The first order of business is to register at TechSoup.org and then register your non-profit in their system. In order to place orders you need to send in documentation that you are a non-profit. We faxed in a copy of our IRS determination and the waiting period for them to process it was around two weeks. If you have not heard back in that time just give them a call and make sure that they have received your documentation.

Before ordering any products you should read the conditions put in place by the donating organization. In the case of Microsoft they allow organizations to request up to 6 titles spread over 2 orders every two years. This means that you have to consider very carefully what you would like to request because once you have placed two orders you need to go through the waiting period before you can order again. Additionally, Microsoft places restrictions on what types of non-profits it will donate to. I am not as familiar with the conditions placed by other organizations but it is clearly written out when you go in to the ordering process.

When it came time to upgrade our server we decided to go with Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft Exchange 2010 Standard Edition each with 35 additional CALs. Our total cost for the administrative fees related to the donation was under $400. Buying these products at retail would have cost us around $6000, much more than our budget could handle!

Overall I found the order process very smooth. I did need to talk with their customer service at one point and the wait was fairly long but once I got through they were extremely helpful. For the Microsoft software we were able to download the software and license numbers directly from Microsoft and also received a DVD in the mail a few days later. I would highly recommend browsing through their website and seeing if there are of your needs which can be met through the donation program.

The Sell

The first step towards implementing Google Apps is to sell it to anyone who needs to be involved in the decision. For us it was a fairly easy sell; our Exchange server is running Exchange 2000 and is 8 years old so we knew we were going to incur a bit expense in the near future when it came time to upgrade. Since Google Apps is free for non-profits (up to 3000 users) the cost savings were obvious. Here you can find a cost comparison between implementing Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange in a business, there costs for non-profits would be lower because the fees are waived so the the numbers look even more attractive.

The other concern which needed to be addressed was the ease of implementation and the amount of time it would take to train employees to use the new system. At this point in the setup this is not such an easy question to answer but once you get further down the line it becomes clearer and you will be able to demonstrate a functioning account to anyone who wants to see it.

Initial Setup

To begin setup you will need to sign up for a Google Apps account linked to your domain. Go to http://apps.google.com and click on Google Apps for Business (if you are a non-profit) or Google Apps for Education (if you are a school). In the Google Apps for Business page you will see a link to the Non-Profit Edition on the right. From here you can begin the setup process starting with your domain name; if you don’t already own one then Google provides information on buying one and its cost. As a non-profit you will be asked to enter your EIN in order to receive the Non-Profit edition and this may take a few weeks to process but in the mean time you will be able to work with the Standard edition in order to get used to the system and begin your initial setup. This limits you to fifty users initially but assuming Google’s stated 1-2 week turnaround for the upgrade is true then that should give you the time you need to get started.

Many of the netbooks on the market today have very similar specs, a 1.6/1.66 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 160-250 GB HDD, 10” screen. Where you are going to find real differences is in connectivity, battery, and design.

If you are looking at a netbook as a primary computer for employees you will want to consider that they have less power than most laptops and a very small screen and keyboard. One solution to the screen size is to provide employees with an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse that they can hook it up to when they come in to the office.

The biggest downside of netbook computers is that they come with a very stripped down version of windows. If you are looking at a netbook as a primary computer you need to be aware that they cannot join a domain so this reduces their functionality in a business environment.

If you are looking at buying a netbook I would recommend that you go to your local computer store and try some of them out. Depending on your typing ability and finger size you might find that some of the netbooks are better suited to your needs.

With the release of Windows 7 Microsoft has upped the specs for netbooks, in particular the maximum processor is now single-core 2.0 Ghz and the maximum hard drive size has been increased from 160 GB to 250 GB. From my research it appears that manufacturers have not released many netbooks with the increased processing power but most have now increased their hard drive size. This is definitely something to consider but with the availability of cheap external storage devices I find that most of my information is now stored externally rather than internally. While the maximum RAM has been kept the same at 1 GB most netbooks are fairly easy to upgrade to 2 GB which I would recommend for most uses. Prices of Windows 7 vs. Windows XP netbooks are fairly comparable but for most companies Windows XP should be sufficient.

Another consideration when buying a netbook, or any laptop, is whether you will need access to Microsoft Office applications. Non-profits do have access to cheaper copies of Microsoft Office but there are Open Source alternative such as Open Office which I will look at at a later date and AbiWord which was reviewed in an earlier posting.

Overall I think netbooks can serve a valuable function for non-profits, whether as a cheaper alternative to laptops or as a secondary computer which can be paired with a desktop computer in the office using a remote desktop solution such as LogMeIn.

