 Hello, welcome, hello. Hello, how are you? Anyway, greetings! Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to Getting the Most from TechSoup and the Technology Capacity Project. Let me try that again. Getting the Most from TechSoup and the Technology Capacity Project, My name is Alonso Shinning, the third, and I'm your webinar facilitator. And I want you to know that I'm here with some really cool folks from TechSoup and first and foremost I have two wonderful presenters and they are Senior Account Manager Ricky Powers and Senior Program Manager Mary Duffy. Now I can introduce those ladies a little bit later but I'm also here with some great behind the scene helps and that is from Ariel Gilbert Knight and Kyla Hunt. Okay again this is the first session of three getting the most from TechSoup and the technology capacity project that's a tongue twister I'm going to walk through some of the procedures of a webinar of what we're going to do and how you can interact with us and then from there on out I want to hand it off to Ricky and Mary here we go so we're using a donation partner called Citrix and they have a tool called Go To Webinar allows us to share our desktop with you all. Okay with that being said if you lose internet connection reconnect using the link that we emailed to you that you actually click to get here also you have questions what you have here and you see on my right hopefully your right as well a little control panel this control panel allows you to interact with us you will be able to type in your questions if you have questions also it's the number one place where you're going to adjust your audio and there are two different audio settings one is called the telephone and the other is called mic and speakers the first one this is called telephone allows you to it gives you a telephone number you dial in and you put an access code and then an audio pan and that's what you listen to the actual webinar the second one is mic and speakers and it uses your computers microphone and your computer speakers if you do choose mic and speakers I strongly suggest use a headset or some type of earphones so and now you don't have the background chatter of your cubemates or office mates or even home mates there we go all right with that being said you can adjust your audio use the settings panning and also every single one of the ten these all of you are muted so if you try to talk to us who cannot hear you again the interaction begins with you type in your question in the box and we strongly encourage you to type your questions in the box we will plan to answer every question that you said that you send out to us we'll answer we promise you all right and not only that this webinar is being recorded so if you have questions and you want actually to see this webinar again and you can actually get it archived to you at the end of the webinar we have set aside 30 minutes and it's called a tech talk this is where you sit down with us so you don't leave go anywhere you just continue sitting anywhere yet now but we actually have a little round to get together and answer your questions a little more personally as opposed to a presentation after the presentation we sit down and answer nothing but questions for 30 minutes if you have any all right with all that being said I am here to introduce to you my partners in crime and presenters Ricky Powers and Mary Duffy hello Ricky are you there I am thank you Alonzo I'm Ricky Powers I happen to be the senior account manager here at TechSoup Global I've been with the organization for a little bit over four years and my role is I work with large nonprofit organizations like YMCA's Boys and Girls Clubs of America Habitats for Humanity at the headquarters level helping them get their affiliates registered with TechSoup qualified and then also make sure that they are classified correctly in order to maximize the greatest number of donation programs that they can and in addition to that I work on some special projects like this hi everybody this is Mary Duffy I've been a program manager with TechSoup for more than 14 years working with nonprofits community organizations and schools both locally and globally but for the past year and a half I've served as the project manager for this particular project and during that time I've learned a lot about TV organizations but most importantly what a great group of talented and dedicated folks there are in this community and I feel lucky as the TechSoup to contribute to the effort so thank you for the opportunity to work together on this and with that I'm going to turn it back over to Ricky who will tell you a little bit about TechSoup thanks Mary Alonzo can I get the next slide thank you so today we're going to cover well who is TechSoup and then what is the technology capacity project and what's in it for you the organization how you can how you can access your donations there'll be an opportunity for questions and answers at the end followed by next steps TechSoup Global actually started in 1987 as an organization called a Confumentor there are many organizations that operate underneath that umbrella and one of them is NetSquared, NGOsource, GuideStar International but today what we're going to do is talk about TechSoup. TechSoup our mission is we're working towards a time where every social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential. TechSoup is a 501c3 nonprofit organization just like yourselves we've served over 127,000 organizations distributed more than six million dollars in technology products we've also saved the nonprofit sector almost two billion dollars in IT expenses and we're currently in 33 countries around the world and growing with that Mary I'll hand it back to you. Well welcome everyone again we're excited to share the resources and benefits that are available to everyone all of you grantees so let's get started and talk a little bit about what's available to all of you. So basically as I mentioned when I introduced myself I've been working on this project for a year and a half and one of the first things we did as part of this project was put together a needs assessment and the assessment included the following things we did a couple of surveys to identify what was most pressing what were the most pressing technology issues for DV organizations we did a series of five interviews with DV organizations so that