 Well we will go ahead and get started. We had 31 attendees that signed up for the presentation and hopefully they'll join us pretty soon. If not, I'm very happy to have all of you here and speak with you today. And I'd love to, especially now that we have representation from other countries, I'd love to hear feedback from you as we go through the presentation on what you're experiencing in your countries as well. Today I'd like to talk with you about the nonprofit technology in a post-COVID world that we're experiencing here. And this is a global issue, not just a local issue. So again, I'm glad to have all of you here in representing your areas. So a little bit about me. I am the Vice President of Information Technology at a local nonprofit organization in North Carolina. I work for the Partnership for Children of Cumberland County. We are early childhood focused, but I serve other vendors and organizations throughout our state with IT concerns. Any IT managed services, any software, hardware, or networking issues that they have, our team helps them with that. I'm also an event producer at NC Tech for Good. Judy Holman, who is also in attendance, is another one of our event producers, and then we have Jean Allen. She's not with us today, but hopefully you'll get to meet her one day soon as well. I'm also the NickelGeeza member and presenter for that group as well. That is the North Carolina Local Government Information Systems Association. So I'm happy to talk with you about the local government side as well as the public sector. In my private life, I am a mother and wife. I'm an avid but beginning hiker and also a plant-based foodie. So I'm happy to talk about any of those things with you offline as well. Here it is. Okay. If you have trouble hearing me, if I'm not speaking loud enough, or if I'm speaking too softly, or if I'm speaking too quickly, please let me know, and I'm happy to change my pace. All right. And now I want to know about all of you. What are the hats that you wear? What is your name? What is your role in NP Tech? And what are your current passions? And I'll get started with Judy. Judy, would you like to share a little bit about yourself? All right. Little so here. I'm Judy Holman. I retired from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999. I was campus webmaster and IT support at the time. Thank you, Judy. Anything that you're passionate about right now that you'd like to share with the group? Zoom. I want to see them go away. People out here want to do face-to-face meetings. I like Zoom. So do I. And I think it's going to be around for a very long time. And we'll talk about that today. Thank you. Thank you. Adi, would you like to share some information about yourself with our group? You may have lost her. Yeah, so you know. My name is Adi Shahar and I'm a founder and chief enthusiastic officer of a non-profit organization called Heartbeat Clowns. My passion is therapeutic clowning and that is what our organization is all about. We upskill youths in the professional skill of therapeutic clowning and take our services to various health care facilities in currently owning in Johannesburg. But we're hoping to expand. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing today. Ivan? Hello. Thank you. My name is Ivan Siralta. I work out of Calgary in Alberta. And and I am a biologist by training and I follow my passion early after doing my doctorate. And I I've been working in non-profits for since 2000. I'm currently unemployed, but I'm really keen on connecting with non-profit technologies from other places. And I tend to speak a little a little bit too long. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say the most important thing. I think I concur if I heard Judy correctly. I think that I am very keen on understanding how this pandemic created a quantum and step up from all the non-profits that I don't know if you recall circa 2019. But we were all really concerned every time we were going to have a voice call everybody or a or a PowerPoint presentation. Everybody thought, oh my god, technology is gonna fail us and we're gonna embarrass ourselves. And here we are today. 20 months later, we're connecting with people from all over the world. And my my biggest passion is inclusion. And and I've seen that now more and more organizations use free functions from things like teams from from Zoom to create closed captioning for people that are hearing impaired. So I think I think there is there are some some small silver linings and all the situation that we have to undergo now. And I hope Rebecca that you pass to the North Carolina Tech Sue people that if if we can meet face to face, we should still always have the option to meet remotely because that creates ties, right? I think I think technology instead of being seen as an impediment is now we have shifted our thinking and thinking about it as a bridge. So thank you. Please continue on and pleasure to meet all of you. Same to you. Thank you, I couldn't say it better. You said it all. I love it. Skylar, would you like to share some information about yourself as well? Hi, my name is Skylar, obviously. I am an accounting clerk with a legal aid firm in Nashville, Tennessee. I recently joined back in March coming from the private sector. And I as well as being an accounting clerk, I also do like some backup tech work. We do have a director of technology, but we are a small organization. So I help out wherever is needed. Great. Thank you so much, Skylar. Jesse Bradley, would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself as well? What are your hats? Can we lose you? I think Jesse is on the chat. I don't think he has access to a microphone. Oh, I see. Okay, yes. Jesse is shared with us. He's the program director. He's a program director and founder and his passions are digital skills training and his mic is not working. Yes. Thank