LogMeIn has a set of tools which can help make this process easier. I will mainly focus on their free edition which should suffice for most applications but will take a brief look at their paid-for services as well.

The free version of LogMeIn allows you to remotely control a computer through your web browser. I have tested it out using Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Personally I like using Mozilla Firefox for the connection because they have a nice plugin for the browser which works seamlessly and very fast.

The process for setting up the free version of LogMeIn is very simple; you create a user account on their website http://www.logmein.com. From the computer you want to allow remote access to you just go in to the dashboard and click add computer. This installs a small piece of software which runs in the taskbar and connects to the LogMeIn server whenever you are online. From another computer you can just log in to your dashboard and you will see the computer which you have set up and begin a remote control session by clicking on the computer name.

Once you have connected to the computer you will be presented with the standard login screen. If someone is on the computer you are remotely logging in to then they will be told that someone is trying to connect to their computer, ensuring that this program cannot be used to spy on employees. You can either blank the remote screen to hide what you are working on or you can leave it up if you are helping someone fix a problem.

I have installed the free version of LogMeIn on all of the computers on our network which gives me easy access from anywhere to help fix problems, as long as they have an internet connection. You can organize computers in to groups to keep work and personal computers separate.

I spent a good amount of time working remotely with a computer in our research lab and I was able to run three pieces of data analysis software along with Microsoft Word without any slowdown. This is nice when you want to take advantage of the power of another computer if, for example, you are using a netbook on the road and want to connect to your computer in the office.

It is also possible to give access to computers to other users of LogMeIn. For instance, you might add a computer so that you can provide technical support and give the user access as well so that they can connect to their computer from a remote location.

As a network administrator I have found this tool invaluable for administering both servers and workstations. Currently it is only supported for computers running Windows or Mac OS but for most non-profits that would be sufficient.

There are a number of paid versions of LogMeIn which provide additional functionality. Of particular interest is the Pro version which gives the remote user the ability to print, transfer files, listen to music remotely, and some other nice features. After trying out the free version if there are features that you feel are missing chances are that there is a version of LogMeIn which offers those features.

There is also an iPhone app which allows you to remotely access computers using your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app is called LogMeIn Ignition and costs $29.99 and I haven’t had a chance to try it yet but it will definitely be something I will consider in the future. If I do purchase it I will post a review once I have had a chance to play with it some more.

Overall I think that LogMeIn have done a great job of setting up a system for remote access and administration. Their program is very unobtrusive, taking up very little memory while running in the background, and automatically connects to the internet when available. It can also be set to only start upon user request so if you want to just use it in a support role it will not be taking up resources at other times.

The ability to receive feedback from those associated with your organization, whether they are members, volunteers, staff, or anyone else related to your work, can be a very powerful tool.

Survey Monkey is an online survey system which is easy to use and reasonably priced.

There are two levels of membership in Survey Monkey. The basic membership allows you to create surveys of up to 10 questions with up to 100 responses to each survey, while the professional subscription allows an unlimited number of surveys with an unlimited number of questions and a total of 1000 responses per month. If you exceed the 1000 responses it is $0.05 per additional response. Additionally; the professional subscription allows you to brand the survey with your own logo.

Survey Monkey offers a 25% discount to its customers who meet the following criteria:

“The discount will be offered only to corporations, trusts and foundations which (a) are organized exclusively for charitable purposes, (b) are exempt from taxation under IRC Section 501(c)(3) and (c) receive substantial support directly from the general public or private individuals.”

The surveys themselves can include a variety of response types including open ended essay responses and ranking scales. You can download all of the results in to an excel document for analysis.

There are a number of ways to administer the survey. The first category of collection is to create a link. This link can either be sent via an e-mail, added to a webpage, or sent via an e-mail list to a group of respondents. The second category is to create pop-up windows for your website. You can either have the survey itself come up or you can have an invitation appear whenever someone visits a specific page on your site.

After investigating a number of online survey sites I have found Survey Monkey to meet the needs of our company in terms of features, cost, and ease of use.

With the technology that is available nowadays allowing workers to telecommute is a very viable option for non-profits. However, there are both costs and benefits to making this option available to your employees. Overall I believe that the benefits do outweigh the costs but there are many things to take in to consideration before making this a policy of your company.

Benefits:

• Cost Savings for Employer and Employees

1. Space Cost Savings
If some of your works are full-time telecommuters then it may be possible to have a small office which has a few desks, a meeting room, and a server room.

2. Transportation Cost Savings
Employees can save money on transportation to and from the office. With the price of gas going up this can be a real incentive for those who are able to work from home.

