Nobody wakes up thinking: Today I’ll try to convince senior leadership to care about a content management system.
More often, it starts smaller than that:
- Publishing delays that keep happening
- Campaigns landing late because a form couldn’t be changed
- Dev resources spent firefighting instead of improving
You raise it in passing, and it gets politely parked. Not because leadership doesn’t care. But because, from their side of the table, a CMS looks like infrastructure. Necessary, but abstract. For nonprofits, think tanks, charities, and educational organisations, digital is difficult to prioritise against frontline services, delivery targets, or the next bid for funding.
And that’s before you factor in the internal reality many comms and digital leads are navigating:
- Budgets split across departments
- Funding pots tied to specific outcomes
- Digital spend scrutinised differently from programme spend
- Responsibility without full decision-making power
If you can show how web platform problems are costing your organisation – in time, opportunity, risk, and reputation – the funding conversation changes.
You’re not asking leadership to care about a CMS. You’re helping them see how the best content management tools protect the organisation, support the team, and strengthen delivery.
This guide gives you the framing, evidence, and language to make that case without drowning anyone in technical detail.
The hidden costs leaders don’t always see
Most CMS conversations get stuck because costs don’t show up as a single scary line item on a spreadsheet. Instead, they leak out slowly.
As trusted digital makers for changemakers, we see patterns repeating across mission-led organisations. And the data backs it up.
The State of Digital Government Review 2025 shows that:
£26bn was spent on public sector technology in 2023, yet up 70-85% of major departments’ budgets go on keeping existing systems running, leaving relatively little for modernisation or improvement
Only 53% of central government and 55% of NHS services offer a digital pathway, with the rest still relying on phone, paper, or in-person routes
At the same time, many organisations are still exposed to accessibility risks. The 2025 WebAIM Million report found that:
94.8% of the top one million homepages still have detectable WCAG failures
Education organisation homepages average
47 accessibility errors
Charity and nonprofit homepages average
40 accessibility errors
This is the context most comms and digital leads are operating in: high expectations, ageing platforms, and very little slack in the system.
Which is why making a financial case, backed by a steady process for improvement, matters.
The challenge with website content management strategy: Translation, not technology
Senior leaders aren’t publishing everyday. So without your insights, they’re not fully equipped to pick the software to manage the content of your website.
They decide based on risk, cost, capacity, and mission impact.
A CMS proposal that focuses on features or (“publishing is a pain in the backend”) forces them to do extra work:
- How much is this costing us right now?
- What risk are we carrying by not acting?
- What improves if we say yes?
- What gets worse if we don‘t?
If you don’t answer those questions for them, they’ll default to caution – even if they trust you. Below is a simple way to frame it.
The four leadership concerns (and what to show them)
1. “How much is this costing us right now?”
What leadership needs to understand:
Your digital team’s capacity isn’t being used to improve outcomes. It’s being consumed by workarounds, chasing agencies, and firefighting platform issues.
The evidence to show:
Across mission-driven organisations The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 found that:
50% of UK charities rate themselves
as poor at resourcing digital work
30% report poor
systems and CRMs
24% struggle with inadequate
IT support and hardware
In the public sector The State of Digital Government Review 2025 found that:
70-85% of technology budgets go on keeping existing
systems running, leaving 15-30% for improvement
47% of central government and 45% of NHS services
still lack a digital pathway, requiring manual workarounds
In the think tank sector The On Think Tanks: State of the Sector 2025 report found that:
Over 70% cite fundraising as one of their
most pressing organisational capacity gaps
29% aren’t using AI, with 26% of non-users
citing infrastructure gaps as the barrier
In higher education AbilityNet’s Attitudes to Digital Accessibility 2025 found that:
Around 42% expect accessibility spending to stay the
same next year, with only 26% expecting an increase
Budget constraints force teams into reactive
rather than proactive accessibility work
When platforms don’t work properly, teams compensate with time. That time has a cost.
Track one typical week and calculate:
- Hours spent chasing agency responses
- Hours lost to publishing workarounds
- Hours spent explaining delays to internal stakeholders
- Hours firefighting instead of planned improvements
Multiply by your team’s average hourly cost (salary plus overhead).
“We estimate 15-20 hours per week lost to platform workarounds and agency management. That’s 40-50% of our digital capacity spent managing the platform instead of improving mission outcomes. At an average cost of £X per hour, that’s £Y,000 annually in wasted capacity.”
- Freed-up capacity redirected to mission work
- Predictable delivery
- Less stress on your team
2. “What risk are we carrying by not acting?”
What leadership needs to understand:
Platform neglect accumulates risk in three areas: security, accessibility, and operational fragility.
The evidence to show:
On security and maintenance: The State of Digital Government Review 2025 found 28% of red‑rated legacy systems lack remediation funding. These small issues compound into expensive problems.
