Mondays with Marissa – Page 3 – The Healthy Non-Profit

A weekly feature in 2012 focusing on technology and non-profits.

Is Reddit an Online Community for your Nonprofit?

September 10, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, nonprofit, technology

It seems as though a new social network is pops up every day. Finding the right one for your nonprofit can be critical to reaching to the right community for your mission.

We’ve talked about how your social media strategy starts with your website. After you’ve spent some time to establish your site, sharing your content is the next step. Let’s take a look at Reddit and how it might be the place for your organization.

What is Reddit?
Reddit is known as “the front page of the internet”. It lists links in order of popularity for users. Users can then upvote or downvote the link moving it up or down the page for the rest of the viewers. Users can also comment on the link. Reddit is known as a place for discussion and reading the comments can sometimes give a person more information than the link originally posted.

What makes Reddit a little different than just a list of links, is the fact that they allow users to create their own communities known as subreddits. Subreddits are lists of links that are associated with a certain topic. Topics range from TVshows to political parties to geographic locations.

How can my nonprofit use Reddit?
Reddit is a great place to share content from your organization’s website. By posting links to your site in the appropriate subreddits you might be able to expose your work to a different community and gain more support for your mission. The key here is to post in multiple subreddits to see which place ends up being the right place for you. When posting make sure to read the rules posted on side bar on the right side of the page. Different subreddits have different rules.

You can start and moderate your own subreddit. If your organization needs to inform people about your mission, reddit is a great place to do so. Not only could you post content from your site, but you can link to news articles related to your mission to generate discussion.

The Reddit community is also known for being able to raise money for charities in a short amount of time. Remember that story Erik shared about a bus monitor who was bullied? The fundraising efforts behind that story happened on Reddit. Reddit was also a major tool used by Stephen Colbert to raise money for Donors Choose. Reddit users are responsible for a lot of good. There is even redditdonate.com where redditors can donate, and subreddit moderators and nonprofit organizations can create campaigns.

The Reddit community also participates in meetups and days of service. If you can get your organization involved in one of those that could me a number of new volunteers for your agency.

The internet is a big place. Finding the right spot for your organization might take some time, but once you find it you’ll be set. Maybe Reddit is the place for you.

Are you an organization that has used Reddit in the past or are currently active reddit users? What works best with this community? I’d love to talk about it more in comments!

Creating secure passwords protects you, your non-profit and your donors

August 27, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

These days, it seems like every few months we are hearing of another password breach at a website. Just a few weeks ago one of the world’s largest online gaming companies, Blizzard, suffered a digital security breach and thousands of passwords were compromised. A month before that, the popular social networking site, LinkedIn was also hacked.

While there is not much that can be done when those things happen, you can take action to ensure your online identity and the identity of your agency remain secure. The first line of defense is coming up with a secure password.

Every site you sign onto will ask for a password. Furthermore, some people might need a password to sign into your computer. That can be a lot of passwords to try to remember. Here are a few tips on how to create memorable and secure passwords:

The longer the password, the better. While creating short but extremely random passwords might be a great strategy if you only have a few passwords to remember, chances are you have quite a few sites that require a password. This is why creating a long password is best. One idea is to think of a story you will never forget and put together a phrase with a few numbers based on that story. That phrase with a few numbers provides you with much better security.
Complex over simple. While you do not want a random collection of numbers and letters, you do want your password to have some complexity. This can be accomplished through the use of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. A general rule is to have at least one of each in your password.
No personal information. Do not include things such as your address, phone number, birthdate, social security number, etc in your passwords. If for some reason a site that you are subscribed to is hacked, the hacker can use this information to link together other information on the web and find out who you are. In no time, your identity theft has your credit card numbers and other personal information.

It is best to have a different password for each site to which you are subscribed. If you are concerned about remembering a bunch of passwords, then there are password managers available to help you. Google Chrome and other browsers offer a password managers that save an encrypted version of your password for you, which will auto-complete the next visit that site. There are also independent password managers such as KeePass that also will save your passwords for you.

Your non-profit organization might already have a policy on creating passwords. So, before following any of the advice in this post, make sure you check with your IT Department and make sure your passwords are compliant. Also, remember to change your passwords often. A good rule of thumb is to change them every three months to keep accounts secure.

These best practices aren’t just necessary for your online activity. They also applies to internal software such as password protected donor databases.

Anyone else have some great password creation tips? What password manager do you use? Does your agency have a password creation policy? If so, would you be willing to share it with other readers? Let’s talk about all of this in the comment section!

Is Instagram the Social Network for Your Nonprofit?

August 20, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

Finding the right social network for your organization is important in ensuring that your message is finding the right people. Photos can sometimes communicate more than words can which is why Instagram might be just the place for your organization.

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 09: In this photo illust... — (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

If you are unfamiliar with Instagram, here are the basics. Instagram allows users to take photos and apply different filters on them. A photo of your friends can suddenly look like a Polaroid photo from the 70s in less than a second. These photos are then put into your feed or shared to your preferred social network for your friends to see. Friends can like or comment on your photos. One thing to keep in mind is that photos must be taken on your phone and cannot be uploaded from a computer.

Seems simple, right? That’s just it. It’s so simple that it has become one of the largest social networks around. What makes Instagram a vital player in the social network wars is the the size of their user base and how active the community is. According to their website, there are 80 million plus users, 4 billion photos uploaded, 5 million plus photos uploaded per day, 575 likes per second, and 81 comments per second. That’s a lot of photos and a lot of activity. Seems like a great place for your organization to get involved.

