Is your charitable organisation's IT built for success?

For years, the not for profit sector has struggled to keep up with the fast changing pace of today’s technological world.  Complex and long-winded sign-off procedures, tight scrutiny of budgets/expenditure and often a lack of in-house IT resource to define a cohesive strategy or manage any third party contracts means that they are plagued by legacy systems, complacent incumbent providers and unexplainable rising costs. 

Viewed as a ‘cost centre’ the potential of IT is overlooked

As a result, IT is typically viewed as a cost centre as opposed to a platform that can drive transformation and change. Even the portrayal of a “third sector” categorisation would suggest a different approach is required by vendors and service providers compared to private and public sector organisations.  Whilst this might apply to the commercial and financial negotiations and the overall sign-off process, charities are subject to exactly the same operational challenges as most corporates, if not more:



• Community outreach and fundraising has never been as crucial to many not for profit organisations in terms of brand and cause awareness.  This demands a certain level of agility beyond the confines of the office and is pushing more and more services online to communicate with an audience in a digital capacity.
• Unlike most corporates, a charity’s user basis very rarely consists solely of employees.  Fundraisers, volunteers and trustees provide invaluable input and still require access to certain shared services, albeit infrequently and via their own personal devices, which poses additional challenges in terms of security, accessibility and management.
• The increased threat from online services and a geographically dispersed remote workforce is one thing, but when combined with sensitive data and regulatory compliance such as GDPR, security becomes a key consideration for most, if not all, charitable organisations.
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Historically, such challenges would’ve been overcome through the adoption of disjointed in-house systems or point solutions, that are not only expensive to implement, but expensive to maintain, regularly requiring the services of multiple third party service providers, which only adds to the cost.  Worse still, due to the approval process, such changes were left until the next round of contract renewals or board meetings, leaving the organisation hindered and unable to adapt with the agility of a standard corporate enterprise. 

Cloud services can be a game changer for charity performance

The great news now though is that those days are well and truly in the past and the emergence of Cloud Computing as a concept has really paved the way for not for profit organisations to refresh, revolutionise and rejuvenate the role IT plays in delivering that all important “best value”. 

As a solution, The Cloud immediately presents improvements in terms of redundancy, availability and performance……all features that are typically backed by service levels and can be enjoyed as a standard throughout the duration of the agreement, not ones that deteriorate over time.  Not only that, but the very nature of the technology involves a public or private cloud provider delivering systems, applications or data securely across the Internet, which lends itself perfectly to the working practices of most charitable organisations. 

The consumption based model is perfect for charities

Beyond the inherent benefits that are available “off the shelf”, most Cloud services, can be tailored to align with the varying landscapes of the different charitable sectors or overcome some of the challenges we’ve already discussed:



• Controlled scalability – Previously charities have been bound by the capacity and capabilities of their in house systems, however the consumption based model of The Cloud makes it incredibly quick, easy and cost effective to deliver services to the organisation and the end users.  New applications and online digital programs can be delivered with minimal upfront investment, both in terms of time and money and during peak periods, resources can be scaled both up, and indeed down, at the flick of a switch to reflect any change in headcount.  Overall, empowering any not for profit organisation with a level of control and agility never really seen before.
• Increased security – Let’s be honest, most Cloud Providers operate out of data centre facilities that demonstrate greater security measures and credentials than most charities could normally afford.  That being said, their standard “blanket” coverage may not always be suitable or sufficient, but these can always be tweaked to meet your charities individual needs and requirements.  Additional services around Cyber Security, Anti-Virus, Endpoint Protection and Multi-factor Authentication are widely available and often more cost effective as an aggregated model than an in house investment.
• Better budget control – We’ve already touched on the budget constraints of the charitable sector and in the past, IT has not only required continual re-investment, but is often difficult to predict based on unexpected component failure, hardware replacement, software maintenance renewals and the unknown cost of expansion.  With the adoption of Cloud, services are charged either based on resource consumption or number of active users and as such this makes the charges/invoices completely transparent, simple to understand and easy for the finance department to budget for.
  

