Straight on till morning.
Technology stewardship for the keepers of history
“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.” — J. M. Barrie
Someone lit the star — a founder, a storyteller, a builder of wonderful things. The organizations that preserve their history are the second keepers of that light, tending it after the maker is gone. The Starkeepers exist so the keepers are never keeping it alone.
A friendly, plain-language review of how your organization runs on technology today — from email and archives to backups and building security. It ends with a written picture of where you stand and what matters most, not a sales pitch.
Microsoft, Google, TechSoup, and others offer free and deeply discounted technology to organizations like yours. Most heritage nonprofits have never walked through those doors. We know where the doors are, and we walk through them with you.
Help that is given is written down: a documented annual grant of expertise — defined, capped, and renewable — that your board can count, report to funders, and rely on. A gift with edges is a gift that lasts.
The organizations that keep history alive — hometown museums, historical societies, theaters, foundations built around a barn or a railroad or a room where something began — hold irreplaceable things: photographs, recordings, records, stories. Too often those things live on one aging computer, behind one shared password, in the memory of one volunteer.
Preservation deserves the same care in its technology that it gives its collections. But small heritage organizations rarely have someone whose job is to notice — to test the backups, to claim the nonprofit programs, to write down how it all works before the person who knows retires.
The Starkeepers are that someone. The work is given, not sold; the findings belong to the organizations, not to us; and the program is built to outlive its founder — because that is the whole point of keeping a light.
The Starkeepers was founded by Todd Ludington, after thirty years of running an IT services company — building, securing, and quietly keeping the systems of businesses and nonprofits alike. The next chapter of that experience belongs to the organizations that keep the stories he grew up loving.
Two short questionnaires start every relationship — one for the person who leads, one for the person who knows the systems. Sometimes that is the same person, and that is just fine.