3. Employee Retention Savings
In the past an employee who was moving locations would need to look for a new job and the company would need to spend the money to hire and train a new employee. With the option of telecommuting it is possible for the employee to continue their current work from their new location. The University of Minnesota Research and Training Center on Community Living has developed a nice worksheet which gives you an idea of the costs associated with hiring a new employee. This can also apply to employees who might be starting a family and will require more time at home.

• Time Saving

1. Time Associated with Travel
According to the US Census Americans spend an average of 100 hours commuting per year. Having an employee telecommute allows them to cut down on this time and put the time in to either additional work or other activities at home. This can be a great incentive for employees.

• Worker Satisfaction

1. Time Spent with Family
Telecommuting can allow an employee to spend more time with their family after working hours rather than spending that time commuting to/from work.

2. Time for other Commitments
If an employee has a doctors appointment during the day and needs to leave work for that time then the amount of time spent not working can be cut down if the employee can just leave from home for an hour to visit their doctor rather then going all the way home (assuming that the doctor is near their residence) and then coming back in to the office.

3. Flexible Schedules
An employee can work the hours which are convenient for them rather than fitting in to the rigid 9-5 schedule that most offices have.

• Provide an incentive to attract highly qualified individuals

There are also some potential drawbacks to telecommuting and they are as follows:
1. Less collaboration between employees
2. Telecommuting requires employees to be highly self-motivated
3. A higher investment in technology might be required in order to allow access to e-mail and files while an individual is not in the office

While there are other benefits and drawbacks to telecommuting these are some of the major ones. While this is not an option for some companies if it is a possible option then it is worth considering for the benefits which it can bring.

CIO.com has a nice article on the Seven Things the CIO Should Know About Telecommuting.

Ad-Aware is a free anti-spyware tool that you can use to scan your computer for spyware. Spyware is a major problem when it takes a hold on your computer. It can result in problems such as advertising pop-ups, computer slow-downs, and even identity theft.

LavaSoft has created a range of Ad-Aware products to help you deal with this problem. The version which I have been using is the Ad-Aware SE Personal which is free to download and use.

The program itself is very easy to download and install. Once installed it will ask you to check for updates the first time you run it (and every time the definitions are out of date). This will upgrade the detection system to help protect your system from the latest threats.

There are a number of different scan options, including a “smart system scan” and a “full scan”. The first time you run the program you will probably want to run the full scan unless your system is brand new. After that I have found that the smart scan works well in detecting any problems.

The only drawback of the free version of the program is that it does not have a real-time protection system so it relies on you running scans fairly frequently to check for problems. However, if you are the type of person who will remember to run scans then this should not be a problem.

There are other versions of Ad-Aware available including Plus, Professional, and Enterprise versions. These all contain extra features and may be worth the cost but if you are trying to save money then the free version should fit your needs perfectly.

Having access to a powerful Word Processing program is essential nowadays but the cost of a program such as Microsoft Word can be formidable. Fortunately there are a number of Open Source solutions available which are almost as powerful, if not just as powerful, as commercial solutions.

If you are just after a Word Processing solution then I highly recommend that you look at AbiWord which is available for free from their website.

Installation of AbiWord is a breeze on a Windows system. The installer gives you the option of associating AbiWord with different file types, including the Microsoft .doc format, along with the option to install support for many different languages.

Once you open up the program the layout will look familiar to anyone who has used Microsoft Word. The most striking difference in the appearance is the use of large icons which may appear strange to a first-time user but actually makes it easier to find what you need.

AbiWord itself loads extremely quickly and uses less system resources than Microsoft Word making it idea for those who might be using an older system. In fact, the AbiWord website states that the minimum requirement is a 486dx process with 16MB or more of RAM; most people will not have seen a computer that slow in years!

Under the tools tab, AbiWord has everything including a spell checker, word count, document history, revisions, and Mail Merge. AbiWord also has the ability to add plug-ins. AbiWord plug-ins include features such as a dictionary and thesaurus, a Google plug-in and two translation plug-ins from Babelfish and FreeTranslation. Also included in the plug-in is AbiPaint, an image manipulating plug-in. The Google plug-in allows you to search Google with your selected text. A complete list of plug-ins is available here.

Other great features of AbiWord include the ability to read and write all industry standard document types, such as OpenOffice.org documents, Microsoft Word documents, WordPerfect documents, Rich Text Format documents, XHTML and HTML web pages and many more. AbiWord is also available on many platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

There are many other features in AbiWord which I will not go in to right now but for those looking for a powerful and free Word Processing solution this is well worth a look.

