure out how much time you have for the transition. For example, if your CEO is ill and will be stepping down in six months, you have time to update any existing exit strategy or succession plan you have in place. Things to include in the timeline: 

• Who is taking over what responsibilities? 
• How and what will be communicated to your company and stakeholders? 
• How and what will be communicated to the market? 
• How will you bring in the CEO's replacement, while helping the current CEO transition out of the organization? 

If you are in a crisis situation (e.g., your CEO has been suddenly forced out or asked to leave without a public explanation), you won’t have the luxury of time.  

Find out what other arrangements have been made in the past and update them as needed. Work with your PR firm to help with your change management and do the right things for all involved to salvage the company’s reputation. When handled correctly, crises don’t have to have a lasting negative impact on your business.   

5. Manage change effectively. When you’re under the gun to quickly make significant changes at the top, you need to understand how the changes may affect various parts of your company. While instinct may tell you to focus externally, don’t neglect your employees. Be as transparent as you possibly can be, present an action plan, ask for support, and get them involved in keeping the environment positive. Whether you bring in professionals or not, make sure you allow for questions, feedback, and even discord if challenging information is being revealed.  

6. Handle the media. Crisis rule #1 is making it clear who can, and who cannot, speak to the media. Assign a point person for all external inquiries and instruct employees to refer all reporter requests for comment to that point person. You absolutely do not want employees leaking sensitive information to the media. 
 
With your employees on board with the change management action plan, you can now focus on external communications and how you will present what is happening to the media. This is not completely under your control. Technology and social media changed the game in terms of speed and access to information to the public and transparency when it comes to corporate leadership. Present a message to the media quickly that coincides with your values as a company. If you are dealing with a scandal where public trust is involved and your CEO is stepping down, handling this effectively will take tact and most likely a team of professionals to help. 

Exit strategies are planning tools. Uncontrollable events occur and we don’t always get to follow our plan as we would have liked. Your organization can still be prepared and know what to do in an emergency situation or sudden crisis.  Executives move out of their roles every day, but how companies respond to these changes is reflective of the strategy in place to handle unexpected situations. Be as prepared as possible. Own your challenges. Stay accountable. 

BerryDunn can help whether you need extra assistance in your office during peak times or interim leadership support during periods of transition. We offer the expertise of a fully staffed accounting department for short-term assignments or long-term engagements―so you can focus on your business. Meet our interim assistance experts.

Read this if your CFO has recently departed, or if you're looking for a replacement.

With the post-Covid labor shortage, “the Great Resignation,” an aging workforce, and ongoing staffing concerns, almost every industry is facing challenges in hiring talented staff. To address these challenges, many organizations are hiring temporary or interim help—even for C-suite positions such as Chief Financial Officers (CFOs).

You may be thinking, “The CFO is a key business partner in advising and collaborating with the CEO and developing a long-term strategy for the organization; why would I hire a contractor to fill this most-important role?” Hiring an interim CFO may be a good option to consider in certain circumstances. Here are three situations where temporary help might be the best solution for your organization.

Your organization has grown

If your company has grown since you created your finance department, or your controller isn’t ready or suited for a promotion, bringing on an interim CFO can be a natural next step in your company’s evolution, without having to make a long-term commitment. It can allow you to take the time and fully understand what you need from the role — and what kind of person is the best fit for your company’s future.

BerryDunn's Kathy Parker, leader of the Boston-based Outsourced Accounting group, has worked with many companies to help them through periods of transition. "As companies grow, many need team members at various skill levels, which requires more money to pay for multiple full-time roles," she shared. "Obtaining interim CFO services allows a company to access different skill levels while paying a fraction of the cost. As the company grows, they can always scale its resources; the beauty of this model is the flexibility."

If your company is looking for greater financial skill or advice to expand into a new market, or turn around an underperforming division, you may want to bring on an outsourced CFO with a specific set of objectives and timeline in mind. You can bring someone on board to develop growth strategies, make course corrections, bring in new financing, and update operational processes, without necessarily needing to keep those skills in the organization once they finish their assignment. Your company benefits from this very specific skill set without the expense of having a talented but expensive resource on your permanent payroll.