you, Ivan. Thank you for letting me know. And Jesse, it is nice to have you here. Thank you so much. And please keep communicating with us in the chat. I appreciate that. Chris Tuttle, I know you very well. I follow you on Twitter. A great Twitter page. Would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself with us today? Thank you. That's sweet. Hey, I'm Chris. Judy, good to see you again. Good to see you as well, Rebecca. And I am a digital strategist. I work with nonprofits to help them use digital more effectively from web to email to social text messaging chat AI. And of course, nowadays a lot of virtual events and live broadcasts. I definitely don't see it going away anytime soon. And I think like Ivan and others have said, the last year and a half has really accelerated a move that was already happening and really forced a lot of nonprofits to deal with using digital to reach people when we couldn't in person. And so my passion is actually keeping that going so we don't return to a in-person only world. I think there's a lot of opportunity for hybrid and virtual in the future. I'm excited to hear you all talk more about it today. So thanks for letting me join you. Absolutely. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Ashwin, would you mind sharing with us who you are and what your passions are? Yeah. So I founded a nonprofit called Asahoka Manaki. So I, along with a friend of mine was from the Hawaiian Islands. We kind of formed this nonprofit to do certain activities, certain good activities in our community, which is in Portland, Oregon. And while doing these activities, we kind of also like to promote our virtual backgrounds. Me being from India, I kind of have a prototype to promote Indian culture in the region. And she being from the Thurman Islands, she likes to promote her culture. So that's what we're trying to do. So yeah, that's about it. Thank you. Thank you all for sharing your information. And it's so nice to meet all of you today. And hopefully we'll share some information that will help and get some resources and advice from one another today. What do we all have in common? We've talked about where we're from, what our passions are, and they're similar, but they're all varying and we're from different areas of the world. But what we all share is that we're all dedicated technology enthusiasts who care about our nonprofit mission or cause in the community that it serves. So we all have one thing in common today. And it's great to meet with each one of you today. So another question that I have for you, and feel free to put this in chat. What is your current work arrangement? And how has that been impacted by the pandemic? Are you working fully within the brick and mortar walls of your office? Are you working in a hybrid or staggered schedule where you're in the office, but you're practicing some personal safety with other coworkers? Or are you working from home exclusively, either by choice or because your organization is still shut down because of the pandemic? And go ahead and enter your answers in the chat window. Okay, we've got Ashwin reporting that everyone is remote. Ivan from home. Chris, we were remote before COVID and still are. We're also doing hybrid events, which require occasional travel and in-person work, yes. Back in the office for four days a week. And several people test positive for COVID and now we're back home again. Scholar, that is absolutely a reality of where we are right now. We think we're back on track and everyone's healthy. We get back into the office working a hybrid or staggered schedule and then someone is exposed and we have to roll back. Yes. A D, remote from home. Yes, work from home. But we'll be brick and mortar beginning in October as far as Jesse. Yes. So we have individuals across the board. Several of you reported that you're working fully remote. A few saying that they have a hybrid schedule, which is typical. I'm also on a hybrid schedule here at my office. And then at least one, returning back to brick and mortar full-time in October. And we do have a lot of conversations that are being generated at this time about the length of time we've been working remotely and what that return to work looks like. And even can we return back to work at this time? So those are all questions that we have that are opening up and recent. A question too, that's a follow-up to this. If you are returning to the work or you have returned to the work space, and I see scholars had this experience already, is with the new variant and the increase in cases recently, at least in our region, have you experienced a situation where you've had to return back to remote work or had to put additional measures in place in your office for protection? All right. And I don't think that anyone has, we've got a lot of remote workers. Yes. All right. So the current reality, at least from the headlines in our country, are that we have people in various states of planning with returning to work. And our IT plans have to follow that shift. Chris Tuttle, when he was speaking earlier, mentioned that he really hopes that the remote and hybrid approach that we take towards event planning and training and even our daily work will continue after the pandemic. And generally, that's the consensus of other people in the United States as well. They're talking about agencies trying to bring employees back to work in planning what that arrangement looks like. How do we have some staff that continue to tell the work, either by the help of their families or for themselves and then continue to have that physical space for their employees to be active? And how do they bridge that gap and communicate together? Some public sector organizations are offering vouchers and extra leave and bonus pay to entice their employees to return to work. And in a recent headline, and this was actually back in July, but I believe