Do you remember the year 2007?
What a great year. That was the year you bought your staff new laptops and computers. The two pastors and your worship / creative arts / web designer / most-overworked-underpaid employee all received matching black Macbooks. The finance guru was given a Dell desktop, and you bought yourself a nice Macbook Pro (you are the IT person, after all).
Then came the summer of 2010…
One of your pastors had a kid in 2008 (aww, how cute…). Well, junior is two-years-old now and practicing drinking without a sippy cup. He has been doing great, only one bad spill. All over daddy’s black Macbook.
The other pastor has a new hobby, photography. Last week he decided to go hiking in the smoky mountains to get some great shots; when he was attacked by a bear. Thankfully he had his Macbook with him and was able to impress the bear with a keynote presentation as to why bears should not eat people. The bear ate part of the Macbook instead.
Thank God.
The finance guru’s Dell is still running Vista (SP1, of course) and seems to take longer and longer to boot up. Your guru often starts conversations with, “I don’t mean to complain, buuuuut…”
You decide to buy new computers all-the-way around. The two pastors will be getting PC’s due to budget constraints, your finance guy will be getting your old Mackbook Pro, and you will get that new Macbook Air you, always wanted (you are the IT person, after all…wait, that was our excuse last time).
But Wait, There’s More!
Forgot to mention that giving is down too.
Upon inspecting your budget, you discover you have almost $0.97 to spend on new computers for your staff. Your money has already been allocated in software and upgrades. You think about going netbook, but decide they are not suitable to fit your needs.
You think about asking the pastors for some kind of giving campaign for new equipment when you remember the building campaign already going on.
What Do You Do?
I don’t know. Looks like you’re on your own with this one. 😉
All I can offer is experience and hindsight. One thing we fail to set up in our budgets is a category for equipment replacement.
Usually we count ourselves blessed if we have some ‘newish’ computers donated to start our churches. We are lucky to set up a budget for repairs and often leave out enough to replace a completely dead system, or two. To avoid the above situation, I would like to offer a great, pre-planning solution.
WARNING: Math Ahead!
This solution will not be popular. I call this the “delayed gratification” principal. The gratification of a new computer is delayed for two reasons;
- You will only pay cash for new computers, not credit.
- You will save up 1.5 x’s the computers value before purchasing it.
Reason #1 means you will not open ANY lines of credit to buy new stuff.
Some will say leasing a computer is a good idea, I beg to differ. I worked for a large, cow-spotted computer retailer for several years. We loved leases. They paid us commission out the nose because clients paid through their noses. If a company leased a computer at $1200 for three years, they paid anywhere from 10-19% annual interest over the terms of the lease (depending on how many computers and credit worthiness). Your $1200 computer is now $1740 (at 15%). Oh, and it was a Celeron processor with 256mb of Ram and a 40 gb hard drive. Not a win by any means.
Reason #2 is a hard one for some to swallow. Why should you save up 1.5x’s the money it takes to by a computer? This is simply because you will want to deposit the rest of the money and not touch it until someone needs an upgrade. This means your money can sit around for 3 years (hopefully gaining interest) untouched. Let’s look at this with basic math:
- Macbook cost: $1200
- Extra for savings: $600
- Total needed BEFORE purchase: $1800
Your pastor and staff members will not like this idea at all.The younger the church, the more things seem to be needed ASAP. You may have to gently explain to them why you are still using old, donated computers for an extra month (or three).
But… But… But…
Ok. So, we saved our pennies and waited two months. Now what?
Buy that computer, compadre! Then take your extra cash and put it in savings (check with your church finance guru for the best way to do this. DO NOT put it in your personal savings!). Once your new computer arrives, give it a death date. This is the day this computer will never see your network again.
So, if you receive the computer on October 1st, 2010, set a death date of three years out (October 1st, 2013). Make sure your staff member who is using the computer knows this. Mark this date in a spreadsheet or database and on the computer if you need to, and repeat this for every computer purchase from here until Jesus returns. Or you get fired. If you name the computers on your network, maybe you could name them by their death date (eg. RIP-10-13)
Every Month…
And don’t forget the wisdom of allocating money each month for your computer budget.
This might seem like a no-brainer, but it does not usually happen. It is a bad idea to “wing it” due to the fact almost all computers will die at the same time. You have helped offset emergency costs by putting extra money in your savings at the time of computer purchase. Now, allocate a small part of your budget per month toward future / emergency purchases. If you only have $200 a month, put $20 bucks away for the future. This may only be $240 a year, but put that with the $600 you saved previously and you can buy a nice refurb on short notice.
The Ideal Situation
The ideal situation would be to save all your money in order to replace your computers on their death date. If you follow this, you will have $1350 in which to spend on your pastors replacement. Do not feel you have to spend all of it. When a replacement is in order, it is a good time to reassess your pastors / staff members needs before purchase. It is good to stagger your computer purchases so you are not hit all at once. Once again, this means some people may have to use older equipment until it can be adequately replaced and budgeted for. Sometimes you will have to play the bad guy and tell people “no” when asking for a new computer.
