Your Questions Answered: Ask Us Anything 12th July 2023

We are a registered charity starting a fundraising campaign and would like to use a tap to donate card reader in our premises shop window. I can see that you can do that with Zettle or Sum-up. Are these card readers stand-alone or do they need to be connected to a smartphone in order to receive payments? 

We aren’t connected to these organisations. Zettle needs access to Paypal. The Sum-up option seems to require a smart phone but may be worth asking both directly 

Similarly, we have staff out and about with Android phones and I have seen that there is a possibility they could have an app on their phone which enables people to give. It seems that these apps are only Android enabled, is that correct? Give A Little has the clearest info about it’s app. If we were to download the app would we need a card reader as well? It seems it only works with the SumUp card reader so that would point us in getting one of those, either a SumUp Air or a SumUp Solo. Any advice on these would be appreciated.  

Again you may wish to contact these resellers directly for a breakdown on how their apps work and if they are specifically associated with Android/Smart phones or if they have hardware which can collect donations with the hardware.  

In the chat, Damian answered: "some of the sum up devices have a smart card in them.  but more expensive but don’t need a smart phone.  we use one and it’s been fine."

Best free video editing softwares - any recommendations? and how do I get started with google grants/ads. 

Ensure to checkout our recent article on Free Tech. We don’t currently work with organisation’s that provide free video editing software. Any orgaisations that provide this usually provide this as a trial or possibly come with lots of various ads. For Google ads help, you should checkout TechSoup courses.

I’d be interested to hear your advice for free video editing software. I’ve used adobe premiere pro in the past but my small charity can’t afford the licence fees. Canva is great but a bit limited. 

Ensure to checkout our recent article on Free Tech. We don’t currently work with organisation’s that provide free video editing software  

We’re also looking at CRM systems and I would be interested to hear about the different options out there. Which ones are suitable for very small charities - we are looking at Salesforce at the moment but is this the best option or which alternatives would you recommend?

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.  

Digital Fundraising - I’d be interested to hear about best practices around promoting fundraising events online. 

We have plenty of content that can help with this one. You can check out our newly refurbished Fundraising hub, which lays out the essentials, has webinars and useful products, and has a useful section to point out Sector Learning.  

I would also recommend joining us in November for our Digital Fundraising Summit. This year’s theme is "The Future of Fundraising" and will inform you on emerging digital fundraising ideas and empower you to try new things.   

You can also catch up on last year’s summit to get useful insights an see what is in store in November.  
 

We’re a small charitable trustee team of 8 - which product is most suitable to enable us to collectively create documents and store them in a shared drive storage location (trust deeds, policies etc.)? We also need a consistent email capability like a "work" email rather than us all using different personal addresses. Being a small operation we’re keen to avoid ongoing cost commitments if possible, but recognise we may need to pay for document storage. And given we’re not very pc literate, are there some very simple instructions on how to set it up? or could you please help us?

In terms of options with small cost options, you may want to look at moving to Microsoft 365. There are lots of charity discounts available (including via ourselves). There are Microsoft 365 products that provide 1TB of storage per user. Moving to Microsoft 365 will also allow you to ‘centralise’ your emails as an organisation rather than all your users using their own individual emails. 365 will allow you to share documents effectively. 

We are a small charity, that runs on a project by project basis. At the moment we have no cyber security whatsoever. Most the time I would imagine this would be not an issue, however, when we do run projects which can cost between £5,000 and £80,000. We are quite busy, and there’s lots of emails, invoices etc. Our question is should we be thinking of having any cyber security, and is it available at a small price, because we are not a wealthy charity. Kind regards, Stephen Israel, and looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow.

There are quite a few options available for Cyber Security software, such as Antivirus. We have offers for Avast, Bitdefender and Norton. Avast comes highly recommended as it is deployed via the Cloud – allowing you flexibility to move protection to different devices if they are replaced (licenses that require installation are often lost if the device is replaced). 

Avast charitydigital.org.uk/products/avast-business-antivirus---annual-subscription 

Norton charitydigital.org.uk/suppliers/norton  

As a small church based charity: 

1) what are the main differences between SharePoint and One Drive

Sharepoint is designed for advanced document management. Onedrive is better used for a place to upload, share and synch files. However they often used together and usually both included within the same license option. 

2) Do we need Norton etc. security or does the Microsoft package give enough safety and security?  

3) What cyber security precautions should we take? 

4) What licences do we need so people can have a e-mail address to access the system?  

If your question is regarding 365, we’d recommend taking advantage of Business Premium for your first 10 users as the price is highly discounted (this license also comes with Windows Defender). We’d also recommend Microsoft 365 Business Basic for users who have more simple needs – perhaps for part-time usage etc.  

For micro or small organisations struggling to by equipment, which kind of free softwares are safe to use and that you can recommend? E.g. antivirus, Web provider (e.g. Wix) and hosting space (e.g. JustHost), etc.  

• Take a look at our webinar about free software available for charities  
• You can also get a free Charity.domain here.
• Wix and our Antivirus options aren’t free, but you may want to take a look at our offers:

• • Wix website builder
  • Avast antivirus

The Microsoft license that is included with laptops is usually an individual/family licenses – these are not licensed for business use and ideally shouldn’t be used for your chariy operations. Do not renew and create a new 365 admin portal for your charity and get it validated for nonprofit discount. Renewal from this point should be pretty simple.

Any tips on where to find some trusted IT support? Our current IT support isn’t working well for us. 

Qlik IT are friends of ours and provide a great service. 

Recommendations from the chat: “Cara Networks works well for us and they are Third sector focused.” 

“We have good IT support from a company called Indigo. Long term relationship with them and happy to pass on their details. Louise - Voluntary Impact Northamptonshire.” 

Any recommendations for a good image database service? Ideally with charity rates 

Adobe Express should be a good start if you want free images: www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/6157  

Then it was clarified that the customer wanted to have storage space. We recommended using OneDrive to store and tag your items.  

We are a very small charity, looking for a good social media scheduling platform,  any ideas?

This has been covered in the chat but just to ensure everyone has heard the answer: You can do this for free using Adobe Express, or you can access a discount to Hootsuite (which seems to be recommended by others in the chat).  

• Hootsuite: www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/6185  
• Adobe Express: www.charitydigitalexchange.org/node/6157  

Any suggestions for a good affordable password manager? 

Dashlane is available through the Charity Digital Exchange at a charitable discounted rate here.  

David from the chat recommends: “NORDPass help us and gave us a good discount but you have to negotiate with them” 

What web site hosting products would you recommend please? 

Wix is available at a discounted rate through the Charity Digital Exchange here.

We are looking for a partner/ consultant who can develop a bespoke product including case management, reporting on form fields and timesheet capability (but quite complex i.e. different people with different rates and different across different times during the day) - do you know of any good consultancy partners that could support finding a solution? 

Is it advisable to use email addresses on a website or should contact forms be used and not email addresses 

Has anyone used a product called Enthuse? 

No one in the chat has specifically used this, but Enthuse is a partner of Charity Digital’s. Enthuse is a fundraising, donations and events registration platform that has helped more than 4,000 charities, including 1 in 5 of the top 100, raise over £70 million. Enthuse’s solutions are customised under a cause’s own brand and put the organisation in control of the data. This allows charities to build and nurture a loyal supporter base, raise more and ultimately have more impact. You can find more information here.