this court case is still happening, one state government organization in Connecticut is suing their government and their organization for requiring them to return to work without proper arrangements in place for their safety. And on top of all of this, we're dealing with the Delta variant and an increased risk of cases. And those are presenting workplace concerns where the Seattle workers are either walking out or protesting and really wanting something to be done about the remote work arrangement and allowing them to continue to have. So all of these factors are at play. And again, we have to learn how to be agile and shift around with technology to meet all of these needs. So there's a very good podcast recently about adopting a placeless mindset. And this is one of the cultural shifts that has occurred with employees and staff really worldwide is looking at how has have my priorities and values changed because of the pandemic with regard to work. And what's important to me moving forward in the workplace, and that maybe was not available to me before, but I expect moving forward. One of those things is location independence over physical presence, having that ability to choose where, when and how you work. And a lot of the tools that we use now with technology with zoom and slack and everything in between is allowing us to be able to do that in question why we really need to be in the office each day to do our work. Secondly, these employees are valuing autonomous work schedules and flexible schedules, having the ability to continue doing that to be able to work in a 24 hour schedule instead of a eight or 10 hour work day. So if I have a project that I can work on from 8am to 9pm, maybe I can do that. Or if I choose to work from eight to 11 the next day, then I should be able to do that and get my work done and expect my employer to anticipate those types of roles. As long as I'm doing the job, that's what matters. They're also going to expect asynchronous communication and collaboration. We're no longer a real time environment going into one meeting space and huddling together to brainstorm a strategy or talk about some type of project that's come on onto your plate. It may be a thing of the past. It's really about sending that communication through electronic channels and expecting possibly not an immediate response, but a response in a time frame that both you and that other person can agree on. Additionally, all of us are expecting open and transparent communication and we have to learn how to adopt that within our digital workspace. We're no longer in a mode where we can just go next door to another person's office and ask if things are okay. So we need to continue to open those channels. And then finally trusting your colleagues and employees to do their work, even though you can't see them on a daily basis, will be critical. So again, in this technology space, we have dedicated employees and colleagues that also care about our nonprofit mission and the community it serves. So this is just getting that broader communication and connection with the other people around us. So developing a placeless mindset again is very important, especially where technology is involved. In your respective fields and your experiences, what are some of the norms or standard practices that your team had before the pandemic that have changed since the pandemic. And I'd like to get a special story from at least one or two of you where you use technology to bridge that gap. And it could be anything from implementing some new technology, hardware device that helped someone to be able to do their work, some type of product or software tool or application that enabled that cross-platform communication amongst all of your group members. So does anyone have anything that they'd like to share? And just raise your hand either in the chat or on video and I'll be happy to call you out. Ivan, I see you and I also see in your chat that you said that there was just a new state of emergency announced yesterday. So if you'd like to share information with us, I'd love that. Oh, in regards with the state of emergency, so we have provincial just a reminder for our friends in the states. For all of you, we have provincial governments instead of states. Our provincial premier basically declared the end of the restrictions in June and July at the beginning of July. And I think he just conceded last night that it was too early. Our ICUs are about the point of collapse and it's terrible. And I think that that is just horrendous call, a political call, because there were political motivations. And I'm going to leave it there because I am highly political, but I respect the fact that none of us are, not all of us are. And I just wanted to, because nobody was volunteering a story, I'm going to volunteer the simplest one. And this is around Microsoft 365. I am currently between jobs, but I continue a lot of volunteer job in the nonprofit sector in a large organization that supports people with physical and developmental disabilities. And it has a large physical footprint. We serve people both residential services and inclusion in the workplace and also recreational services. We had to completely shut down our recreational services, but all the other services, as you imagine, are the lives of our clients, so have to continue. And both the board and all the 600 employees of the organization, again, this step quantum leap forced from one day to the other. I remember we used to have problems connecting on conference calls over our phone. And from one day to the other, the teams, because these residential supports teams have to isolate themselves because these are people that have concomitant health conditions. They cannot really see other members of the team because it's just not safe. From one day to the other, the IT staff step up. And of course, there were pains the