Celebrating 25 Years of Community IT with CEO Johan Hammerstrom

In this special anniversary episode, we celebrate a major milestone: 25 years of Community IT. Founded on February 1, 2001, by David Deal as a mission-focused spin-out from Reliacom, Community IT has spent a quarter-century navigating the ever-changing tides of technology for nonprofits exclusively. CEO Johan Hammerstrom, who was one of the early employees to move from Reliacom to the new company, joins us to reflect on our journey from the early days of wiring offices for the internet to our modern role as a national provider of remote IT services and cybersecurity. 

We discuss how our bedrock foundation of servant-leadership has allowed us to remain a stable, trusted partner for the nonprofit community through dot-com busts, financial crises, and global shifts in how we work.

Beyond the history of servers and software, this conversation focuses on the vibrant people who make our mission possible. Johan shares why it is useless to predict exactly where IT will be in five years, and why Community IT instead invests in the creative, dedicated staff who can guide nonprofits through whatever the future holds. 

Whether you have been a partner since our founding or are just joining our community, tune in to hear how our commitment to technology expertise ensures that nonprofits can stay focused on their missions, no matter how the digital landscape evolves.

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• on the Community IT website

Thanks for listening. 

Transcript

Johan Hammerstrom 0:22

You know, celebrating 25 years ago today, David Deal founded Community IT Innovators or something something like that.

Carolyn Woodard 0:32

Welcome everyone to the Community IT Innovators Technology Topics podcast. I'm Carolyn Wooderg, your host. And today I'm very excited to talk with our CEO, Johan Hammerstrom, about a very special occasion. Johan, would you like to introduce yourself?

Johan Hammerstrom 0:48

Yeah, thanks, Carolyn. Happy to be back on the podcast. I'm Johan Hammerstrom. I'm the CEO.

Carolyn Woodard 0:54

And what are we going to talk about?

Johan Hammerstrom 0:56

Today we're going to talk about the history of community IT and specifically our 25th anniversary. So February 1st marks the founding of community IT innovators. And we'll be we're very excited to be celebrating our 25th anniversary this year.

Carolyn Woodard 1:14

Well, thank you for doing this with me. What I actually thought we would do is go backward in time, if that is okay with you. Just kind of, I think we've told the story from you know of the founding a couple of times. So I was thinking the highlights I came to my mind were 2020, you know, going all remote and you know, doubling the in the size of the number of clients and number of staff.

Johan Hammerstrom 1:41

So we became 100% employee owned in 2012.

Carolyn Woodard 1:45

2008, 2010. You know, we really focused in on what you know our core services were that we were really good at and decided to, you know, like pare off some of the other offerings we had and um be the best MSP we could be.

Johan Hammerstrom 2:01

Yeah, I I think it's definitely worth mentioning and recognizing, you know, that for the first 10 years of the company, you know, I think it's worth honoring and acknowledging like those teams and the work that they did. And um, you know, they did a lot of amazing work. It was of another era.

Carolyn Woodard 2:20

Yeah.

Johan Hammerstrom 2:21

You know, they were building databases and websites from scratch, you know,

Carolyn Woodard 2:27

and that is like that stopped being the way we do it anymore.

Johan Hammerstrom 2:31

Yeah, exactly.

Carolyn Woodard 2:31

Which is great because it demonstrates like we we change and we evolve, and yeah, um, and that's a good quality to have if you're looking for a long-term partner, it's not gonna be stuck in a past technology, yeah. Um, trying to get you into it because that's what they do, you know.

Johan Hammerstrom 2:48

Um, well, so the the ESOP was founded in 2005.

Carolyn Woodard 2:53

So is that when the process started to move the the shares to employees?

Johan Hammerstrom 3:00

Yeah. 2005 is when the company was turned converted from an LLC into a corporation, when we incorporated, and when we became incorporated, Dave was the majority shareholder, but some of the shares were owned by that. Was when the ESOP Trust was created, and I think at the founding, it was like five or ten percent of the shares were owned by the ESOP. The things that come back to me are you know, there's the Great Recession that was had a big impact on the company.

Carolyn Woodard 3:38

We weathered the financial crisis, and that helped us focus on what we do best and refine those that offering.

