Your Questions Answered: Ask Us Anything 16 August 2023

Following support for Office 19 with 365 ending after October, what alterative affordable options would best suit a mid size organisation?

Moving to a 365 subscription with downloadable apps is now the more affordable option due to price increases on charitable discounted Office on-prem licenses 18 months ago. The nonprofit discount that charities have access to for Microsoft Cloud can really cut your costs down. Charity Digital can provide a basic support service and 10 Business Premium licenses at £0.90 per user per month. There are plenty of other options too so please do feel free to contact us directly for your licensing options.  

www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/3384  

Do you have any suggestions for the best CRM and email nurture journey systems that are low cost or free? 

Take a look at our article posted in April regarding best CRM systems. We also did a podcast about choosing the right CRM linked on this page. Many CRM’s have a free option such as Hubspot, Zoho, Zapier. 

charitydigital.org.uk/topics/the-best-crm-systems-for-charities-7626  

Here are some of our most recent articles on CRMs and volunteers that you might find helpful.  

Please note, you can purchase and explore ‘Donorperfect’ on our Charity Digital Exchange catalogue.  www.charitydigitalexchange.org/content/donorperfect-online-1-year-subscription-%E2%80%93-access-discounted-rates  

How do I go about sourcing the perfect CRM system to meet our needs in the community youth sector; as an umbrella group for youth organisations and with our main function being to support those organisations to deliver high quality youth work to young people, I need a system that I can have oversight of but the individual organisations have their own private access to. We need something to register young people at youth provision, complete attendance monitoring, monitor progress and achievements of young poeple, record staff training and DBS checks. I could do with additional functionality around recording "customer enquiries" so I can capture all the advice and guidance we give.

Checkout our guide to choosing the right CRM (Charity Digital - Topics - An easy guide to choosing a CRM system). Salesforce is great if you have the funds or personnel to implement and train with it. For small charities, we’d recommend DonorPerfect or Bigin by Zoho.

Feel free to take a look at the resources also mentioned above.  

charitydigital.org.uk/topics/a-charity-guide-to-choosing-a-crm-system-9103  

From the chat: Salesforce & Monday offer 10 seats free 

What IT managers are available for free who can assist charities in decision making, who do not have an on site expert and who outsource their IT?
 
Starting point would be Digital Candle – a free consultation provided to charities on their Digital needs who may be able to put you in touch with the right person www.digitalcandle.org.uk/ 

What cloud based H&S systems that are not expensive are available where everything relating to H&S can be kept, including policies/procedures/RA’s/SOP’s/templates with drop down menus for RA’s to make it easier for the not so proficient in RA’s/database that sends reminders to document owners that their RA is due for renewal?
 
There are no Health and Safety systems out there for nonprofits/charities so we have no information on this. However, it may be worth asking for a nonprofit discount when asking for a quote. Softwareadvice.co.uk has an interesting directory and comparisons on this topic so you may want to check that out.

Hugo in chat added: Been looking into this going direct to bright safe looks good and they gave a cheap quote. Plus additional support with policy is included 

What cloud based facilities management systems are available that is not expensive to record PPM’s/reactive/statutory compliance that is easy to use and sends email updates to the person who raised the reactive requests
 
We don’t work with any organisations that provide this software but you may want to check out offers from Camms.Risk, Hyperproof and Audit Prodigy. Again, ask these organisations if a nonprofit discount is available. 

What software can we access for free?

Zoom have automatically renewed our annual subscription at full price. Can I cancel it and buy a new subscription with charity discount?

Before cancelling, please query the cancellation/refund process with Zoom. Our discount code can be applied to Zoom accounts without an existing paid subscription. Based on this the answer is yes. Please note that Charitty Digital provides a Zoom discount code – not the subscription itself. This means you will need to pay for the discount code and pay Zoom directly at the discounted rate.  

Are there good CRMs with project management built in 

There are lots of good ones. Salesforce is great if you have the right training or have someone who can implement it, it can be a great option as it’s very powerful. Same as Zoho and Dynamics for 365. They all do take a fair bit of work to get the most out of them. Something a little more basic that has helped us a bit is something called AirTable. It’s helped us keep track of conversations and integrates nicely with Zapier and other software, such as Asana.  