On accessibility risk: The WebAIM Million 2025 reported:
- Charity and nonprofit sites average 40 accessibility errors per homepage
- Education sites average 47 errors per homepage
- Every failure is a potential complaint, lawsuit, or reputational risk
On operational risk: Our 2026 Web Platform Triage Kit research found that neglected platforms follow a pattern: every small change takes weeks, updates pile up, and organisations know it’s degrading but it hasn’t broken badly enough to justify fixing – until it does, and the cost is exponentially higher.
Document:
- Number of overdue security patches
- Number of known accessibility failures
- Time since last security audit
- Estimated cost of breach remediation or accessibility lawsuit
“We currently have [X] overdue security updates and [Y] known accessibility failures. The average cost of remediating an accessibility complaint is £Z. We’re carrying risk that grows with every month we delay.”
- Proactive risk management instead of reactive crisis response
- Legal compliance
- Protected reputation
3. “What improves if we say yes?”
What leadership needs to understand:
The value of having the right software to manage the content of your website isn’t just in fixing what’s broken. It’s in unlocking what you currently can’t do with your current system.
The evidence to show:
The State of Digital Government Review 2025 estimates £45bn per year in unrealised savings and productivity benefits across the public sector due to underinvestment in digital. The same pattern shows up on a smaller scale: when platforms can’t evolve, organisations can’t capitalise on opportunities.
Our 2026 Web Platform Triage Kit identifies four patterns that lock up value:
- Neglect: Small improvements that would generate value can’t be executed because the platform is too fragile
- Overbuild: Features exist but are unnecessarily complex to use, so value remains theoretical
- Drift: No proactive partner thinking about your platform between your requests, so opportunities are missed
- AI Spiral: Tools are paid for but not delivering value because foundations aren’t in place
Identify specific improvements you can’t currently execute. For instance:
- Better donation flows (abandoned cart recovery, mobile optimisation)
- Faster campaign deployment (reduced time-to-publish)
- Improved user journeys (personalisation, better site search)
- Data-driven decisions (analytics you can genuinely use)
Estimate the value of each improvement.
“We estimate that improving our donation flow would generate [X] additional revenue annually. Faster campaign deployment would allow us to respond to [Y] opportunities we currently miss. But we can’t make these improvements with our current platform constraints.”
- Ability to ship improvements that generate value
- Faster response to opportunities
- Competitive advantage in digital fundraising and engagement
4. “What gets worse if we don’t act?”
What leadership needs to understand:
Web platform problems can compound, and delayed action increases both costs and disruptions.
The widening strategy gap: The Charity Digital Skills Report 2025 reveals:
- 74% of UK charities say digital is a medium or high priority
- But only 44% have a digital strategy (down from 50% the previous year)
- 60% accessed no digital funding in the last 12 months
- 69% cite finances as the primary barrier
The public sector trajectory: The State of Digital Government Review 2025 found that:
- Only 9% of major government tech programmes achieve green ratings (healthy delivery)
- Tech programmes are 60% more likely to be red-rated (requiring immediate action) than non-tech projects
- 28% of legacy systems lack remediation funding, creating accumulating technical debt
With nearly 20 years’ working across mission-driven organisations, our experience confirms this predictable trajectory. Neglected platforms follow similar patterns:
- Small inefficiencies add up (workarounds become routine)
- Backlog grows (improvements never happen)
- Risk accumulates (security, accessibility, performance)
- Confidence drops (team and leadership lose trust in the platform)
- Decisions are made in crisis mode (expensive emergency rebuilds instead of managed improvement)
Map the trajectory:
- Now: Current cost in wasted capacity plus current risk exposure
- 12 months: Projected cost if problems compound plus increased risk
- 24 months: Crisis scenario (emergency rebuild, reputational damage, regulatory action)
“Right now, platform problems cost us £X annually in wasted capacity. If we delay action for 12 months, that cost grows to £Y as workarounds multiply and risk accumulates. If we wait until crisis forces our hand, we’re looking at an emergency rebuild costing £Z plus potential reputational or regulatory consequences. Early action costs less and disrupts less.”
- Controlled transition instead of crisis response
- Lower total cost of ownership
- Protected institutional knowledge and continuity
Having the best content management tools for the job isn’t a luxury
You’re expected to keep the site running, evolving, and compliant – all while trying to prove its ROI in terms that weren’t designed for day-to-day digital work.
But you’re allowed to want a digital platform that’s looked after, evolves, and makes you look competent in front of leadership.
And, ultimately, your platform should enable your mission delivery. So when senior leadership understands digital isn’t competing with mission funding, but actually enabling mission work, the funding conversation becomes clearer.
If you’ve wanted seniors to take your site concerns seriously for a while now, it’s worth getting clear on your points.
