Overview

The first NTRS was held November 10th, 2005 at CompuMentor. The focus was "Optimizing the Consultant / Nonprofit Relationship". Approximately 35 people attended. The meeting was 2hrs. There was a good mix of IT and non-IT, and consultant and nonprofit staff. We also had a few for profit software vendors in the room. The format was one facilitator leading a discussion among the audience - there was very little presentation, no computer technology assistance generally.

Networking Notes

These notes were taken at an informal Emerging Technologies discussion held at CompuMentor on July 5, 2005.  The aim of the discussion was to examine ways in which new technologies impact (positively or negatively) nonprofit organizations. The notes are also attached.

CompuMentor needs your help! We developed a
guide for non profits to use to do a security audit of their window desktops
and networks. We need a few mentors to take this into the real world and do an
audit following the steps in the guide and reporting back to us on what, if
anything, was missing. The audit should
be done on a small non profit or business.

This is a shorter project commitment than usual, lasting only a month. Please e-mail mentor@compumentor.org if you're interested in volunteering for this.

This IT resource was developed by CompuMentor's Healthy & Secure Computing campaign and was created in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. It provides advice on getting technology systems working again in small- and medium-sized nonprofits where business continuity plans were not sufficient or did not exist.

CompuMentor is a US-based nonprofit dedicated to providing technology support to nonprofit organizations. Here is a list of CompuMentor programs that are providing technology resources to nonprofits recovering from disasters:

Implementation Materials

The HSC program includes guides for implementing our recommended baseline technologies. These materials include both step-by-step directions for manual implementation and automated installation tools, where possible. If you follow these guides you will insure that your computer and network installations are indeed healthy and secure.

These guides are included in the appendixes, and are available on the HSC program Web site.

Appendices
Appendix 1 - Implementation Guidelines

General Documentation

Nonprofit IT staff fall into two common roles, the IT manager and the accidental techie. An IT manager is a staff member with an IT support background whose primary job responsibilities include IT support for the organization. This role is responsible for most IT decision making. An accidental techie is a staff member with basic IT skills, but whose primary responsibilities are not IT-related. Often the accidental techie participates with management to make IT decisions rather than taking sole responsibility for those decisions.

Desktop User Support
Any organization that uses computers needs to have some form of end-user support. This can be provided in a number of different ways, but this support needs to be available. Lack of this first-level support is almost certain to result in significantly more costs, in staff time and data loss, than it will cost to provide.

Technology is not a one-time retail experience. Ongoing maintenance, support and management are essential, or the technology will degenerate. Proper support procedures and the resources needed to provide them are essential. An important part of the HSC program is a set of support and documentation materials. These materials help you with HSC program adoption, implementation, support, and maintenance. Below is an overview of the support and documentation materials. More detailed samples are located in Appendix 3.

This is the easy part. You can assign tech staff (internal or consultants) to implement your priority projects. But remember, these are not complex, proprietary or organization-specific projects; they are standard tasks like upgrading desktops or implementing a back-up system. Most anyone you hire can do these projects, the challenge is for you to determine which projects are most important.

The HSC guidelines themselves are in Appendix 1. They are organized into seven broad categories:

• PC hardware
• PC software
• LAN technologies
• Server technologies
• Internet technologies
• Security and privacy
• Ergonomics

PC Hardware: minimum specifications for Windows and Macintosh systems, buying advice, and more.