Cloud has to be the way forward for charities

Overall, the versatility of Cloud Computing makes it suitable for pretty much any business, but the OPEX based model, flexible contractual terms, remote method of connectivity and outsourced management positions Cloud as THE way forward for the not for profit sector and bridges the gap between what has only typically been available in the corporate marketplace.  Adoption of Cloud services is a journey though; one that still requires careful management, planning and updating to ensure it continues to work for the organisation.

Skye’s cloud – the perfect partner for charities 

From inception in 2012, Skye Cloud invested heavily in a private cloud infrastructure that delivered enterprise grade technology at a price point that has fuelled massive growth year on year.  Hand in hand with this, our experience, understanding and connectivity into the public cloud platforms, positions us as an unrivalled expert of cloud technology as a whole. 

Whilst this might seem like a big claim, this is where Skye Cloud really differentiate from the competition and where charitable organisations really stand to benefit, because it is this versatility and platform independence that drives our approach within this sector.  As we have already highlighted, the varied user base within Not for Profits poses several challenges with regards to the differing use of technology and differing access requirements, both in terms of frequency and BYOD. 

To that extent, Skye Cloud build a tailored solution based around the specific use case for each organisation, department and/or user type and leverage the benefits and of the most suitable cloud platform, albeit private, public or a mixture of both to deliver the desired functionality in the most cost effective way.

Collaboration and relationships

Before we can propose a plan though, we ensure we understand not just objectives, but also the culture and the ways of working. With Skye you will get a group of people who will listen first. We will then collaborate. And only once that is done will we propose the plan. We believe – irrespective of sector – it’s the personal relationships which make business successful, so all of our team from top to bottom ensure we deliver on this promise.



Over and above the solution itself though, there are also a number of other commercial, financial and operational reasons to partner with Skye Cloud.  For one, our Disability Confidence certification lends an empathetic touch to our approach and services, our commitment to information security means we are ideally placed to assist with your own Cyber Essentials Certification and the fact we have successfully helped over 30 Not for Profit organisations realise significant cost savings and achieve operational efficiency through the adoption of cloud technology, provides an understanding of the challenges, decision making process and overall objectives that guarantee we can replicate this success time and time again. 

Experience, understanding and giving charities a head start

Skye Cloud work with over 30 not for profit organisations. We have developed an understanding of  the challenges a varied and remote user base represent we can help your organisation improve operational performance and reduce outgoings - with no downtime or disruption. Whilst one size doesn’t fit all, we have firm foundations to build around to enable us to implement the right plans quicker and more cost effectively. An example of this would be Cyber Security Essentials Accreditation. Having gone through the process with a number of organisations already we are very well placed to navigate not for profit organisations through this process with the minimum of fuss, cost and effort.

Our ethos is to partner with our clients in the long term,  we are disability confidence certified and take on not only responsibility for IT but an active role in supporting fundraising your organisation – why not see how we supported Noah’s Ark recently to help raise over £2m. <link to landing page we will create.>

A personal approach

to service

For each customer we provide a named account manager and a named technical partner who are both accessible and will pick up the phone should you need to get in touch. We dedicated the same people to clients enabling relationships to be built which over time increase pro-active collaboration and enables any issues to be resolved quickly. We appreciate things can go wrong – we are honest enough to accept that given the business we are in, but we also strive to resolve any issue quickly and crucially comprehensively. Our team are not tasked by volume of “resolves”, we are all collectively tasked by customer satisfaction, and that’s the over-riding metric for our business and we strive to achieve every day. We know if our clients are happy and are getting value with us they will stay – our 96% client retention rate evidences this.

Commercial benefits

Commercials are important to every business and acutely so in the charity sector. On average we have saved in the region of 20% off the first year IT bill for not for profits organisations who have transfer their business to us. 

What next?

The decision to move to the cloud needs careful consideration, but if you are a Not for Profit and want to Join the In Cloud, there is only one choice; Skye Cloud. 

What our Not-For-Profit Clients say