Johan Hammerstrom 3:48

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in some ways that goes back to the we've always been subject to the forces, the greater forces of history.

Carolyn Woodard 3:58

So we started as a company as a division of another company called Reliacom. And that was founded um uh in the early 90s by um man called Chris Chang, and our founder, David Deal, worked for him and what became in charge of a practice within Reliacom that was focused solely on nonprofits. And then after about eight or nine years, uh, for various reasons, David Deal uh spun out the company and founded Community IT. And I believe you said in the past that he had to take out a mortgage on his house, second mortgage, and was the typical uh small business founder. And that has created a lot of confusion about how old community IT actually is.

Johan Hammerstrom 4:57

So the the history of that um is that let's say for the until we became an ESOP, so from 2001 to 2005, most of the people in the company had been at Reliacom. And not but not for that long. I mean, you know, for a couple of years. But I think at the time we're a very young company, and we felt like you know, we didn't want to tell people, well, we've only been around for a year or two.

Carolyn Woodard 5:27

Less than a year, yeah. Less than a year, because it wasn't really it didn't really reflect the yeah depth of experience we had as a business. So we used the starting point for community services division. Well, so that's where it started to get confusing because Reliacom was founded in 1993, but the community services division was founded in 1994, and then Community IT was founded in 2001. So you had three different dates to pick from, and people would just pick the one that was the most convenient for the circumstance. So it just created all this confusion. So I think it's been long enough. My opinion is that it's been long enough that February 1st is the official start date of this company. Exactly. So can you tell me a little bit more about the changes in IT and technology and where Community IT has come from over those years?

Johan Hammerstrom 6:25

The internet, you know, the internet sort of came along in in the mid-90s, and it was kind of humming along in the background, but that was a lot of the early business for Reliacom came from the growth of the internet, and then the dot-com boom happened in the late 90s, and then the bust happened in 2000, and that was what really forced Reliacom's hand and caused us to split off from Reliacom. It was it was really a result of the dot-com bust that we became our own company. Because I think if it hadn't been for that, Reliacom probably would have I mean, they eventually went out of business um because they lost all of their customers. Because I think people forget that Northern Virginia was it was kind of like Silicon Valley of the East. Yeah.

Carolyn Woodard 7:19

Yeah, like that AOL complex was like the thing.

Johan Hammerstrom 7:23

It was the thing, and all these people were coming out of AOL. Nowadays, like no one would take that seriously because of where AOL is now. But at the time, like it was spinning out all of these small businesses, and that was Reliacom's bread and butter. And so when they all went out of business in 2000, that like really stressed the company.

Johan Hammerstrom 7:41

And that's what if that hadn't happened, we probably would have continued doing what we were doing because we had no interest in being our own company. We it was kind of convenient for us to be this sort of you know, rebel. We were all young, we were in our 20s, and we were like, we're rebels, we're not, we're not part of the corporate, you know, we're not corporate robots like trying to make money. We're out here like helping these small organizations. We didn't want to run our own business. It was kind of we were kind of forced to, you know, by that, by that shift.

Johan Hammerstrom 8:14

So then dot com bust, we become Community IT in 2 000 in February of 2001. In September of that same year, six months later, 9-11 happens. That's right. That's causes all of these changes in the nonprofit sector. But then it also like the internet really takes off after that.

Johan Hammerstrom 8:39

And we really grew a lot, you know, in that period from 2002 to let's just say 2007. We were growing really fast, you know, we were having a lot of different identity crises as a business, like who do we want to be? You know, what kind of business do we want to be? And then the Great Recession happened, you know, in 2007. That really ultimately led us to divest of the web database and consulting, you know, businesses. And then kind of coming out of that, and the MSP model really started to take hold in the industry, you know, in the late 2000s.

Carolyn Woodard 9:22

I feel like um, you know, when I joined Community IT, we were still doing a lot of very custom work, custom database building and custom websites. Um and we were using standardized technology, like you build a SQL database, right? But we were the only ones who could maintain it, unless you had, you know, someone, if you had someone at your nonprofit who could build a database, they would build it and maintain it. But if you called us in, like we were the ones who knew how it worked, basically.

