Nonprofits are businesses and businesses use technology. The technology itself is not unique. What’s different about nonprofits are the characteristics of a business model that is focused on public good as the bottom line. If you’re a technologist who has ever wanted to work at a nonprofit but are unsure of what the challenges will be, or you work at a nonprofit and want to know more about what makes you unique, this is a worthwhile read.
Microsoft Office 365 offers a compelling but confusing array of applications for document collaboration and management. SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams – which one is best? Our answer: all three of them, as they each have particular strengths. This article dives deep into a methodology for securing organizational work product, collaborating effectively, and keeping it all organized with Microsoft 365.
We live in dangerous times. The internet brings us wondrous things, but they’re threatened by the bad actors who want to take our wonderful things away. This article lays out in detail the case for investing in security and the most effective measures that you can take.
AS you probably know, Salesforce is popular with nonprofits and the company makes some compelling cases for why it should be, as it’s a flexible, powerful tool for managing constituents and donations, among many other things, offered at a serious discount from their standard pricing. But it’s not always the perfect fit. This article goes in depth on what it is about Salesforce that might make it worth your while – or not.
Securing your organization against cyber-threats requires far more than just putting the technical safeguards like Multi-Factor Authentication, Single Sign-On, and Firewalls in place. Your organization culture must be one that values the confidentiality and security of your and your clients’ information. That starts with having sensible security policies in place that the staff understand and comply with.
Selling the importance of a new CRM or financial system can be a challenge when you have to sell the injtiative to the executives, the board, and often the funders. They want assurances that the investment will yield a measureable return. Here’s how you make that case, and make your organization one that can easily calculate ROI.
We want information that speaks to our mission effectiveness in order to raise awareness, funding, and support for the work that we are so passionate about. And that requires a technology platform that makes it easy to retrieve, produce and format that information in ways that will get the message out. So how do we get from a disjointed system architecture that makes producing a board report at three day ordeal to the holy “fingertips” grail? This article offers some guidance.
The nonprofit sector is littered with organizations that have made huge technology investments that failed to produce the desired returns. While there are many reasons why tech projects fail, fundamental to their success is the company’s ability to adopt new systems. How can you create an environment where technology projects succeed?
What are the most secure nonprofits doing and how do youcompare? This handy chart lets you self-assess your level of risk from one (completely insecure) to 5 (fully protected). Take a look and see how you’re doing.
Here at Techcafeteria, we’re all about metrics and measurement. That said, data is data and the devil is in what you do with it, so it’s painful when what seems like a useful set of metrics can be easily abused. Help desk metrics, like number of open tickets and time taken to close them, offer a stark example of data that, in many cases, might be better off not being collected.
Nonprofits are known for doing more with less. For nonprofit staff, that means that you likely don’t earn the wage that you would doing a similar job for a for-profit corp. And most of us would argue that it’s a fair trade – until it isn’t. This article is a reasoned argument for paying, if not on a par with the for-profits, within a range that will stabilize your operations.
This one is for my peeps, the techies, who generally love their work but hate to talk about it. If you’re a System Admin or IT Manager, it’s likely that written communication isn’t your most polished skill. But it can’t be overstated it is how important communication is to the success of IT. This article advises on how to do it right.