first two weeks. Nobody knew what link to click or how to create efficiently a meeting from a calendar invitation or from an email conversation. I think this was well used time because we all have to plow through the whining that we normally whine. It's like, oh, you know, this never works. And the people went like, okay, now we have no alternative. This has to work because there is no other option. And again, I think it's a good story. Unfortunately, we are just starting to be able to establish how are we going to measure the impact on both our clients and our staff that because we are a diverse organization, we not all try looking at little cubby holes in our computers. Some of us need physical contact both for an emotional support and also it's just the social thing. Some of our clients and our staff require it. So we're just trying to grapple how we're going to measure this, how are we going to address it. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And you brought up a few great points on that, too, is one of the things that has been a I would say a positive aspect, an outcome of this pandemic is to get the buy in from your teams, to introduce a new technology is more rapidly accepted, even though they still have challenges, like you said, not being able to click the link or open the tool, but they accept it and embrace it much more readily. And they move forward. And that's an important aspect of this is to make sure that you have the right tools on board and that you're working through navigating those issues where you really can't work one on one and in person. But you've got a team that's engaged and ready to move forward with that at the drop of a hat and take on that role. So great. Thank you for sharing that. Addie. I'm sorry. We have a pilot. We've had to pilot our project to set up our work on a digital platform to deliver our training and also offer our services at healthcare facilities. Because with COVID-19, we have not been able to offer our therapeutic services face to face. Yes, absolutely. And navigating that, I know, at least in the U.S., we have the HIPAA concerns and I'm sure there's probably some regulations that you probably had to face with doing therapy online versus face to face as well and figuring out how to do that. That's another challenge in having the right team involved in that and having the right tools and it's critical. All right, Judy, I see your hand raised. I forget that I'm muted. That's okay. I started Zoom sessions with my family. We are spread all over the country. We've had two family reunions over the years and other than that, we never see each other. So monthly Zoom meetings have just opened up a whole new contact in our family, which I think is good. If we want to, we're going to continue them? Yes, absolutely. Yes, this is actually helped us. Zoom has helped us bridge the gap of geography very easily. Not only at work, but at home as well. Yes. Yeah, it's opened up new ways to communicate that just didn't seem to be there before. And feel free. I noticed Adi wrote having struggles finding the right tools being a challenge for sharing information and doing, I'm sure, doing virtual therapeutic services. If you know of any technologies and you're in this chat together, please share your lessons learned with each other. So the National League of Cities outlined some technology goals that they felt were important this year as they evaluated public sector and what they were adopting. And some of the information that you've already shared about your experiences have been very similar to what the rest of the public sector has experienced. This year they've invested in technology that enabled them to do remote work, keep their operations running, of course, with the hybrid approach or even having to go fully remote, being able to engage with their constituencies and then build operational efficiencies around their operation in general. They're also realizing the increasing importance of having the remote capabilities and the digital workflows continue after the pandemic. And we talked about that a little bit as well. A lot of these resources are really great tools, not only for now, but in the future to continue to embrace that as a culture for the work we do, enable better efficiency and productivity for your teams and help them to stay more engaged with one another. Some of the top priorities that they identified through another research collaboration that they did with eRepublic found that they also are struggling with and will start looking towards technologies that allow them to have better citizen engagement remotely to improve their process automation and then, of course, modernize their infrastructure to support all of this new technology. So how did we adapt? Some of the things that all of us have experienced and I know that we've adopted very quickly in the past two years has been one in the mobility space with cloud-based services and mobile technology devices, making sure that every person on our network has mobile technology in hand to be able to work, whether they're in the building or offsite. Automation tools such as client web portals, any AI or bots that can be incorporated into your chat features or your social media, touchless check-in, intelligent security cameras like Verkata, which is what we were using here, automated entry to our building, and then any other outsourced services that maybe we didn't have the technical expertise to implement in our office. Collaboration and communication were a big deal for many of us globally, file sharing tools, digital document processing, communication being the biggest thing when we're working remote is video conferencing like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, as well as chat features, Slack, Discord. Feel free to put in the chat any other chat tools that you use on a daily basis. We also transitioned