Carolyn Woodard 9:56

And I feel like even at that time, we were learning and the best practices was moving toward standardized technologies and away from highly customized technologies for nonprofits. And we, you know, it forced a big change for us, but I think that demonstrates our ability to evolve and to follow the best practices and the data and the, you know, what we were seeing in the community rather than focusing just on what we were trained to do, basically. Do you think that's fair to say?

Johan Hammerstrom 10:31

Absolutely. Yeah. There was a great book that came out in 2010, 2011, maybe earlier than that, called The Big Switch. And it's probably, I'm I'm sure it's been forgotten because the premise of it is kind of quaint in retrospect. But the an it was all about the cloud and everything moving to the cloud. And the analogy that the author used was he was looking back at the industrial revolution in the late 1800s, and he said that in the late 1800s, every factory had its own power supply. Every factory had its own coal-fired furnace, was generating its own power, its own electricity. And the big change that happened in industrial production in the early 1900s was replacing all of these individual power supplies with the grid, the power grid and the power supply that's feeding power to the grid.

Johan Hammerstrom 11:31

And so he said the same thing's gonna happen in IT. Everybody has their little server in their closet with their own email server and their own website and their own, you know, thing, the custom thing that they've built. And that's all gonna get shifted into these common, much larger, more much more efficient, you know, and better run, you know, common infrastructure storage facilities, which are data centers, you know, and and again, like we forget, you know, now data centers are just sort of a fact of life, and so we take it for granted that they're there.

Johan Hammerstrom 12:08

But when you look back at 2010, like everybody had a server in their closet, you know. If you're a small organization, if you're a larger organization, you had a nice built-out server room with HVAC and the fancy like chemical, you know, fire extinguishing systems and stuff. Yeah.

Johan Hammerstrom 12:27

But it's the same thing with databases. Like, I think the the thing that helped our database business more than anything else was Microsoft Access. Because back in like 2000, 2001, you got the Microsoft Office Suite, and it came with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Access. And then you had an intern in your office who was like really good at computers, and they built you a little access database. And then when their internship was over, they left. And now you're like, I have this, all my critical organizational data is in this database, and I can't fix it, I can't maintain it.

Johan Hammerstrom 13:05

So then our solution was yeah, don't use Access databases. We'll build a database for you on a more robust platform like Cold Fusion. We'll store it like on a MySQL server on your little server in the office. And then the next evolution beyond that was don't instead of having it like on a custom database that you built that's hosted in your office, move to a commercially available you know, database. And that's I mean ultimately, I think that's like the Salesforce. Like Salesforce has made a ton of inroads in the nonprofit space, basically by taking all of that and managing the database, the application, the hosting, all of it. And same thing happened with websites, with um like WordPress, and then even more so with Squarespace.

Johan Hammerstrom 13:59

And but people used to build their own websites too. Like that Microsoft Suite also came with Microsoft front page. I don't know if you remember that.

Carolyn Woodard 14:08

I do remember it.

Johan Hammerstrom 14:10

And people were like, I'm building my own website, like creating a Word document. It was as easy, you know, as creating a Word document, and people would host it off of the servers in their closet. I mean, it's all very that was a long time ago.

Johan Hammerstrom 14:27

But you know, the business, our business evolved as the industry changed, and you know, as the cloud, everything sort of evolved to this much more robust and efficient environment in the cloud. And so our services that we offered as a as a business changed over the years. Um, and we've always really embraced the more efficient, more stable, more reliable approach.

Johan Hammerstrom 14:58

Like a lot of, I remember a lot of MSPs were pretty resistant of the cloud because they felt like they were going to lose all their business. And our premise has always been we want to do what's best for the nonprofit sector. And if there's still a need for us, then we will continue to be in business. And if there's no longer a need for us, then you know, we should shut down the business because we're not delivering value to the nonprofit sector anymore.

