Uploaded by
Google on 12.07.2007
NTEN is a professional association of
nonprofit IT people.
It's essentially the membership organization of
techies for good.
It's the people who work in nonprofits who do technology.
They're all NTEN members, and they use technology in an
extremely innovative way.
We have about 10,000 individuals in our community
and about 2,000 active members, and so we have a big
community of people that we communicate with, coordinate
with, do a lot of things with.
We use pretty much all of the Google Apps.
We use a lot of Google tools.
So we use Analytics, we use AdWords, we use Groups to some
extent, but Google Apps is extremely useful for us
because we're highly distributed.
We're six people, but we have two in California, two in
Portland Oregon, and then several on the East Coast, and
we have lots of people who come and go, and so we need to
accommodate them in very, very easy ways.
So adding an email account is a cinch, adding a user to a
calendar is a cinch, sharing documents is really easy.
And I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled, thrilled at some of
the increasing functionality that I've been seeing.
The other thing that's really critical about Gmail is the
excellent, excellent, excellent spam-catching
capabilities.
Unbelievably good.
Really good.
We're out there a lot.
We have a really highly-visible website, and so
we get a ton of spam.
And, actually, we don't get a ton of spam,
which is really nice.
So I think from the point of view of a small nonprofit with
limited resources with important other work to do, I
think it'll lessen the pain and the IT challenges
internally that they face on that productivity suite level.
The cost savings, let's talk about that, because the fact
that the application is free and the fact that now the
educational premiere version is available to nonprofits for
free, or will be, they are not just time, not savings, not
just productivity, it increases the actual cost
savings, you do not have to buy licenses.
And that's important.
For nonprofits, it's really important because often their
resources are strapped.
So from the point of view of an advocacy or an advocate for
making it easier for nonprofits to adopt IT in
their organizations, this is a really promising move.
I mean, it's just fabulous and it's
great, it's really wonderful.
And, hopefully, it raises the ability of nonprofits to do
what they really are all about, which is make the world
a better place.