Your CFO has resigned

The best-laid succession plans often go astray. If that’s the case when your CFO departs, your organization may need to outsource the CFO function to fill the gap. When your company loses the leader of company-wide financial functions, you may need to find someone who can come in with those skills and get right to work. While they may need guidance and support on specifics to your company, they should be able to adapt quickly and keep financial operations running smoothly. Articulating short-term goals and setting deadlines for naming a new CFO can help lay the foundation for a successful engagement.

You don’t have the budget for a full-time CFO

If your company is the right size to have a part-time CFO, outsourcing CFO functions can be less expensive than bringing on a full-time in-house CFO. Depending on your operational and financial rhythms, you may need the CFO role full-time in parts of the year, and not in others. Initially, an interim CFO can bring a new perspective from a professional who is coming in with fresh eyes and experience outside of your company.

After the immediate need or initial crisis passes, you can review your options. Once the temporary CFO’s agreement expires, you can bring someone new in depending on your needs, or keep the contract CFO in place by extending their assignment.

Considerations for hiring an interim CFO

Making the decision between hiring someone full-time or bringing in temporary contract help can be difficult. Although it oversimplifies the decision a bit, a good rule of thumb is: the more strategic the role will be, the more important it is that you have a long-term person in the job. CFOs can have a wide range of duties, including, but not limited to:

• Financial risk management, including planning and record-keeping
• Management of compliance and regulatory requirements
• Creating and monitoring reliable control systems
• Debt and equity financing
• Financial reporting to the Board of Directors

If the focus is primarily overseeing the financial functions of the organization and/or developing a skilled finance department, you can rely — at least initially — on a CFO for hire.

Regardless of what you choose to do, your decision will have an impact on the financial health of your organization — from avoiding finance department dissatisfaction or turnover to capitalizing on new market opportunities. Getting outside advice or a more objective view may be an important part of making the right choice for your company.

BerryDunn can help whether you need extra assistance in your office during peak times or interim leadership support during periods of transition. We offer the expertise of a fully staffed accounting department for short-term assignments or long-term engagements―so you can focus on your business. Meet our interim assistance experts.

Read this if your company is considering outsourced information technology services.

For management, it’s the perennial question: Keep things in-house or outsource?

For management, it’s the perennial question: Keep things in-house or outsource? Most companies or organizations have outsourcing opportunities, from revenue cycle to payment processing to IT security. When deciding whether to outsource, you weigh the trade-offs and benefits by considering variables such as cost, internal expertise, cross coverage, and organizational risk.

In IT services, outsourcing may win out as technology becomes more complex. Maintaining expertise and depth for all the IT components in an environment can be resource-intensive.

Outsourced solutions allow IT teams to shift some of their focus from maintaining infrastructure to getting more value out of existing systems, increasing data analytics, and better linking technology to business objectives. The same can be applied to revenue cycle outsourcing, shifting the focus from getting clean bills out and cash coming in, to looking at the financial health of the organization, analyzing service lines, patient experience, or advancing projects.  

Once you’ve decided, there’s another question you need to ask
Lost sometimes in the discussion of whether to use outsourced services is how. Even after you’ve done your due diligence and chosen a great vendor, you need to stay involved. It can be easy to think, “Vendor XYZ is monitoring our servers or our days in AR, so we should be all set. I can stop worrying at night about our system reliability or our cash flow.” Not true.

You may be outsourcing a component of your technology environment or collections, but you are not outsourcing the accountability for it—from an internal administrative standpoint or (in many cases) from a legal standpoint.

Beware of a false state of confidence
No matter how clear the expectations and rules of engagement with your vendor at the onset of a partnership, circumstances can change—regulatory updates, technology advancements, and old-fashioned vendor neglect. In hiring the vendor, you are accountable for oversight of the partnership. Be actively engaged in the ongoing execution of the services. Also, periodically revisit the contract, make sure the vendor is following all terms, and confirm (with an outside audit, when appropriate) that you are getting the services you need.

Take, for example, server monitoring, which applies to every organization or company, large or small, with data on a server. When a managed service vendor wants to contract with you to provide monitoring services, the vendor’s salesperson will likely assure you that you need not worry about the stability of your server infrastructure, that the monitoring will catch issues before they occur, and that any issues that do arise will be resolved before the end user is impacted. Ideally, this is true, but you need to confirm.