from a traditional phone system over to voiceover IP, so anywhere at any time our staff could receive phone calls from the building and then provided some remote workers with hotspots and cell phones. And finally we had security and Jeffrey Brown just joined us and I don't want to dig too deeply into the security that we introduced because he's going to be doing a full presentation on EDR next month and I'm excited to have him. But as far as security within our building, we did introduce additional security tools for remote access, doing monitoring of remote systems, and then transition from a corporate antivirus tool over to endpoint detection and response, which is a more robust security tool. So now I want to know what's been a game changer for you in any of these areas and you don't have to report those out by audio, but if you'd like to put them in the chat, share those with others. But some of the tools that you can think of in any of these categories that either you introduced to your organization or your group or found useful during this time that helped you to continue to do your work and serve your mission. Okay Chris reports, automation using scheduling tools like Calendly? Yes, Calendly is amazing to be able to manage your time and send out to someone that you need to meet with or work with the time slides that you have available to meet with them and let them choose. I love that tool. Yes, absolutely, Chris. Another tool that I use that's similar to that for group meetings, because we're still having those group meetings through Zoom is a tool called Doodle and that one also absolutely helps. All right, but think about that. And as you're, as I'm going through the presentation, if you can think of any other tools, please share them in chat. And we're going to do one other thing here. I'm going to open Mentimeter. And this is another tool that I found very useful. It does work clouds, but in this case, we're going to use a little word bubble. Let's see if I can show up on my screen. Okay. If you have the availability to do so, please go to www.menti.com and enter the code above on my screen. It's 9708-4965. And if you'll put in that screen, some of the things that have been a game changer for you. And what we'll do is collect those as we're talking. And then we'll come back to this in just a little while and see what people have shared. All right, so putting all of that together, we talked about, and thank you, Chris, for sharing that. Putting that all together, one of the things, and this is what we've looked at so far in this presentation, is identifying the current technology and resources that have become necessary, critical, essential for us to be able to do our work during the pandemic. And as several of you have mentioned, I want to keep those around after this is over. And there's a good case for that. We could have another pandemic. No matter where you are in the world, there are weather events that can cause your operations to shut down. Here in the southeast United States, our problem is hurricanes and ice storms in the winter. For some of you, you may have typhoons, earthquakes, other natural disasters that could shut you down as well. And what we've learned through the pandemic is that as long as our teams have the resources and the technology and the capability to get on the internet to do their work, they can work just from about anywhere. And what we have in common is sharing that goal to serve our community. So we're at a good position in our environment where people can continue to work where before this happened, they were shut down. They were not able to do anything. So we need to think about that as we start talking with our leaders about continuing to use these technology tools moving forward after the pandemic. After that, we need to analyze those resources to make sure that they're still beneficial, that they're the right set of tools that we need to have in our back pocket. And then if there are any other tools that we need to plan for that we don't currently have. Next, we want to define the resources that we will continue to use and establish what needs to expand upon those as well. Are there certain tools that might need upgrades or enhancements? And then finally, you're going to put that all together in a plan and present that to your leadership for buying in. So I'm going to share that plan with everyone in the chat now. And this is what I call the iAdapt plan. And I'm sending this to you, so you'll have something in hand to share with your groups and to work around that planning process. All right. And let's say I probably did not share my previous screen where I was talking about those different buckets, but the eyes for identify, analyze, define plan and the technology of course is being the most important part teams of iAdapt. Opening that plan, I've been that up here. And just going to a little bit more detail on that. If you can see my screen, I'm going to get a little bit larger so we can all see it. All right. So digging down a little bit deeper in that. And again, you have the resource in chat as well. One, you want to identify that technology that starts by making a list and categorizing what resources you have available, brainstorming what tools they are, whether it be Zoom or Slack or Discord or Caledly or your phone system or your mobile devices, making sure you have a full inventory of all of that technology. Determine early on who the stakeholders or representatives that need to be involved in this process are. You're going to need them not only for guidance, advice, support for planning, but also for buy-in moving forward when you need to make those financial decisions about what technology is needed. Next, you want to analyze those resources and determine what is most beneficial moving forward. That starts by a cost-benefit analysis. What was most beneficial and can we