we could get some input on what are some of the technology challenges and successes that are going on in the field we looked at some research a variety of different research products and one of them was the the core capacity assessment the CCAT which I believe many of you are familiar with we collected and analyzed DV organizations hardware and software purchases we looked at in TechSoup what are folks in the DV world ordering and requesting in terms of donations and so that we just got a better idea about what kinds of products and resources would be most helpful to all of you. We also hosted tech talk sessions and what those were were an opportunity for us to talk with specifically with organization staff find out what some of the challenges were and offer some solutions and ideas for addressing those challenges and finally we hosted a webinar based on all this information we gathered to our needs assessment on healthy and secure computing for DV organizations so from the needs assessment we identified three top goals and three top challenges for DV organizations and these were the goals that we found you know as I'll break this down into people speak it's just the three goals are really to help grantees establish basic IT systems and resources so you can better serve your clients. Secondly we wanted to share the best practices that are being used by other DV organizations so that you can learn from each other what works and what doesn't and how they got to a successful place with their IT systems and then third is we want to be looking at and evaluating options and solutions for DV organizations to access on-site technical support. On-site technical support was a huge issue for organizations and we would like to start to take a look at ways of helping you address some of the issues that you're dealing with so that was one of our goals. The needs assessment pulled out these top three challenges and none of this I believe is going to be surprised to any of you. Time and resources I mean time and resources right now at we have the maximum requirements and the minimal support so what what our idea around this is to try and help you maximize resources with the current budgetary constraints that you're all dealing with. The second big challenge was awareness of technology support resources. Folks don't know how to access resources that are available either for free or low cost and we think we can help with that. And then third top challenge that was identified was support to implement and maintain technology systems. Again that on-site support is a big issue as well as how to keep up to date with this really changing environment which is IT and maintain your systems and forecast future needs. So these were the challenges that were identified again through our needs assessment. So based on these challenges that DV organization they're facing along with the goals for the project we develop this suite of services for DV organizations through this project and I'll quickly review each one of these now. So each grantee will receive up to $1,250 of products through TechSoup. Each grantee who participates and meets all the requirements will be the ones that will be able to access this. We're going to provide all of you with a suggested list of products for what you might be interested in accessing but that is not a requirement. You're not obligated to go with those products. The choice is really yours based on the needs and requirements of your particular organization. Now there may be certain situations where a vendor that we work with may have some restrictions regarding who gets access to those products but those will be highlighted and clear when you go to the point of actually trying to request donations and get those for your sites. We'll talk more about that later as well. The next thing that we're offering is account management services. Ricky who is just outstanding at this is the account manager for this particular project. We're really lucky to have her and she will be helping your organization through the registration process and helping you with accessing your requested donations. Ricky's going to talk a little bit more about that later on in the webinar and go into a little bit more detail about that but again we're just really fortunate to have such a talented great person working with us on this project so you'll be able to access her throughout this project. The other thing that we're offering is we're developing a people friendly tech guide. We did this with the library community through our cookbooks and we're doing sort of a modified version of this again specifically for DV organizations. We've broken it down into easy to understand language that targets the key areas of need for DV organizations. So you're going to be receiving toolkits, how to resources along with a current guide at these upcoming webinars. So there'll be some good print based material as well as some webinar material that you can access throughout this project. And then finally the online peer support. TechSoup has this really great community of folks who help one another deal with some of the issues that they're dealing with in their nonprofit organizations related to technology. So we have a very large community that talk to each other about IT. We are going to provide you with a how to guide for accessing the TechSoup forums and getting the most from TechSoup forums as you can based on your particular needs. And then finally these webinars and TechTalk series. So as you know we're offering these three webinars. Each session includes a up to an hour webinar followed by up to a half hour TechTalk. Now sometimes it's less, sometimes it's right on spot that it's a 60 minute webinar and a 30 minute TechTalk. It varies depending on the audience. But the webinars are really targeted at getting the most from us this being the first one. Secondly, identifying and documenting what you need. This will be an introduction to technology planning and how to really use that planning to help you develop a system that really works for your organization. And then thirdly we're going to deal with keeping your system safe and secure. This is a big issue for DV organizations as well as any organization. And so we'll be discussing best practices and systems for creating a secure computing environment at your organization. Following each one of those TechTalks will