Here’s how to stay involved with your vendor
Ask lots of questions. There’s never a question too small. Here are samples of how precisely you should drill down:

• What metrics will be monitored, specifically?
• Why do the metrics being monitored matter to our own business objectives?
• What thresholds must be met to notify us or produce an alert?
• What does exceeding a threshold mean to our business?
• Who on our team will be notified if an alert is warranted?
• What corrective action will be taken?

Ask uncomfortable questions
Being willing to ask challenging questions of your vendors, even when you are not an expert, is critical. You may feel uncomfortable but asking vendors to explain something to you in terms you understand is very reasonable. They’re the experts; you’re not expected to already understand every detail or you wouldn’t have needed to hire them. It’s their job to explain it to you. Without asking these questions, you may end up with a fairly generic solution that does produce a service or monitor something, but not necessarily all the things you need.

Ask obvious questions
You don’t want anything to slip by simply because you or the vendor took it for granted. It is common to assume that more is being done by a vendor than actually is. By asking even obvious questions, you can avoid this trap. All too often we conduct an IT assessment and are told that a vendor is providing a service, only to discover that the tasks are not happening as expected.

You are accountable for your whole team—in-house and outsourced members
An outsourced solution is an extension of your team. Taking an active and engaged role in an outsourcing partnership remains consistent with your management responsibilities. At the end of the day, management is responsible for achieving business objectives and mission. Regularly check in to make sure that the vendor stays focused on that same mission.

“The world is one big data problem,” says MIT scientist and visionary Andrew McAfee.

That’s a daunting (though hardly surprising) quote for many in data-rich sectors, including higher education. Yet blaming data is like blaming air for a malfunctioning wind turbine. Data is a valuable asset that can make your institution move.

To many of us, however, data remains a four-letter word. The real culprit behind the perceived data problem is our handling and perception of data and the role it can play in our success—that is, the relegating of data to a select, responsible few, who are usually separated into hardened silos. For example, a common assumption in higher education is that the IT team can handle it. Not so. Data needs to be viewed as an institutional asset, consumed by many and used by the institution for the strategic purposes of student success, scholarship, and more.

The first step in addressing your “big” data problem? Data governance.

What is data governance?

There are various definitions, but the one we use with our clients is “the ongoing and evolutionary process driven by leaders to establish principles, policies, business rules, and metrics for data sharing.”

Please note that the phrase “IT” does not appear anywhere in this definition.

Why is data governance necessary? For many reasons, including:

1. Data governance enables analytics. Without data governance, it’s difficult to gain value from analytics initiatives which will produce inconsistent results. A critical first step in any data analytics initiative is to make sure that definitions are widely accepted and standards have been established. This step allows decision makers to have confidence in the data being analyzed to describe, predict, and improve operations.
    
2. Data governance strengthens privacy, security, and compliance. Compliance requirements for both public and private institutions constantly evolve. The more data-reliant your world becomes, the more protected your data needs to be. If an organization does not implement security practices as part of its data governance framework, it becomes easier to fall out of compliance. 
    
3. Data governance supports agility. How many times have reports for basic information (part-time faculty or student FTEs per semester, for example) been requested, reviewed, and returned for further clarification or correction? And that’s just within your department! Now add multiple requests from the perspective of different departments, and you’re surely going through multiple iterations to create that report. That takes time and effort. By strengthening your data governance framework, you can streamline reporting processes by increasing the level of trust you have in the information you are seeking. Understanding the value of data governance is the easy part/ The real trick is implementing a sustainable data governance framework that recognizes that data is an institutional asset and not just a four-letter word.

Stay tuned for part two of this blog series: The how of data governance in higher education. In the meantime, reach out to me if you would like to discuss additional data governance benefits for your institution.

As a new year is upon us, many people think about “out with the old and in with the new”. For those of us who think about technology, and in particular, blockchain technology, the new year brings with it the realization that blockchain is here to stay (at least in some form). Therefore, higher education leaders need to familiarize themselves with some of the technology’s possible uses, even if they don’t need to grasp the day-to-day operational requirements. Here’s a high-level perspective of blockchain to help you answer some basic questions.

Are blockchain and bitcoin interchangeable terms?

No they aren’t. Bitcoin is an electronic currency that uses blockchain technology, (first developed circa 2008 to record bitcoin transactions). Since 2008, many companies and organizations utilize blockchain technology for a multitude of purposes.

What is a blockchain?