afford to continue it? Are they sustainable in the long term? Is it possible? And we'll use Zoom as an example. Zoom gave everyone resources at no cost and limited cost at the beginning of the pandemic. And now as we're approaching coming out of that in some ways, those free resources are no longer free and having to pay for some of those premium services and making that decision of not only do we continue to use this, but how many of these can we purchase and who do we need to purchase these for? Can they be used after the pandemic and how? And that question is going to be left up to each one of your teams, but I would say that for the most part that's going to be yes if you're considering all of the other situations that could occur in your work environment that would require you to work remotely. Do they benefit all users or just a few? There's several technology tools that I can recall that we purchased as an organization that were just for a few people to get their job done, but we're not necessarily something that we would need organization-wide. And at that point we need to determine whether that's something that we need to continue to use. What did we implement that is not being used effectively? Are there tools that you purchased early on that maybe one of your department directors or your leaders said we have to have this? But the research is showing that there aren't that many users that are using that tool. One of the ones that I can cite most recently for my organization is we purchased an add-on to our phone system for a Webex video conferencing. And it was not a user-friendly and our staff really enjoyed Zoom like the rest of our team here today does. And so we don't use that tool. And we need to go back to the vendor and say we don't need this resource anymore. Jeffrey's reporting DocuSign. Has that been a good product for you, Jeffrey? It's a product that she used to send out documents that need to be signed. The problem is everybody wants a DocuSign account, but only the people who are sending the document need an account. Absolutely. So defining that set of people and making sure that they understand really was a challenge for us. Absolutely. That is a perfect example. And I can relate to that. Jeffrey, I'm having the same problem in my office. Everyone wants DocuSign. And that's where, again, bringing this plan in and saying, okay, I've got to get these leaders to the table and talk about the reality of the fact that only the people that need to sign need this DocuSign platform and all of these other users can just go online and they don't need that full tool. And we don't need to invest the money in that. Another one that comes to mind is Adobe Acrobat Pro. I have a huge list of people waiting to have that installed on their systems and to purchase the full version. And you don't need that unless you're doing some focus work on merging PDF files or editing or creating forms. And a lot of our teams only need to convert their Word document to a PDF file. So those conversations need to happen early on. So you're not wasting your money, but if you already have spent the money to determine which users you should just roll off and not renew moving forward. Thank you for sharing that. Again, what else do we need to do for the future? That's part of that planning. Next, you want to define the resources that you're going to continue to use and need to expand. Looking at that DocuSign and saying, okay, these are the people that we're going to invest in the DocuSign platform. What do we need to do to renew their contracts or renew their subscriptions to that tool? Adobe Pro, how many licenses do we need? Do we need to invest in Adobe Teams so we can manage all those licenses we purchased? Do we need to upgrade some of the software tools that we bought last year? Are they at the point where there's a new version that needs to be brought down? So all of those things you want to consider. With all of the new resources, of course, you're going to develop a project plan for that and evaluate the risks and benefits again, but also determine the offsets of those costs. And again, I'm not going to jump on Jeffrey Brown's presentation next month, but one of the things that I would give as an example for offsets is we're currently on a corporate antivirus software and we're being driven to EDR, that endpoint detection response platform. Well, once we move there, we don't need the corporate antivirus anymore because that's rolled into the new product. So we're offsetting those costs and we're talking about that with our leaders. So let them know, hey, this isn't going to be a $5,000 transition. This is more like a $2,000 transition because you've already invested the first 3,000 in the other product. So having those conversations helps to build the buy-in and get approval for some of the technology that you're working on. Also determining your project implementation needs, looking at the timeline and being realistic about that. You may have leaders that say, I want this technology platform yesterday and you have to be able to give them a deadline of, oh, I may be able to get this implemented in 60 days or before the end of the fiscal year to be able to establish those realistic boundaries. And then determining the impact. How will this new technology product that we've introduced for remote work or hybrid work impact not only the teams that are already using it, but the ones that we're going to introduce it to. And then finally with all of that, you're putting that together again in some cohesive format where you can share your ideas and your challenges and your opportunities with your teams as well as your organization. I don't know if many of you have a board that you have to respond to when you make financial decisions, but everything that I do has to go to the board. And having that in some type of cohesive and understandable