Please join MCS for a series of four seminars on the latest in web based technology for your non-profit. These trainings will be from noon to 1:30p.m. on Fridays in January to February 6. Cost is $25 each or $80 for all four, but free for organizations who have subscribed to MCS's cloud computing initiative. To sign up:
“Moving Your Non-profit to the Cloud: A Series of simultaneous Live and Web-Based Seminars on Hosted Computing for Non-Profits”
As part of our “Networked Non-Profit” initiative to support non-profits in utilizing information technology, MCS is offering a 4 part series of workshops designed to help your organization virtually eliminate it’s costly and complicated IT programs, and move them to no or low cost computing available by way of the internet, known as “cloud computing”. Sessions include:
• Friday, January 30, 2009 “Working Together in the Cloud: Spreadsheet and Documents”
• and new Friday, February 6, 2009 "Administering the Cloud: Administration and Advanced Applications of the Google Enterprise"
• Friday, February 13, 2009 “Moving E-mail to the Cloud: Branded Email through Gmail”
• Friday February 20, 2009 “Collaboration Tools in the Cloud: Calendar and Group Sites”
Register for all four: "Entire four part Cloud Series" for $80
About Moving IT to the Cloud:
Most nonprofits struggle to develop and maintain basic IT infrastructure to support the core mission work of their organization, not to mention their increasing need for a substantive external online presence. The constant hardware and software upgrade cycle leaves many nonprofit leaders with the feeling of being perpetually behind in IT adoption and use. Even when organizations find competent technical volunteers, maintaining consistency over time can be challenging.
In these difficult economic times, nonprofits must find ways to shed expenses and to network more closely with other organizations to fulfill their mission. A move away from each organization owning its own IT infrastructure to the shared infrastructure of the cloud holds great promise in reducing costs for organizations and to facilitate network building of similar organizations through shared communications tools -- greatly minimizing resource use on non core mission tasks.
Cloud Computing: Right Solution at the Right Time
MCS believes cloud computing is important given its potential implications for your organizations bottom line in this time of financial challenge.
For small and mid-sized nonprofit organizations, eliminating hardware, software and support costs could reduce their IT expenditures by $6,000 - $25,000 (for a cost comparison for a typical nonprofit organization with 8 staff see: http://www.managementconsultingservices.org/cloudsave ). Such cost savings would have significant effects on the bottom line of organizations, freeing resources to concentrate on issues of mission. Other benefits include:
• Most nonprofits will never have technology as their core competency, nor should they. If your organization is good at providing a particular service than providing great service should be your focus. By offloading your IT infrastructure, you can stop worrying about upgrades
• Many of the applications are low or no cost for nonprofits. Nonprofits will see significant cost savings in not having to upgrade hardware and software and because much less tech. support is required.
• These applications are great! Some of the best developers in the world work at places like Google and Salesforce.com. These developers have spent years building solid, feature rich systems. The days of needing to hire a developer to build a database from scratch are numbered. Developer time is spent customizing and integrating already great applications.
• Many software as a service providers have opened up their platforms to other developers. If the core application doesn’t have everything you are looking for there’s a good chance that someone has developed a low cost solution to suit your needs.
Let MCS move you to the cloud and save money now. For more information: http://www.managementconsultingservices.org/cloud