What’s the best online meeting app that allows more than 1 hour duration (eg Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams etc)? 

This all comes down to preference. They all have their benefits, e.g. you are probably already paying for a subscription that contains Teams and all of your chats are kept within the system. Google Meet also falls into this criteria if you are already a big user of other Google products. 

The interesting option of Zoom is that due to the covid pandemic, even the most non-tech-savy individuals made themselves become used to communicating remotely via Zoom for their work – as well as communicating with families, friends etc. 

Comment from Hugo: The google solution is alright but the algorithm does not show screens well if you are showing it in a meeting room 

What approach should an organisation take to ascertain the level of work required to ensure Cyber Essentials are met? 

First starting point: Visit the NCSC (www.ncsc.gov.uk/). They should be the starting point for any Cyber queries and they have a few useful free tools you can use too – they can also guide you towards obtaining Cyber Essentials certifications – organisations such as IASME can help with this. There’s a few quick wins your staff can employ straight away by always ensuring your software is up to date on devices (even your phones, tablets), using two/multi-factor authentication and possibly obtain a Password Manager (such as Dashlane ) 

2. So what approach should an organisation take to develop an understanding of digital security and make any recommendations for improvement? 

Nominate a single person to lead the project – they can take ownership of task getting done as well as be the first point of call for any queries or assistance. This person should also be provided the flexibility to train themselves on the correct steps they need to employ a strategy (such as reading up on NCSC information). A full digital (and hardware) based audit would also be useful steps too. 

3. Should we be reviewing the NIST cybersecurity framework as a starter, seeing how we perform against each criteria, where we are not performing well (gaps) would be the improvements we need to make? 

It’s an option for sure. We’d recommend obtaining Cyber Essentials certification. There are quite a few organisations that provide ths – such as IASME. Again, the NCSC can help you find the right path on this. 

Do you have recommendations for email systems? We use DotDigital currently but not 100% happy with it. 

Charity Digital re-sell dotdigital with discounted pricing for the non-profit sector, NHS, trusts,CIC’s and companies that don’t have charitable status but work with charities. Charity Digital have been working with dotdigital for over 15 years and have found it to be a very powerful and intuitive platform so if you’re not 100% happy with it, then contact Elizabeth who can provide any assistance with features that you wish to use more to their potential or can provide guidance with platform issues. Also Mailchimp is an email system that many organisations turn to in the first instance as it offer free email sends up until a certain limit and Constant Contact is a product that is also available in Charity Digital’s product catalogue. 

charitydigital.org.uk/products/products/dotdigital-email-marketing-platform 

charitydigital.org.uk/products/products/constant-contact-online-marketing---access-to-discounted-rates 

We are a disability charity, so would be interested to know of any good (and not expensive) accessibility software or add-ons which we might be able to make use of. 

There’s multiple text to speech options out there such as Murf, Speechify, Capti Voice. Most software of this nature does not actively advertise nonprofit discounts (most likely due to their software being used by a specific audience) so ensure to ask these organisations if they have one. 

We currently use Canva for design work but does Adobe Express have similar/enhanced functionality? 

Adobe Express has Social Media Scheduling and can also help you design logos, images etc. You can get this for free through the Charity Digital Exchange by clicking this link. www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/6157 

We had a great demonstration from Adobe on this, which you can watch using this link. charitydigital.org.uk/on-demand-webinars/on-demand-webinar-how-to-improve-your-content-creation--social-media-with-adobe-express 

Best alternatives to Hootsuite? 

If you still wish to stick with Hootsuite, you can access a free discount through Charity Digital: www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/6185  

Hugo from the chat: I quite like Buffer 

Amy from the chat: Later.com for Instagram only  

How do you do your due diligence on new software options? 

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Make sure it is from a reputable vendor (accreditations are a plus)
• Any reported or known issues?
• Does it meet requirements for security such as  - does it send data out, how often is it updated?
• Is it used widely?
• Does it send data out to process else where in the cloud?
• Does it require an internet connection constantly to function?

Any leads on pro bono web development? We have had the design done and have wireframes but need a developer to build it in Wordpress... 

Hugo: Wordpress community is worth approaching. On Slack, do a search for this. He says it’s getting easier to find funding for it - Digital inclusion funding: Reach out to city councils to get funding