format is very important. So preparing that goals-based technology plan that outlines your need, your purpose, your objectives, and your roadmap is essential. Some of the tips that I can give you in that is defining your need and purpose and being very descriptive, but allowing for some flexibility. Again, not making those hard line decisions of I'm going to have this rolled out next week when you really have so many other factors that could become constraints or roadblocks that get in your way. Prioritizing and setting your objectives with that identified roadmap and making sure that it makes sense that it's in a logical path and using smart methodology to outline those goals that by such and such date, again making that realistic, I will achieve this goal with a measurable outcome. And then finally ensuring that your plan, your project roadmap takes all those possible constraints that we talked about into consideration, including the approval process, do you have a finance department that you have to deal with? Is there someone that has to approve your purchases other than you? The purchasing process is in itself dealing with vendors and getting the agreements in place, dealing with staffing and support to implement those things and how that impact will be felt by your end users. Are they going to be training? Are they going to need additional support? Any buy-in or adoption challenges again looking at that presentation to board or getting someone else involved in that for planning and approval? And then finally determining any other projects or requirements that may impact this decision. So does anyone have any questions about this framework or using iAdapt for making technology decisions moving forward after the pandemic? I hear no questions, so I'm going to go ahead and move forward. I've got one of my favorite actors of all time, Rowan Atkinson on the screen from Mr. Bean. He's just got that good question face, but are there any general questions or anything that you would like to discuss? I'd like to open the table up to everyone here to talk about anything that they're working on either as a technology project moving out of the pandemic or any challenges that they need any advice or support from our team on. Yes, Ivan? Thank you. So could you, within the framework of your plan, could you speak about how nonprofit organizations make sure that they take advantage, like in this case, take advantage of all the low-cost or rebated opportunities that are out there? You know, you mentioned the proverbial adobe acrobat and at 600 or 800 Canadian appease, we could afford about zero in our organization, but at $15 apiece, we have been able to afford more when we use TechSoup. So my concern is that as there is this push of users, individual users bringing technologies that they might be familiar in their home or with their families that are perhaps free to use for individuals, then when you try to do it, use it in the enterprise, they are extremely expensive. So how do we make sure as administrators that we are using, if not through TechSoup, that I don't know, we know the representative for our area and we take them for lunch and we convince them that adonation is the right thing to do. I have only experience with TechSoup and with some Microsoft products that are not included in the TechSoup offers because I know the people in the area, but there are certain things like you mentioned, DocuSign, that I have zero success getting them to give us low-cost copies. Thank you. Yes, that's a great question. And I would say it is a dilemma and it needs further research. Non-profit, the public sector, we don't cry loud enough. We don't ask enough. And I think that's one of the challenges that we face is finding those free and low-cost resources. Like you said, TechSoup is a wonderful platform. That's what we're all here for today. We're all the champions of the TechSoup cause because they do great work in giving low cost and even some free resources. Some of the other things that come to mind is Microsoft for nonprofits. We have not entered that space fully, but there is at least their basic level of services at no cost for technology support for Outlook email as well as the Microsoft Teams platform. So that's one resources that I know of. Google Workspace also has a non-profit platform as well. As far as the Adobe products and DocuSign products, that is definitely a challenge. And I'm not sure where that will go in the future. We do have Adobe Sign as well as DocuSign that are the most reputable, most well-known, but like Ivan said, they're also very expensive. So if anyone has any guidance or any experience with any other product that's worked well for them, please put it in chat. But there's more to come on that. I think that that's one thing that as a community, as a TechConnect, TechSoup community, we need to engage on and start talking about. And Ivan, I'd love to talk with you. I'll find about that as well, how we could share those resources and talk about what's available. Yes. Jeffrey is saying Dropbox also has a signature feature and there is a free level of Dropbox as well, isn't there, Jeffrey? Are you able to unmute? Could you tell us a little bit about that if you know anything about it? Yeah, we've been going back and forth with this DocuSign thing for a while, primarily because they're just so expensive and they're just unwilling to discount anything for non-profits. So we took a look at that. We took a look at the Adobe sign, which is actually the most economical of them. And then Dropbox, because we do have a few Dropbox accounts. The Dropbox one, though, is an add-on to their business product. So you would be buying the business and then buying an add-on just to get the signature feature. And we just weren't able to roll that out, you know, widely, as everyone thinks they need to send documents to Sign when it's just not