Other Things to Remember:
- Pricing changes. If I would have told you you could get a Mac for $999 five years ago, you would have been amazed and astonished. Even a decent business Dell or HP can be found for less than $500.
- Needs change. One year your pastor though he needed a computer. Now he can work effectively from an iPad, bank the savings.
- Emergencies happen. You should be well prepared if you budget for them. I would recommend having enough cash on hand to completely replace one out of every five computers.
- Nobody is above a refurb. Don’t feel obligated to get everyone a brand new computer, especially if the person is a repeat offender (meaning they have broken their church-issued computer more than once).
- You do not NEED a new computer, even if you are the IT person. Yes, you may need something with more power for some things. But let’s be honest, you do not really need a 3D video card with 1gb memory on it to run remote desktop?
- Buy upgradable if you can. Try and get a laptop with a motherboard that can hold godly amounts of RAM. Keep some spare hard drives around for upgrades. Buy a tower for secretaries or people who do not need the mobility of a laptop.
Like I stated from the start, these are tips I have picked up over my many years of IT work. A lot of these ideas are lifted from a mega-church I used to work for. I am not saying these are the only rules to abide by, but I think they are worth checking out and maybe even using.
Kevin says
I have an even less popular idea:
1) Install an easy to use open source operating system like Ubuntu or Mint
2) Continue to get free software upgrades
3) Extend your death date by at least 2x because Linux needs to stay efficient for its users
4) Put the money you didn’t spend into a savings account for more important things
Most people use computers for a) a browser (Firefox) b) an office suite (OpenOffice) which have great solutions on Linux. If that is the case for your users (I know it’s a mental leap, but you don’t need an iPad to surf the web), you could save a bundle of your church money to be used on more important things than hardware and software upgrades. 😉
Go forth and prosper!
Kevin
http://opensourcechurch.com
BenJPickett says
The other thing to consider with this is how much time will you have to spend supporting those users that have never used Linux before. The solution is less expensive to set up, absolutely cannot disagree with that.
However, what is YOUR time worth to spend these hours training someone that has never used a Linux distribution. Get calls back because the person they emailed a document to can’t open it or it looks funny because it wasn’t saved in an office compatible format or used office compatible features.
It is a nice solution for the really budget tight that NEED a fix now but there are other factors to take into account when going down this road.
Don Dudley says
I understand what Ben is saying. You would be surprised by how many people flip out about the differences between linux and mac / windows.
I will say, the OS cost is really nill when it comes to hardware. I am not opposed to using linux where we can, or when we can (especially on things like internet kiosks, etc), but some users do find it hard to switch.
Kevin says
I guess I’ll take a page out of Ben’s book and say that “there are other factors to take into account.” The OS cost is not nil when you can extend the death date of your computer by at least 2x. That means you are most likely buying 2x as many computers as you really need which means you’re OS is costing quite a bit. If you read the article in my last comment, you’d also know you could probably upgrade and refurbish your current hardware much more easily using Linux so you didn’t have to buy anything new to begin with.
The truth is we like new hardware and use excuses to buy it. We want it, we don’t need it. If you are serious about lowering your IT budget, open source should always be at least some part of that equation; it might be a bigger or smaller part depending on your organization. My experience is that your organization’s perception of open source software (which is normally negative by default) has more to do with how large a part it can play rather than the reality of what open source software could actually be used based on requirements.
Kevin
http://opensourcechurch.com
Kevin says
Just for the record, I do understand all of that (this is why I mentioned it would be an even less popular idea). However, I personally think it’s time we break out of Micro$oft’s and Mac’$ strangle hold on our budgets. I think we need to say, if you are working with us you need to use open formats especially from a Biblical perspective. I don’t mind other people and organizations using non open source software. But forcing me to use, non-open source software because you don’t use open formats is careless, inconsiderate and even selfish. This might take some of your time initially, but it is worth your time so that we aren’t just little puppets in big software company business models.
Using open source software is a preference; using open file formats is a necessity.
Kevin
http://opensourcechurch.com
BenJPickett says
Lots of great advice in there, not just for the church but from a business perspective too. I especially like the one about the IT guy not needing the newest, latest and greatest. My thoughts on the death date, I think it’s a good idea but you need a different way of tracking that information than a label or a computer name, I only see my companies laptops once in a blue moon. A spreadsheet is a good idea but it’s only effective for up to so many PCs. I recommend a solution like Spiceworks or NAGIOS.
Don Dudley says
The more I see about spiceworks, the more I like it.
I do think you need a good way to track your items. Databaseing may be better than Excel, but if you only have 20 computers, than its not so bad. And it is easy to use.
Jonathon Deringer says
I agree, use Linux were possible. I would hesitate to fully deploy Linux to all clients. We’ve dealt with Linux on four laptops but the users tend to be frustrated with the differences and lack of program availability.
If you can get approved for techsoup.org you can get significant savings on software which you can reallocate and spend on hardware.