For many nonprofits, integrations are treated like a necessary expense. You need your LMS to speak to iMIS. You need your webinar platform connected. You need survey data, marketing activity, online community engagement, and other third-party systems feeding the right information back into your AMS.
So, you buy a bridge, pay the setup fee, pay the annual fee, accept the yearly increase, and move on.
But that model deserves a second look.
In a recent episode of The Nonprofit Edge, Joe John, CEO of John Consulting, reframed the conversation in a way many nonprofits may not have considered: what if you stopped renting your bridges and started owning them instead?
That shift can reduce long-term costs, increase flexibility, improve automation, and give your organization more control over one of its most important assets: its data. A bridge, as Joe explained, is a two-way connection between iMIS and third-party systems that keeps important information in one place, can update in real time, and usually runs automatically behind the scenes without manual effort.
Here are five of the most valuable and illuminating insights from the conversation:
1. Bridges are not just technical tools; they are operational infrastructure.
Nonprofits rely on more platforms than ever. Learning management systems, webinars, communities, surveys, and marketing tools all play a role in the member experience. The problem is not using those platforms. The problem is when the data lives everywhere except where your team needs it most.
Joe’s point was simple: a bridge keeps important data flowing back into iMIS, so the organization has one trusted place for visibility, activity, and action. He also emphasized that bridges can run in real time and are typically fully automated, reducing the need for staff to manually move information between systems.
That matters because every time staff members are downloading files, reformatting spreadsheets, uploading lists, or manually syncing systems, the organization is spending time, introducing risk, and slowing down decision-making. Later in the conversation, Joe called this out directly, noting that many organizations still rely on people to download and upload files between systems, when automation can save labor and improve accuracy.
For nonprofits under pressure to do more with less, bridges are not a luxury. They are part of how you protect staff time, improve reliability, and support a better member experience.
2. The traditional bridge model may be costing more than nonprofits realize.
One of the strongest takeaways from the episode was financial. Now, this one is important.
Joe explained that many bridges have historically been sold as SaaS products, with organizations paying year after year for what is often largely a hosting model. Because bridges do not usually change frequently once they are working, nonprofits can end up paying recurring annual fees and yearly increases for something that is largely stable and is never upgraded or changed.
He contrasted that with John Consulting’s self-hosted Azure DevOps model, where many clients are hosting all of their bridges for about $25 - $50 per month total, or roughly $300 - $600 a year, instead of paying $4000 or $5000 per bridge annually.
That is where the mindset shift becomes powerful.
Instead of continuing to rent bridge products at escalating rates, nonprofits can own the hosted environment, work directly on Microsoft, and avoid the ongoing burden of large annual SaaS fees. Joe summed it up clearly in the episode: organizations have been renting their bridges, and now they can own them.
For budget-conscious nonprofits, that is not a small distinction. It is a long-term financial strategy. Is your head running your financials right now and thinking about how much you spend and how much you can save? Some of Joe’s clients are saving $12k a year with this model. You don’t have to be budget-conscious to think this makes sense.
3. Ownership also gives nonprofits more control and flexibility.
Cost savings are only part of the story (of course a huge part of the story).
Joe also explained that when an organization self-hosts its own bridge environment, it has its own copy of the software and can adapt it to fit how the organization actually works. In contrast, a traditional product often works the way it works, with limited flexibility for those needs that matter most.
That is especially important for nonprofits, because no two organizations operate exactly the same way. Membership models differ. Certification flows differ. Marketing needs differ. Revenue strategies differ. Integration requirements often look similar on the surface, but the details differ.
In the episode, Joe is very transparent. He explained that if a bridge is already built, clients can pay a one-time fee, have it adjusted to fit their environment, and then own it. He also noted that if a needed bridge is not already on the list, John Consulting can build it from scratch, usually in the $6,000 to $10,000 range, customized to the client’s specifications, instead of locking the nonprofit into a perpetual annual fee.
That flips the traditional conversation from “What can this product do?” to “What does your organization need?”
4. The real value is not just integration; it is what integration makes possible.
Another important theme in the livestream was that a hosted environment does more than just support bridges.
Joe described how self-hosting through Azure DevOps gives clients access to webhooks, workflows, scheduled services, staging and production environments, and applications that require elevated permissions. In other words, it expands what nonprofits can automate and build beyond the bridge itself.
He also gave examples of the kinds of bridges nonprofits commonly need, including LMS integrations such as Absorb, webinar integrations such as Zoom and Blue Sky, online communities such as Higher Logic, marketing integrations, and survey tools such as SurveyMonkey.
He added that organizations can integrate with virtually anything if that connection is important to their operations.
This matters even more as nonprofits think about AI, analytics, and future strategy. Joe noted that organizations need their important information in one place so they can track KPIs, analyze historical activity, and build the kind of data foundation that supports better insight over time.
The bridge is not the end goal. The bridge is what enables your systems to speak to each other so your organization can operate more intelligently.
5. Why does this matter now?
Many nonprofits already know bridges exist. What they may not know is that there is now a better ownership model available.
That may be why this conversation resonated so strongly. Joe made the point that nonprofits often see the traditional pricing, decide it is too expensive, and keep doing manual uploads because it “works,” even though it is inefficient and far from ideal.
The opportunity now is to reduce costs without reducing capability and in many cases, to gain more flexibility than a rented bridge product would allow.
For organizations that care about efficiency, member experience, staff time, data reliability, and long-term technology control, that is a meaningful shift.
Final thought
Nonprofits should not have to choose between affordability and functionality.
Bridges are too important to be treated as an afterthought or a never-ending rental fee. They shape how your systems communicate, how your data flows, how quickly your staff can work, and how well your members and partners experience your organization.
The smarter question is no longer just, “Do we need a bridge?”
It is, “Why are we still renting one if we could own it?”
Want to see what that could look like for your organization? Download our Bridge Brochure and Pricing Guide to explore the types of Bridges available, the benefits of self-hosting, and what a more cost-effective integration strategy could look like for your nonprofit. Want a personal consultation to discuss building your tailored Bridge? Contact Joe here.