be this after party which webinar will be these after party TechTalks where you'll get to ask questions, will answer as many of those as we possibly can and provide you as many resources as needed. So just note you've already done one of them by going through this webinar you've just got two more to complete. The one on planning and the one on safe and secure computing. So the upcoming webinar dates are January 11 and January 18. So how do you register? Next slide, Alonzo please. One more. Sorry, folks. You received today an attached document which is the introduction to the technology capacity project. In that document on pages four and five are a place where you can register for the upcoming webinars. All you need to do is open that document, go to the January dates and register right there. So that will get you set up for the upcoming webinars and TechTalks. Okay, so please answer or ask us any questions that you have regarding what I've just reviewed. We will go over these questions at the end of the webinar. We'll be happy to answer any of these questions and we look forward to receiving your questions. So with that I'm going to turn it back over to Ricky who will let you know a little bit about how to sign up and access TechSoup donated product. And so here's Ricky. Thank you. Hey, next slide Alonzo please. There we go. One more. So I'll be covering product donations, getting started to place a donation request, how to check your eligibility and go through the request to donation process and then also the checkout process. TechSoup is a great resource for organizations and this is a snapshot of our homepage. Over on the left hand side I just want to point out the get started box. And there is where our learning center is and that's where a library of past webinars will be, our community you'll find there, a catalog. But just make sure that you, I just wanted to call your attention to that box. But what I'm going to cover today is how to get product donations. TechSoup currently has 45 different technology partners. We call them donor partners. Examples of this are let's say Intuit who does QuickBooks. Citrix online is one of our donor partners and right now we're utilizing their go-to webinar. And TechSoup also happens to be the exclusive distributor for Microsoft product donations. Now TechSoup can be a little bit confusing because it looks like an e-commerce site like Amazon. But it's not. You do need to take several steps in order to be able to place a donation request. So what I like to do is just call out that we live some place between applying for a grant and Amazon. That's what TechSoup is. In order, first thing you'll need to do is join TechSoup. Then we register your organization or associate you with an existing organization. There's a qualification process that includes faxing the first page of your 501c3 documents into us. You check your organization's eligibility. As I just called out, we have 45 different technology partners. Which one of those programs, those donation programs, does your organization qualify for? And then finally you get to request a donation and go through the checkout process. Step one is to create an individual user profile. Now when you join TechSoup, you join TechSoup as an individual and not your organization. So I would join TechSoup as Ricky Powers and not TechSoup the organization that I represent. In this process, really it shouldn't even take five minutes to join TechSoup. Next you're going to want to see which one of the donation programs does your organization qualify for. If you look over on the right, that bottom arrow points to our check eligibility tool. You would click on that. It's going to take you to the check eligibility list. What you're going to need is your tax ID number and your budget and your organization type in order to do that. And what I like to mention is that each one of our donor partners has a different focus on where they want their product philanthropy to go. The best way I can equate that is I don't give money or volunteer to every organization that needs my time or would like my money. And so our donor partners are very much like that. In order to register your organization and I believe most organizations are already registered. So really what you would be doing is linking to an existing organization in our database. You're going to need your tax ID number and if you don't know what that looks like it's a nine digit number. It's two digits and a dash and then seven digits. You're also going to need your organization's operating budget which some organizations if you're giving money to recipient of services that your budget overall budget is going to be larger than your actual operating budget. So we want to focus on the operating budget. When you you've joined text oh wait sorry go back one more Alonzo I'm sorry. So in this register organization you would put your tax ID number in and then a list is going to come up. If your organization is already in our database then you're just going to click on that organization and go ahead and link to that account. In order to link to that account you're going to need what's called an association code or it's also step three on the screen. And that was a something that someone in your organization created. It's not something that was assigned to you by TechSoup. It's also not something that was given to you by Blue Shield of California. This is something that someone in your organization created. And then step four would be confirmation. So if you've successfully associated yourself with your organization you'll get an email saying welcome. You're now an authorized user. You can place donation requests on behalf of your organization. Two great resources that I'd love to see each one of you subscribe to is Buy the Cup which is an e-newsletter and then also our e-newsletter the new product donation alert. And by the Cup you're going to they'll have a list of free webinars that we do. It's just a great resource with technology articles. Sometimes some of our donor partners do challenges that you could participate in. And then when it comes to the new product donation alert well obviously that's going to have new products in it. But also we have special acquirements that you'll find in there. A great example of that is Cisco when they decided to discontinue the flip video cameras. They gave a small allocation