Speaking to , Infoxchange's Australian founding executive director, Andrew Mahar, and Connecting Up Australia's CEO, Doug Jacquier, said technology plays an integral role in their work with the not-for-profit sector.

"Our mission is technology for social justice," Mahar said. "We work for the not-for-profit sector to improve the way that they use technology for the betterment of society."

Jacquier said Connecting Up Australia's role is to provide IT solutions to the ever-growing not-for-profit charities, with companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Sophos, MYOB and Flickr contributing hardware and software to the organisations' mission.

"We estimate that on an annual basis, the non-profit sector probably spends half a billion dollars on technology-related issues," Jacquier said. "It's a very, very large market."

Mahar agreed that the market was larger than many expect, but that this idea was not realised by many in the larger IT community.