Johan Hammerstrom 15:23

And I remember there was this one company, Zenith InfoTech. They were like an MSP tools company. They had like a data, they had a help desk that you could buy, they had a backup solution that you could buy, they had an endpoint management solution. This is all very like primitive back in like the late 2000s, early 2010s. And they had what they they had it's called the Zenith Cloud. And you can sell a cloud solution to your customers. And the Zenith Cloud was a little half rack with like a bunch of servers in it that you put in the closet. And we're like, this isn't the cloud. And they're like, Well, we call it the Zenith Cloud. And so you're basically like misleading your customers into thinking that they were moving to the cloud and they were moving into this, like they were the worst. They went out of business, not too much.

Carolyn Woodard 16:18

Inconceivable. Inconceivable.

Johan Hammerstrom 16:20

Ridiculous.

Carolyn Woodard 16:21

I don't think that word think means what you think it means.

Johan Hammerstrom 16:24

Exactly.

Carolyn Woodard 16:27

So I think we've been um very agile at moving with the technology. And um as you said, we I think have for a long time recommended uh, because we have this long experience working with nonprofits and seeing, you know, working strategically with them and seeing what the needs are, and seeing that locking yourself into some very customized solution really limits your options and can make it very expensive. Because there's a if there's only one consultant who can repair that thing, then you have to pay them whatever they ask because you've got this database that only they can fix.

Carolyn Woodard 17:05

So we've been advocating for a long time for people to you know move to very standardized solutions where there are a lot of consultants, a lot of companies can help you, which kind of seems counterintuitive, but we know that uh we are very good at helping people with those solutions, at helping organizations.

Carolyn Woodard 17:24

Um, so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you as a longtimer about the people. Because another thing that we talk about often is how hard it is for nonprofits to hire IT personnel internally, to find someone that has the right mix of that skill set of being a very tech-savvy, you know, like having all the technical skills and also understanding nonprofits and also being able to think strategically about what IT, the nonprofit, needs, and also be a people person and be able to interact with all of the nonprofit staff who are often also usually very people-oriented people, and just how difficult it is to find those people.

Carolyn Woodard 18:09

So, can you talk a little bit about the people at community IT over the years and you know, how did we find the people? I you said that a lot of people at Reliacom, you know, came with us and became the company at Community IT. So what about the people over 25 years?

Johan Hammerstrom 18:27

Yeah, well, it's uh I think the the common factor among the employees at community IT who've um been here the longest, stayed the longest, and enjoyed the experience the most, I would say has been their commitment to working with nonprofit organizations. That's kind of the most important factor. Obviously, having technical skills and experience, the ability to do technical work at a high level is also really important. So, you know, if if you don't have a good technical base, it's gonna be hard to be successful at an IT company doing providing IT service. That kind of goes without saying.

Johan Hammerstrom 19:15

Um but technically talented people are hard to find just in general. Um, but then for nonprofit organizations, finding technical people who also are really committed to the nonprofit sector and the work that nonprofits are doing is also can also be challenging. And I think that's the thing that has been the most um important for staff who've who've really found this to be a valuable experience and for you know for us in terms of recruiting and retaining really talented technical, technical staff.

Johan Hammerstrom 19:53

I think one of the things that we provide for our employees is the opportunity to be in a community with other technical people who are committed to working with nonprofit organizations. Because I think one of the things that we've observed over the years, especially with smaller nonprofit organizations that only have one IT person, they're kind of alone in the organization. There's no one else they can talk to about technical issues, technically what it's like to be an IT services provider.

Johan Hammerstrom 20:30

And so one of the benefits of working at community IT is that you have this huge community of peers that can that you can turn to quickly for guidance with technical issues, with you know, if you if you're trying to solve a technical problem and you're not able to, there's a bunch of people that you can turn to to work with. Um but also guidance with non-technical issues, you know, trying to trying to get things done at a nonprofit organization can be challenging at times. And so being able to turn to other technical people who have experience with nonprofits is also something that can be really uh beneficial.

Johan Hammerstrom 21:12

Um, so I think that commitment to working with nonprofits is uh is really key. And I I will add that, especially with larger nonprofit organizations that have you know IT departments or teams with at least two or three people. Um, what I've observed over the years is that those organizations that also have internal IT staff who are really committed to the mission of the organization and the work that they're doing, that makes a big difference in those larger organizations as well. And um, I've had the great honor to work with some incredible IT professionals over the years at the different nonprofit organizations that we've worked with. And um there have been a lot of nonprofits that we've supported who've really benefited from their internal staff, their in house staff, um, that are very talented technically and extremely committed to the work that they're doing. And that's you know, really makes a huge difference. And those are these are all you know, IT professionals that could be making a lot more money. Somewhere else, and they've all recognized that there are more important things in life than maximizing your earning potential.