to TechSoup to donate to the nonprofit sector. And if you hadn't been subscribed to the NPA and paying attention to it you would have missed out on those cameras. Also I'd like to call out our digital catalog. This is another great resource. The home page is over in the get started box on the left hand side right above the check eligibility tool. If you need to download a copy you can do that as well. Alright so you've joined TechSoup. We've associated we either registered your organization or we've associated you to an existing organization in our database. Now what you're going to need to do is identify the products that you need. A lot of this will you will have covered in the other webinars but you're going to review what your organization currently has. Then you're going to identify your organization's most pressing needs. Then identify your budget and remember that's your operating budget. And then request the product donations that match your budget limits and your most pressing needs. Next slide also please. Thank you. Alright so now now all we have left to do is to request your donation. You're going to log into TechSoup and once again you log in as the individual. Since you're already an authorized user for your account you don't need to you don't log in as the organization. You log in as the individual. And then what you do is just add the products to your cart. Remember your maximum amount is $1,250 and you only have one chance to request product donations through this grants. Step five is the checkout process. We've just put everything in the cart. Now what we need to do is just click view cart. Step two is our what we call the restrictions engine. And what happens is that our systems just takes a look at your organization and make sure that you're qualified to receive that donation. And if you're not then it won't let you move forward in the checkout process. Step three is the agreements. And in the agreements I'm just going to make this easy on you. Just answer yes to all of the agreements. But some of the things that you're agreeing to is that you won't be using this product for fundraising purposes. Any donations that you receive through TechSoup are for your operations and not any other purpose. You also agree that you're going to participate in a case study should one of our donor partners ask you to do so. Step four is the shipping and delivery. I'd like to call out a couple of things in step four. Number one you're going to choose ground shipping. Now it actually defaults to ground shipping so you don't have to click it. But there's no fee for ground shipping. And then also in the payment option in the phase you're going to choose the check option not credit card. Step five you just review everything. Shipping address is correct. Yes it's ground shipping. And yeah we're going to pay by check. And then step six is confirmation. Now in order for us to distribute your donations you do need to take one more step and email this step that's the order confirmation to bscfgrant at techsoup.org. It's listed right there on the screen. But and please give us 10 days, 10 working days to get that request processed. Yeah any questions? Thank you Ricky. Looks like we have a question from Victoria and let me actually unmute Mary. All right and it's asked can item purchased from others to be messed into... I think she meant I'm sorry mixed into prevent duplicate otherwise we can add outside the purchases. Can we... Let me I'm not sure what this question is asking. Let me actually unmute her and have her ask the questions. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Hello Victoria how's it going? Victoria Murphy are you there? Maybe Victoria can you resubmit your question please in the chat box. That'd be awesome. In the meantime we got another question coming in from Lisa and she asks will we be able to obtain a copy of the slides? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll send that out to folks so you'll have this as a reference point. There we go. All right and I'm hoping Victoria is able to resubmit her question. I'm assuming if I can try to decipher if she's asking can items purchased from other sources be mixed into prevent duplications otherwise there's some other way we can add the other outside purchases. So I'm not sure what you mean by other sources or outside sources but that's something you guys can answer. Yeah. One of the things that we'll be doing in this next upcoming webinar is talking about how to document what you have identify what you need and then make sure you you access the right product both through TechSoup and through any other source in the future. One of the reasons that sometimes this gets difficult is that you're not quite sure about everything you've got and so what we'll show folks through the webinar and also provide in the guide are specific instructions on how to do that well how to make sure you know what you what resources you have at your disposal and what things you'll need to purchase going forward after this grant. Thank you Mary. So Victoria does she answer your question accordingly? So the other thing along so I just wanted to call out is next week's webinar will be hosted by Elliott and Elliott is somebody that's worked with us for a while has done a variety of webinars and in the last round in terms of feedback we got really high reviews so it was it's a really great opportunity to learn more about how to gather information but also how to do some planning so that you know what you need in the future. So he will be doing that webinar on the 11th and then Eric Leland I think many of you know Eric he had done a webinar with us a while back he's somebody that's worked with us on a number of project projects and he's great around security and safety of your system so that will also be a really well spent hour I think in terms of helping you identify any security issues you might be experiencing and how to resolve those going forward. Another question comes in from Danielle will the second and third webinars be offered at additional times I have conflicts on January 11th and the 18th I could ask a representative for my entry to attend on my behalf if that permitted. Yeah that would be great if you could have someone from your organization sit in that would be ideal it doesn't have to be the same person that sits through all webinars because you recognize