Cost-efficient high-tech for charities

Digital transformation and becoming more data driven: these may be two objectives for your charity, but there are important questions that need to be asked. How much will these initiatives cost, and can your charity afford it?

 

The good news is that there are many cutting edge digital innovations that can offer your charity huge benefits that don’t cost the earth. In fact in some cases they needn’t cost your charity anything at all.

 

Here are some of the best ones that your charity should know about.

 

 

No code software platforms and citizen development

 

There are all kinds of ways that a good piece of software – either a mobile app or a program for a desktop or laptop – could help you charity.

 

The problem is that if your charity needs a piece of software to do something specific, then the chances are it doesn’t exist. That means you will have to write the software yourself, or pay a software developer to write it for you.

 

That’s where “no code” platforms can help. A no code platform is a product that allows anyone to write relatively simple but useful programs without any software coding knowledge. Instead, users can point, click, drag, drop, and configure from various options to create a program in a very short space of time.

 

In many cases, the best people to write these programs are the staff that need them and will ultimately be using them, and these people are known as ‘citizen developers’ to differentiate them from professional developers who write software for a living.

 

Popular no code platforms include Mendix, Zoho Creator, Knack, Appy Pie, and Betty Blocks.

 

 

Hardware virtualisation

 

As your charity grows, the chances are that it will adopt more software packages for constituent relationship management (CRM), HR, accounting and payroll, online retailing, project management, and so on.

 

A common problem is that all these software packages may be running on separate servers for security and other reasons, so that what you end up with is “server sprawl”: an IT room with multiple computers in it, each costing a significant amount to buy, maintain, and replace on a regular basis.

 

On solution to this problem is to use a technology called hardware virtualisation. This allow you to convert an entire server – including the software running on it – into a ‘virtual server’: a piece of software which emulates the real physical server. You can then run multiple virtual servers on a real ‘host’ server.

 

One of the benefits of virtualisation is that you may only need a single computer to run all of your charity’s virtual servers, saving your charity on hardware purchase and replacement costs.

 

What’s more, this single computer will be working hard, whereas in the past you may have had three or four servers which were only working at 20% or 30% of their capacity. That means you will be using your computer resources much more efficiently.

 

Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualisation product is available free in versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server. There are other virtualisation products available from companies including Citrix and VMware.

 

 

Open source software programs

 

Some of the most cutting-edge technology that charities can benefit from involves software for activities such as data analysis, online retailing and fundraising.

 

In many cases some of the best software available, including BIRT and Spark for data analysis, is produced as part of open source projects. These projects are collaborative affairs and many people including professional developers and volunteers contribute to the project.

 

There are a number of benefits to open source software, including the fact that it is generally available to use completely free. Another important benefit is that open source software can easily be adapted to suit your charity’s specific needs.

 

So you could adopt a particular open source data analysis or online retailing software product and then pay a developer to tweak it to add one or more specific features that you would like but which are missing.

 

 

Open source operating systems

 

Every computer needs an operating system to make it work, and the most common operating system is Microsoft’s Windows. But charities can avoid the occasionally substantial cost of buying the latest version of Windows by opting instead to use a free open source operating system such as Linux.

 

Aside from the cost saving, Linux is an extremely powerful and secure operating system, and it will also run on older computers which would need to be replaced in order to run the latest version of Windows.

 

Popular Linux distributions which can be used by people familiar with Windows include Ubuntu Desktop and Linux Mint.

 

 

Chat bots

 

Charity service users, supporters, and potential donors often need help or information from charity staff. But this takes up time that staff members could be using more productively for the charity, and sometimes staff may not be available.

 

One very cost efficient solution is to create a chatbot which uses simple rules or even artificial intelligence – which is not as complicated as many believe it to be - to understand online queries and to provide help and information in response.

 

The benefits of this approach are that chatbots can be very easy and cheap to set up and operate, they free up staff time, and they can then be “on duty” twenty four hours a day.

 

Popular tools for creating Chatbots include Botsify and Chatfuel.

 

 

Hardware in the cloud

 

Many charities take advantage of the cloud for access to software-as-a-service, but your charity can also use computer hardware more cost-efficiently by accessing it from the cloud. That’s because cloud service providers use vast amounts of computer hardware, and take advantage of virtualisation technology, automation, and economies of scale to operate it at very low cost.

 

That means that if you choose to use cloud storage resources, or perhaps security appliances running in the cloud, you get the benefit of low costs which would be impossible to obtain if your charity was operating its own storage systems or security appliances.