In its simplest terms, a blockchain is a decentralized, digital list (“chain”) of timestamped records (“blocks”) that are connected, secured by cryptography, and updated by participant consensus.

What is cryptography?

Cryptography refers to converting unencrypted information into encrypted information—and vice versa—to both protect data and authenticate users.

What are the pros of using blockchain?

Because blockchain technology is inherently decentralized, you can reduce the need for “middleman” entities (e.g., financial institutions or student clearinghouses). This, in turn, can lower transactional costs and other expenses, and cybersecurity risks—as hackers often like to target large, info-rich, centralized databases.

Decentralization removes central points of failure. In addition, blockchain transactions are generally more secure than other types of transactions, irreversible, and verifiable by the participants. These transaction qualities help prevent fraud, malware attacks, and other risks and issues prevalent today.

What are the cons of using blockchain technology?

Each blockchain transaction requires signature verification and processing, which can be resource-intensive. Furthermore, blockchain technology currently faces strong opposition from certain financial institutions for a variety of reasons. Finally, although blockchains offer a secure platform, they are not impervious to cyberattacks. Blockchain does not guarantee a hacker-proof environment.

How can blockchain benefit higher education institutions?

Blockchain technology can provide higher education institutions with a more secure way of making and recording financial transactions. You can use blockchains to verify and transfer academic credits and certifications, protect student personal identifiable information (PII) while simultaneously allowing students to access and transport their PII, decentralize academic content, and customize learning experiences. At its core, blockchain provides a fresh alternative to traditional methods of identity verification, an ongoing challenge for higher education administration.

As blockchain becomes less of a buzzword and begins to expand beyond the realm of digital currency, colleges and universities need to consider it for common challenges such as identity management, application processing, and student credentialing. If you’d like to discuss the potential benefits blockchain technology provides, please contact me.

The late science fiction writer (and college professor) Isaac Asimov once said: “I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.” Had Asimov worked in higher ed IT management, he might have added: “but above all else, I fear the lack of computer staff.”

Indeed, it can be a challenge for higher education institutions to recruit and retain IT professionals. Private companies often pay more in a good economy, and in certain areas of the nation, open IT positions at colleges and universities outnumber available, qualified IT workers. According to one study from 2016, almost half of higher education IT workers are at risk of leaving the institutions they serve, largely for better opportunities and more supportive workplaces. Understandably, IT leadership fears an uncertain future of vacant roles—yet there are simple tactics that can help you improve the chances of filling open positions.

Emphasize the whole package

You need to leverage your institution’s strengths when recruiting IT talent. A focus on innovation, project leadership, and responsibility for supporting the mission of the institution are important attributes to promote when recruiting. Your institution should sell quality of life, which can be much more attractive than corporate culture. Many candidates are attracted to the energy and activity of college campuses, in addition to the numerous social and recreational outlets colleges provide.

Benefit packages are another strong asset for recruiting top talent. Schools need to ensure potential candidates know the amount of paid leave, retirement, and educational assistance for employees and employee family members. These added perks will pique the interest of many candidates who might otherwise have only looked at salary during the process.

Use the right job title

Some current school vacancies have very specific job titles, such as “Portal Administrator” or “Learning Multimedia Developer.” However, this specificity can limit visibility on popular job posting sites, reducing the number of qualified applicants. Job titles, such as “Web Developer” and “Java Developer,” can yield better search results. Furthermore, some current vacancies include a number or level after the job title (e.g., “System Administrator 2”), which also limits visibility on these sites. By removing these indicators, you can significantly increase the applicant pool.

Focus on service, not just technology

Each year, institutions deploy an increasing number of Software as a Service (SaaS) and hosted applications. As higher education institutions invest more in these applications, they need fewer personnel for day-to-day technology maintenance support. In turn, this allows IT organizations to focus limited resources on services that identify and analyze technology solutions, provide guidance to optimize technology investments, and manage vendor relationships. IT staff with soft skills will become even more valuable to your institution as they engage in more people- and process-centric efforts.

Fill in the future

It may seem like science fiction, but by revising your recruiting and retention tactics, your higher education institution can improve its chances of filling IT positions in a competitive job market. In a future blog, I’ll provide ideas for cultivating staff from your institution via student workers and upcoming graduates. If you’d like to discuss additional staffing tactics, send me an email.