different people do different tasks so just so you have representation at those webinars that would be great and that would totally fulfill any requirements. Thank you again Mary. All right is there a deadline by when the orders have to be placed this is from Roxanne. That's a great question. At this point we are still in process to finalize this but it looks like the end of March is the grant cycle for this particular series of projects but we're still trying to figure out there may be some future opportunities for folks to place orders but I would just say if you've attended all of these webinars ideally I would suggest that you put in your donation request before the end of March and if there are any changes to that we will notify everybody in advance. All right this question Anna she asked does this grant count against our product limit from tech suppliers? That's a great question. We'll do this by case by case basis and so what we should do is when you get to a place of actually requesting your donations this will be something that you'll want to talk through with Ricky to go through the specifics because there's you know again all these different requirements and limitations and restrictions and we will address this on a case by case basis but we'll make sure that you get what product that you need. All right Ricky is there anything else you want to add to that regarding that process? No you did a fantastic job. All right this is from Simon is there any restrictions on disposal of the donation received in the product is obsolete or damaged? If it's obsolete or damaged well obsolete I'm sorry I'm sorry did you want to say something Alonzo? Not at all. Okay so we basically are distributing products that is you know current product so if something comes in damaged we definitely will want to deal with that but in terms of getting something that's sort of antiquated and outdated this again goes back to looking at what you have making sure you're requesting product that you need and it will work with your existing systems so if you have any questions though about whether or not this product is antiquated or something that you won't need you don't need I would really suggest that you send me an email at mduffy at techsoup.org and I can talk this through with you or if I can't answer your question somebody within our group can so please contact me if you have any questions about whether or not this is the right stuff for your organization. Very I have something that I'd like to add. Okay great if and so the RCI the refurbished computer initiative any donations that an organization receives through that they come with a sticker attached to it and when that system gets to end of life you just call the 800 number on that sticker and a prepaid postage box will come and you put whatever that is inside the box close it up and send it off and it's disposed of in a green manner so that could be antiquated materials or products and if that didn't answer the question please resubmit so we're sure that we we've got to the heart of your question. Kyla and Alonzo any other questions from folks? Here we go yes it's some Shannon when would you send out your recommended list of software? You know we'll send this out before the next webinar so you have that at your disposal so we'll send that to you so remember today you received the guide and you received some background information we'll do the same thing for this next webinar and make sure that you get that in advance of the second webinar. You'll also get the technology project guide which will have a bunch of really helpful tools and information about managing and maintaining your system so that'll come out to you as well. All right thank you and continuation of Simon's question he asked one about the restrictions and obsolete software he said sorry what I meant is as we use that for years it becomes not needed anymore. Mm-hmm. Some suitable and that. Okay so yeah I mean that's one of the reasons that software assurance at least for office or Microsoft products is a really good thing to take a look at because if say friends did you buy something in that same year and it gets upgraded you can upgrade easily with software assurance. Ricky do you want to talk a little bit about the software assurance program? Yeah so any Microsoft product that or donation that's acquired through TechSoup comes with software assurance and that allows an organization I believe it's it's only three years they have three years to either let's say a new version of office came out so you had office 2010 and and office 2012 comes out you can upgrade to that version without paying any additional fee and that's what software assurance provides. It ends up being a fantastic money saver for any organization and usually our companies have to pay additional in order to receive that and it just comes standard with TechSoup. All right I'm not seeing any more questions I don't want to say go once going twice sold or anything like that. If questions come up for folks after the webinar though always feel free to contact myself or Ricky. We're happy to help you with any of your questions related to these presentations or the program in general. And we do have another question I see it. I want to sneak in here. I asked the other two webinars took them out of order is this is this list in the one of the downloads you sent me with the last two webinars. This is yeah this is if you've done session two and session three now you've done session one and you've met the requirements you are able to go ahead and move forward with requesting donations. There you go. Well that looks like to be it for the questions last but not least I'd like to thank our web webinar sponsors teachers online for providing this go-to webinar tool for us to communicate with you ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to thank Ricky Powers and Mary Duffy and for their support and the presentation and also for the behind-the-scenes sports from Ariel Gilbert Knight and Kyla Hunt. Thank you so much everyone. Any last words Mary or Ricky? No. Well thank you everyone for attending right after the holiday I know this was tough for folks to make this webinar so we really appreciate you joining us today and we'll look forward to seeing you all at the next webinar next week so take care of yourselves. Happy New Year. Thank you. Thanks everybody. The webinar.