Have you ever used a skills matrix in IT change management at your nonprofit?

Do you know your super-users and early adopters? Your champions and ambassadors? Do you know who on your staff will happily and reliably use the tool exactly as trained vs your staffer who is always looking for new features and finding new shortcuts? Do you know who usually needs a little extra training and review sessions? Who is tech-hesitant, or even tech-phobic? How can you make your IT roll out a success for ALL your users? Can using an IT skills matrix make a difference?

Join Build change management expert Heather Ritchie in an interactive, free webinar to learn about this simple and effective tool. She shares a spreadsheet template, talks through real life scenarios and examples from her work, and explores the benefits and challenges of creating a staff skills matrix.

A skills matrix is also a useful tool to increase the value of training and enhance your conversations about professional development. Where are you investing in your staff skills? Where should you invest? Where do your staff want to learn and improve? What skills will help them and your nonprofit the most?

How can using an IT skills matrix improve new tech rollout?

Build Consulting download: IT Skills Matrix Template

As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience. Community IT believes strongly that your IT vendor should be able to explain everything without jargon or lingo.

Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic, and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

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 tips 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. Whatever you use, the important thing is to REQUIRE 2SV for any account that your staff log into.
• 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 tips! 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.

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.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

Senior Consultant Nura Aboki explores best practices on supporting one or two Macs when everyone else is on Windows laptops.

Nura and Carolyn discussed the ins and outs of supporting a few staff members and managing a few Macs, whether in a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace environment.

The days of leaving your Mac users to manage their own devices are long gone – current cybersecurity risks require full management of ALL your end users. You might try to get all your staff on the same laptops, but Mac users really love their Macs and are reluctant to give them up. How can you best ensure their device is secure while letting them use the machine that makes them the most productive?

There are a lot of advantages to allowing Mac users to keep their Macs. It increases the pool of qualified talent you can hire, and can make your office more able to recover from cyber attacks by having a variety of laptops running different systems even if they are united on Microsoft or Google platforms.

Nura recommends starting with policy – even if you are only managing a few Macs, you are going to want to include those users in your Acceptable Use Policies. You’ll also want to document the expectations on your IT team or IT provider for their level of Mac support.

Second, do not leave your Mac users behind in terms of IT support. If you allow them, support them. If you are hiring for an internal IT team, ensure the ability to support Macs. And if you are hiring outsourced IT, be thorough in questioning their support agreement to manage a few Macs.

Finally, Nura gave us some ideas in three issues:

• on what one thing nonprofits could do to better support Mac users,
• what Mac users would do differently, and
• what Apple could do to better at the enterprise level in addition to the individual level.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.