Carolyn Woodard 22:32

I think also that once you have a bunch of um technology nerds who love nonprofits together, our culture kind of snowballed as well. So we attracted other employees who really enjoyed our internal culture and enjoyed the mission. And um, it's something actually, now that you're saying that I'm realizing about technology people in nonprofits in the larger environment is that there are several organizations connecting us. So you have NTEN that has the conference in DC where nonprofit uh IT people get together. You have TAG Technology Association of Grantmakers, which also started out as a you know, a group of you know IT professionals at foundations who wanted to talk to each other and share stories and resources and support.

Carolyn Woodard 23:30

So it is something that is, I don't know that it's unique to our sector, but it's something that really can help. If you're listening to this podcast right now and feeling like you have no one to talk to, uh, there are organizations out there that are very supportive.

Johan Hammerstrom 23:46

Yeah, and if I could, I just want to um also shout out and really honor and recognize our staff who are immigrants to the United States, because that's been a key part of our story as a company as well. And from the beginning, you know, we've we've had staff uh who are immigrants um from day one. But uh about 10 years ago, we started partnering with Carlos Rosario Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. And that's an adult education public charter school that provides a variety of different educational tracks, uh, culinary hospitality, but also IT. And we partnered with them to provide job placement for a lot of their graduates. And so we ended up hiring a lot of um, you know, first generation immigrant staff uh as a result of that partnership. And that's been a huge part of our story and our success as well.

Johan Hammerstrom 24:47

And I think that's another example of um sort of the positive snowball effect where we had it, we hired a few, you know, first generation immigrants to work at community IT, and it really helped transform the culture to make it more welcoming, you know. Um, and so we have staff from all over the world, and you know, we really have opportunity to learn from each other and you know, learn about somebody else's um cultural background, learn about their experience uh in the in the US. And so that's been a rich part of our history.

Johan Hammerstrom 25:25

And then one last I would be remiss not to also um acknowledge and honor our Mennonite history, which may come as a surprise uh to people, but um our founder, David Deal, is a Mennonite. Many of our earliest staff, uh, especially in the pre-community IT Reliacom days, were um Mennonite interns. They were part of the Mennonite Voluntary Service and were you know being assigned to DC to provide tech support to all these nonprofits in DC back in the 90s. And so I think our Mennonite background has also been a huge uh. Mennonites are, you know, they're not, they don't bring a lot of attention on themselves, but um like it's the culture of service and humility and resourcefulness um and frugality.

Johan Hammerstrom 26:18

I mean, I think that's those are all uh cultural values that we have as a company that are very positive, that I think can be traced back in many ways to our to our Mennonite roots. So I just want to acknowledge and and uh uh also just share my own gratitude. I'm not a Mennonite, but I feel like I've benefited greatly from uh the Mennonites.

Carolyn Woodard 26:40

Yeah, same here. I remember um there was a period where you know how there's the trendy business books um and they kind of come in and out of trendiness. And the servant leader, there were just like you know, 20 best-selling books on business about how to be a servant leader. And I remember during that trend thinking, oh, but we've been doing that forever. Like that's like just a huge part of our culture. So yeah, that definitely came from the beginning.

Johan Hammerstrom 27:07

Yeah.

Carolyn Woodard 27:08

Well, I want to wrap up and uh be you know mindful of our time together, but I just wondered, you know, 25 years, that's a huge uh achievement. And small businesses lasting 25 years, it's uh not all of them make it that far. No, it's and uh I feel like you know, uh, from my perspective at least, we have so we have such a strong foundation. Uh, we have you know great, a great history of 25 years.

Carolyn Woodard 27:35

But I'm wondering if you want to give us just um a thought or two about where, you know, where are we going? What what do you see changing in the next, I don't know, 25 years that that's impossible to predict in in IT, but maybe in the next five years, 10 years?