Web Meetings are an extremely powerful tool if you are able to conduct them. Unfortunately, programs such as WebEx are very expensive to use. Recently I came upon an Open Source alternative called DimDim. I have installed this on our company’s server and had a chance to play around with it.

DimDim provides the following features:

Presentation and Document sharing.

Perfect for sharing documents with those outside of your office. Although there were some lag issues (most likely related to our connection here in the office) the speed was relatively good. Initially the quality of the picture was poor but this can be adjusted in the settings resulting in a much better quality picture. Although it is still below the quality of WebEx it is also free so I had no complaints!

Audio and video sharing.
This can be very useful for discussing the documents. Video can make for great presentations. On my computer at work I did not have access to a web cam so I was not able to check the video quality but the audio came through without any problems.

Application sharing.
This works along the same lines as the document sharing aspect but allows you to share other programs.

White board and Annotations.
Realistic interactive collaboration which involves a lot of annotations, corrections, group drawing (and doodles in the margin) is enabled through digital whiteboard and annotations feature of Dimdim. These features are possible on existing documents too leading to seamless distributed brainstorming.

Chat.
The chat feature is unobtrusive but useful when you need it.

Polls.
Polls enable the presenter to gauge the mood of the participants and to take decisions considering the opinions of many. I did not try this feature myself but it could be very useful when conducting trainings or other activities.

Question manager.
Question manager which is like a moderated Q&A setup enables the presenter to better manage the interaction.

Record and Archive. Enterprise Version Only
All the interaction is recorded and archived for sharing with non-attendees and to reach a broader audience. Great for recording trainings for later use.

Support for DimDim mainly comes from the Community lead forums (as is common among Open Source applications.) Most of my questions were answered very quickly using a simple search through the forum. If your question is not answered there then response time on the forums seems to be very fast.

Installation of DimDim was a fairly easy process. I installed it on to our server although the website indicates that any XP machine with at least 1 GB of RAM can act as a server. We are still working on issues with the firewall to allow connections to come in from the outside but the program worked very smoothly first time when accessed from within our network.

An Enterprise Version of DimDim is also planned which will have a cost per user but provide more support. Details are not available at this time but I expect that it will cost less than WebEx.

My first impression of DimDim is that it is a great tool which can only get better as it leaves the Alpha testing phase and moves towards its final release.

Everyone has seen how immensely popular Blackberry devices are nowadays but many people in small non-profits believe that they cannot afford to begin using Blackberry devices. While the cost of a monthly plan is still a consideration Research in Motion (RIM), the company which developed the Blackberry, has now made it possible to add a BlackberryEnterprise Server to your small business.

The Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) is a much more powerful system than the simple internet forwarding of e-mail which can be used with your desktop machine. The server integrates with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise and provides push-based wireless access to tools such as e-mail, calendars, contacts, and instant messenger. The use of BES also allows for more centralized administrative control over the devices.

The cost of implementing the BES is:

BlackBerry Enterprise Server Software v4.1 for Microsoft® Exchange
Includes 1 user license $2,999/server
Includes 20 user licenses $3,999/server

And to purchase additional client licenses it is:

1 user $99/license
5 users $429/pack
10 users $699/pack
50 users $3,299/pack
100 users $5,999/pack
500 users $27,499/pack

As you can see; the cost can be extremely high! However, the nice folks at RIM have created a Blackberry Enterprise Server Express edition which is a fully featured copy of BES but is free of charge. The express edition comes with one user license and more can be added according to the prices above. The only restriction is that you are limited to 15 total users before you have to purchase the full version of BES. This is perfect for small companies which do not need a large number of employees to have Blackberries.

I found the installation process to be very easy with good documentation available. You will need to have some understanding of how your server works but it will not require a degree in computer science to get up and running. With the deal RIM also throws in two free months of technical support so if you run in to any problems they will be available to help walk you through it.

The server requirements for a small number of users are not formidable. For up to 500 users RIM recommends a Pentium IV processor (2 GHz or greater), 1.5 GB of RAM, MSDE 2000 (free download if you do not already have it), Windows Server 2000 (or above), Microsoft Exchange 5.5 (or above), and Internet Explorer 6.0 (or above). I did not check on the requirements for IBM Lotus Domino or Novell Groupwise but I assume that they are similar. If you already have an Exchange Server in place then it is very likely that you meet these requirements.

We have had the BES in place for a few months now and there have been no problems with it. While we only have one user on at the moment I found it very easy to add another user when it was needed for a short period of time. Feel free to check out the Blackberry Enterprise Server Express Edition on the Blackberry website.