IT Business Manager Tiff Parker explains some useful features and some things to avoid when using Google Workspace for Nonprofits.
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Google Tips for Nonprofits
Tiff Parker is an expert in Google Workspace support, having used Google Workspace herself throughout her career and developing a practice as an in-house expert to our clients who use Google Workspace. Carolyn asked Tiff for her Google tips for nonprofits on features to use and things to know about Google Workspace at the office.
The takeaways:
- Know the difference between My Drive and Shared Drives, and set up Shared Drives for anything that you will want access to after a staff member leaves your organization. Step by step instructions to set up Shared Drives can be found in the Google knowledge center and can be done by “non technical” staff.
Be thoughtful about creating the Shared Drives architecture and assigning access. Train your existing and new staff on your expectation for saving and collaborating on files using Shared Drives.
- Google uses the acronym “2SV” for second factor verification. Similar to Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA,) you can use any authenticator (including Google’s) or have a text or call sent to your phone to verify your identity. Whatever you use, the important thing is to REQUIRE 2SV for all staff, for any account that your staff log in to.
- Use Google Groups to save money on licenses and make it easier for teams or committees to collaborate. You can set up Google Groups with a single email address such as “contact@yourdomain” and all the members can see and respond. Groups has a lot of great use cases at nonprofits.
- Google Calendar has an option for “rooms” that you can use for many resources you may want to be able to reserve, like projectors and other AV equipment if you are still using a physical office.
Thank you, Tiff, for these useful Google tips for nonprofits!
If you have more Google Workspace questions, or have a great tip to share, get in touch!
Presenter
Tiff Parker joined Community IT Innovators as an IT Business Manager (ITBM) in October 2023. She brings over 17 years of experience working in nonprofit technology.
As an ITBM, she guides clients through implementation of effective technology investments and utilizing efficient IT services in direct support of their missions. She also assists clients with long-term planning, budgeting, and strategic goals.
The Community IT ITBM service provides an outsourced IT manager to clients at a reduced cost to hiring and having an IT manager on staff. These managers are a resource dedicated to matching technology solutions to clients’ business needs. To do this well requires an ongoing conversation with the client to continually understand their business needs, and then effective communication with client staff and leadership about the ways specific technology solutions can meet those business needs and how to budget for technology.
The ITBM makes recommendations on IT investments, training programs, maintenance, and licenses. They help the client be forward-looking, and act as a vendor-agnostic, trusted advisor with deep knowledge of the nonprofit IT software and platforms available. Because Community IT works in partnership with clients to manage long-term IT needs, the ITBM relationship with the client makes them a true asset.
Prior to coming to Community IT, Tiff was the IT Director for an environmental nonprofit where she was responsible for the overall vision, planning, implementation, management and support of their various information systems, data, policies, and processes. Tiff graduated from Virginia Tech in 2007. She holds the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals MS 900 certification.
Transcript coming soon!
Ready to get strategic about your IT?
Community IT has been serving nonprofits exclusively for twenty years. We offer Managed IT support services for nonprofits that want to outsource all or part of their IT support and hosted services. For a fixed monthly fee, we provide unlimited remote and on-site help desk support, proactive network management, and ongoing IT planning from a dedicated team of experts in nonprofit-focused IT. And our clients benefit from our IT Business Managers team who will work with you to plan your IT investments and technology roadmap if you don’t have an in-house IT Director.
We constantly research and evaluate new technology to ensure that you get cutting-edge solutions that are tailored to your organization, using standard industry tech tools that don’t lock you into a single vendor or consultant. And we don’t treat any aspect of nonprofit IT as if it is too complicated for you to understand.
Many outsourced IT providers simply won’t support the Google Workspace environment. Because so many nonprofits use Google Workspace when they start up, Community IT has a robust practice of support for Google Workspace when your nonprofit gets big enough to need help.
We think your IT vendor should be able to explain everything without jargon or lingo. If you can’t understand your IT management strategy to your own satisfaction, keep asking your questions until you find an outsourced IT provider who will partner with you for well-managed IT.
If you’re ready to gain peace of mind about your IT support, let’s talk.
Photo by Ginger Jordan on Unsplash