true. So everyone would want a Dropbox account. Yeah, I mean, there's just, there's no real, like I said, non-profit friendly way to do signatures that I have found. And I've looked everywhere. Absolutely. Hello Sign, oh, Chris Settle, Hello Sign gives you three documents per month on their free account. So that might be something if you're doing a few documents. At least there's some limited resources. And on a DocuSign does a trial as well. So playing around with some of those does hail. Ivan, yes, you have your hand raised? Reika, is there an opportunity, is there an opportunity for TechSoup as a overall industry organization to do some advocacy? That's what we call loving for non-profits in Canada, we call it advocacy. Is there an opportunity for the organization to go and represent the voice of the industry to organizations like DocuSign? And there are several other project management tools that we've been trying to implement because, again, individual licenses are free. But as soon as you try to use in a project, even with five people and a small non-profit, it becomes very expensive. And I'm surprised that those startups have not have not think about non-profits. Thank you. Yes, yes, that is a great question. And while I don't know the answers to that, our colleague with TechSoup, Eli Van Der Giesen, is an excellent resource to ask that question to. And I will I will ask him because that is a great, great opportunity and a great question. So thank you. Yes, I will send that out to him. Thank you. All right. Chris mentioned also curious about folks that are deploying systems remotely, particularly Macs and managing those. That's a good question, Chris. I don't live in the Mac space, but I know a few people who do and they're mentioning, I don't know how they're how they're getting a cross platform. They're mentioning using VMware and Mirador, M-I-R-A-D-O-R-E are two platforms that I know a few people are using for mobile device management. Does anyone here in this group have anything to share as far as any platform that they're aware of for mobile device management of remote systems, particularly Macs? There's Jamf, which is the big one. And we use Kaseya, but Kaseya is really more geared toward Windows machines, but there is some limited things that we can do on Mac. And then there's a new one out, Ninja, something or other, just looking it up. That also does heavy Mac remote management. I'll put it in chat once I find it. Okay, wonderful. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you. Does anyone have any other questions or anything that they would like to discuss? Oh, thank you. Jeffrey just shared the link to the Ninja. Yes, thank you. All right. Well, we are finished with our hour today. And I hope you got at least one resource today from this presentation that will help you in your work in the future. Next month, we have Jeffrey Brown, who is with us today and will be presenting on cybersecurity. Jeffrey, would you like to introduce yourself and just say a few things to give us a sneak peek of what's to come in October? Sure. So my name is Jeffrey Brown. I'm the Global Health Desk Manager for IntraHealth International, which is a global NGO that does work with healthcare workers in developing nations. And I've been in the IT industry for about 25 years, about 15 with IntraHealth. And really, I started grassroots just in helping people throughout their issues. My actual education is an aerospace engineering. But, you know, I found myself in the computer space and making money, so kind of stayed here with it. Really, my main focus has always been on end user support, you know, making sure that backups and getting rid of malware and having the best antivirus available really have always been my focus and central management of those type of resources so that, you know, you can do some of these things remotely and easily and get to, you know, those resources. So really, we've got such a mixed bag of people here in this group. So I'm going to touch some on the various levels of these groups that we have in the group. Those that are just purely community driven without real infrastructure behind them. And then we're going to talk some about the small organizations where they do have some infrastructure involved, getting your email all from, you know, a central domain type thing. And then more the enterprise where Rebecca and I sit for what to think about along those lines. So it should be fairly interesting if you have anything specific. I'd love to hear about what you want to hear about. And I can incorporate it in the presentation. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. I'm excited to attend. My team is transitioning from antivirus. Oh, Chris, thank you so much. I'm sad to see you go. I look forward to seeing you next month. But our team is transitioning from corporate antivirus over to EDR in the next few months. And what I'd like to hear in your presentation is some guidance on how to navigate that without shutting everything and everyone out of the tools that they're used to using, but with security in mind as well. But I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thank you so much. No problem. Looking forward to giving it. So we are past an hour and thank you, Jeffrey. I wanted to give him an opportunity to announce himself and talk about our event for next month. Next month we have Jeffrey's presentation, Navigating the IT Security Landscape in a Hybrid Environment. That's on October 28th, which is just a different week than what we're used to having our meetings on. Usually we do the third Thursday of the month. Next month will be the fourth. So please sign in, join. It will be on Zoom again. To reach this page, go to events.techsoup.org and look for the North Carolina NC Tech for Good chapter of Tech Connect. Thank you so much. And I hope you have a wonderful afternoon or evening.