Ministry technology is ministry work.
After twenty years inside ministry IT, I keep coming back to the same truth: the knowledge every ministry needs already exists. It’s just scattered across a hundred organizations that rarely compare notes, held by leaders who are carrying it alone. IronSharp brings the expertise, the knowledge, and the people together.
Why IronSharp exists
One conviction, three doors
Expertise you can hire
Technologies moves ministries through the full cycle, from a named problem to a solution their own team runs.
Enter Technologies The commonsKnowledge in the open
Community makes what ministries know visible to each other. Real stacks, real pricing, real lessons learned.
Enter Community The covenantLeaders who aren't alone
Faith connects the leaders behind the work, because it is heavy and no one should carry it masked.
Enter FaithWho you’d be working with
Twenty years on both sides of the table
I’m Marc Smith. I spent a decade building the software ministries buy: donor management, CRM, and eCommerce platforms, ending as Vice President at DonorDirect. Then I crossed to the other side of the table and spent another decade selecting, implementing, and leading those same technologies from inside one of the world’s largest ministries.
At Samaritan’s Purse, I led the teams responsible for donor systems, enterprise applications, data, cloud infrastructure, and AI. I oversaw an organization-wide donor platform transition and helped build the ministry’s first enterprise data warehouse. I supported technology operations across the UK, Australia, Canada, and Korea, and served as the IT leader on the committee that stood up our GDPR privacy and governance program.
I also founded the organization’s AI Enablement team. What excited me was never the technology, it was the hours coming back to people: the reports, the data entry, the busywork sitting between a staff member and the ministry they were actually called to do. My job was to make it safe to say yes, so I built governance a leader could carry into a boardroom with confidence, not a policy that sits unread in a binder. Those are the same conversations happening across ministries right now.
Most recently, I led the building of Samaritan Ark, a Samaritan’s Purse ministry that exists to help other ministries share the Gospel of Jesus Christ through technology. We built the data centers, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS solutions partner ministries rely on.
I’ve lived both sides of the technology relationship. I know how software gets designed, marketed, and sold, because I’ve built it. I know what it takes to select, implement, govern, and live with those decisions, because I’ve owned them. Very few people in ministry technology have sat in both seats, and it shapes every engagement.
Working with me
IronSharp is intentionally small
When you call or email, you work directly with me. I’m not here to sell you another framework or methodology. I’m here to put two decades of practical experience to work on your hardest technology decisions, so you move faster, avoid expensive mistakes, and end up with something your team can run and your mission can rely on.
Technologies is that experience, put to work on your problem. Community is the network I wish had existed when I started. Faith is the room I needed and didn’t have.