Johan Hammerstrom 27:51

Well, I think you know, like our purpose as a business is that's that's the bedrock. And it's to help nonprofit organizations accomplish their mission through the effective use of technology.

Johan Hammerstrom 28:03

So as long as there's a way to do that, we will continue to be relevant, I think.

Johan Hammerstrom 28:09

Um, we have changed dramatically over the last five years. We've gone from being a business that was deeply rooted in Washington, D.C., part of a community here. Uh we still are, but we've added, you know, I would say close to half of our staff now are outside of the DC area. We've gone from being a very location-based business to being a fully virtual, fully remote business. We've navigated the that change successfully, but that has changed our company and you know is leading us in a new direction.

Johan Hammerstrom 28:43

So in some ways, it's a process of discovery. We're figuring out what does it mean to be a fully virtual, fully remote company? What does it mean to serve nonprofit organizations nationwide rather than just in Washington, D.C.

Johan Hammerstrom 28:59

And I think one of the great values and advantages of being an employee-owned business is that it's not just one or two people's vision, it's sort of a collective vision that we are figuring out together. And that's been a long part of our history.

Johan Hammerstrom 29:15

And I think when you look at all of the changes we've made over the years, um, closing down some lines of business, starting new lines of business, finding better ways to serve the nonprofit sector, a lot of that has been driven not only by our purpose, but also by the engagement that every employee has with the mission of the of the company. And I think that goes back to our employee ownership roots and and identity.

Johan Hammerstrom 29:43

And so I think that's gonna be it's the core things, those won't change. Employee ownership, the value of employee engagement, the purpose of serving nonprofit organizations.

Johan Hammerstrom 29:55

Uh, the technology does change, like you've like you said, Carolyn. It changes in ways that we can't predict. We just don't know. Like in 2021, no one was. I mean, I'm sure some insiders could have seen Chat GPT coming, but no one else did. Now it's here, now we're all figuring out what it means. There's gonna be some other new thing that none of us are predicting in two or three years. So we got to stay agile.

Johan Hammerstrom 30:18

But I think as long as we're grounded in those things that have made us who we are, um, it'll help us to be successful in adapting to the new technology changes and finding ways to help nonprofits use that new technology effectively and appropriately. So uh I probably just avoided giving you a specific answer, but that's the

Carolyn Woodard 30:43

No, that was that was a perfect answer. I think that um, yeah, there's I mean, as you said, there's only so much you can predict, but relying on our foundation is what is gonna lead us forward for sure.

Johan Hammerstrom 30:59

I'll say I'll just one thing I'll maybe this will be a good note to close on. You know, we've added a lot of new staff over the last you know three or four years. And I'm just extremely, I think the thing that excites me the most about Community IT is seeing those staff get excited about doing this work and seeing them figure out new and better ways of delivering IT service to nonprofit organizations.

Johan Hammerstrom 31:27

And so growing and evolving the company is a collective effort that every employee at Community IT is a part of and vital to making happen. And I see that happening as people start to get more uh experience working here. I start to see them, you know, finding new ways to deliver service. That's extremely exciting. And so to me, like that's the future of the company is that that employee engagement, employee creativity that everybody brings to the work that they do.

Carolyn Woodard 32:00

That's a that's a great place to leave it. Thank you, Johan, for for joining me today to talk about our 25th anniversary year and our actual anniversary, February 1st. And um I'm just uh so so happy and proud, as you said, to work for a company like this.

Johan Hammerstrom 32:20

Thank you, Carolyn.

Johan Hammerstrom 32:21

Yeah, and I just want to acknowledge all the employees over the years. There's been several hundred who've worked at Community IT at one time or another. And uh we were actually some of me and some of the old timers were just thinking back to who was working here when we first started, and we can remember every single person, all their names, and they've all meant a lot, you know, to those of us who've been here, to all the organizations that we've worked with.

Johan Hammerstrom 32:47

So um, this anniversary, you know, it's not just for those of us who who are still here who have been here the whole time, but um also for those who've anyone who's ever worked at Community IT over the years, uh this is you know partly a result of your work too. So just want to thank thank all of them also.