In working with many nonprofits we’ve come to realize that most are still spending thousands of dollars from their limited budgets on outdated information technology (IT) solutions– when they could be spending next to nothing.

Many nonprofits have a local server to host their email, local intranet system, and/or a few accounting or project management software programs.  Tens of thousands of dollars a year go to individual per-computer software licenses and IT support to maintain complex cabling systems and local software installations. Such a setup can crash, break, lose emails, and cost thousands of non-budgeted dollars to fix.

Fortunately there are more secure and more dependable IT cost-saving solutions!

Upleaf works with our clients to transition their IT setup to “the cloud“.  This means that email, office documents, databases, accounting software and project management tools can be hosted remotely by large companies with better security and backups, and accessed by staff from anywhere that they can connect to the Internet.   This solution is more affordable, dependable and secure than a local server system. It can also increase productivity for employees who travel or work from home, and facilitate collaboration and information-sharing between geographically dispersed offices.

For example we often recommend the use of Google Apps, which offers email, calendars, and office software solutions for free to small and medium-sized nonprofits.  Most other software programs that nonprofits routinely use are also available on the cloud (including Quickbooks!) as are all of the CMS platforms and CRM systems that we typically customize for our clients.

Once your organization has made the transition to a more efficient on-the-cloud IT system, the maintenance costs usually drop to almost zero.  That frees up thousands of dollars a year that you can invest in other activities to make your organization more efficient, improve your reporting capability, or reach more beneficiaries!

Please contact us if you are interested in receiving a quote for Upleaf’s services.