So you’ve created your Instagram account and now are wondering what type of things to share – don’t worry, here are some ideas.

Behind the scenes – people love to feel like they are being let in on secret. Show them what goes on behind the curtain.
Event coverage – document the party as it happens!
Your mission in action – show how your organization is achieving it’s goals
Volunteer spotlight – take a photo of your best volunteer and share it
Project updates – are you building a new facility? share with others how things are going.

While you can share any of the photos you take on Instagram, keeping some of them specifically on Instagram will encourage people to follow you.

Also, you can easily create a community on Instagram by getting your followers involved. Interactions on Instagram follow the same format as Twitter where as users can mention others by using @ and users can create hashtags. Say you are having a special event focused on summer. You can ask followers to post photos of what summer means to them and mention you in them or tag them with a specific hashtag.

One more thing, if you use MailChimp for your email newsletter, there is an application called Instachimp that will integrate your Instagram photos into your newsletters.

For more examples on how to best use Instagram for your organization, take a look at this article on Mashable.

I hope that you now have a better idea of how Instagram can help your organization reach out to a wider audience. Are already using Instagram? What do you find successful? Let’s talk about it in comments!

Time to Go Back to School: Computer Maintenance 101

August 13, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but summer is almost over. In fact, today many students and teachers are headed back to school. With that in mind, I thought I’d share some tips on how to keep your computer up to date and ready for what ever you throw at it. There are many things that you can do to improve the performance of your computer and prevent having to call your IT person.

Operating System Software Updates
Whether you have a PC or Mac, updating your operating system is important and easy to do. On Windows machines, your computer is updated when you turn your computer off from time to time or you are prompted to download updates and restart

your computer. On a Mac, Software Update runs once a week and brings you updates for your operating system and other software that is installed on your computer. While these notifications can come up at an inconvenient time, say while you’re working on a project, take the time to update them. Many of the updates are security updates and will help you with computer maintenance down the road.

Virus Scanning
Viruses can affect every type of computer and running a virus scan routinely is one of the best ways to catch viruses early. Too many people wait until their computer starts acting wonky. There are many options out there when it comes to choosing your virus scanning software. Some of the most popular ones are Symantec and McAfee, but there are many options out there. Just make sure you update your virus scanning software to ensure it is up to date on the latest viruses out there.

Updating Your Browser
Can you tell the theme of this post is updating your software? Browsers need updating too. With the amount of work done in a web browser these days making sure you have the most up to date version of your browser ready to go can

Image representing Google Chrome as depicted i... — Image via CrunchBase

help you make sure you have the most recent features to make your life easier while working in the cloud. Each browser is updated in a different way and their updates can sometimes be included in your operating system updates. However, if you use Chrome or Firefox you can set it up for automatic updates so you don’t need to worry about checking all of the time.

Dust it off
This one sounds a little strange, but at a former place of employment it was a regular part of our computer maintenance routine. Computers can suck in a lot of dust which can overheat them, making it harder for them to work properly. You can prevent this from happening by dusting off you computer from time to time. If you really want to get adventurous, open it up (if you have a desktop computer or are allowed to do so) and use a can of pressurized air to blow all of the dust inside the computer away. If you decide to do this, please turn off the computer before opening it up and make sure you contact IT to let them know that this is something you plan on doing. I don’t want to get you violating any technology polices, but dusting your computer can be one of the easiest ways to improve performance and it’s not too hard to do. If you can’t do it yourself, ask your IT department about doing this for you.

Back Up
I’ve talked about the importance of backing up your data before on DonorDreams, but I cannot stress it enough. If you can, set up your computer to back things up automatically so you don’t forget to do it.

Turn It Off and Turn it Back On Again
It’s super simple, but one of the best tips when it comes to computer maintenance. I am someone who leaves my computer on all of the time, but when things start running a bit sluggish, I restart it and it’s back to normal.

I hope these tips for improving the performance of your computer were helpful. What are some of your favorite ways to keep your computer running smoothly? Leave me a note in the comments below.

What non-profits can learn from the Olympics: A lesson in social media

August 6, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of the Olympics. It is a chance for me to see sports that I don’t normally have an opportunity to watch. For instance, have you seen handball?!!? That stuff is crazy!

Sports watching aside, the London 2012 Games have been a little different from the Olympiads before them. They are the most “social” games that we’ve ever experienced. I thought today, since we are smack dab in the middle of The Games, we could take a look at how social media has made an impact and what non-profits can take away from it.

Censorship

Last week, reporter Guy Adam’s Twitter account, was taken down. This was shocking to hear because Twitter has been social media’s liberation network. Twitter is supportive of free speech . . . just look at their public positions on WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring movement. When reporter Guy Adams tweeted criticism of NBC’s coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, Twitter responded by shutting down his account. After media coverage of this censorship, Adams’ account was reactivated.

What can non-profits take away from this?

Just because social media is, in most cases, a free service and covered under the First Amendment, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Twitter, Facebook, et al, are still corporations. They can still regulate your account without your knowledge. As a result, I recommend that all non-profit organizations have their own websites and not solely rely on social media. After all, social media is only one tool that you should use to drive people to your website and share their message with the world.

Rants

People will talk. There’s no doubt about that.

However, there are times when people are not only representations of themselves, but they are also representing an organization and something larger than just themselves. So, when USA Women’s Soccer Team member, Hope Solo, tweeted her disdain for the commentary that was being given during her games, her coaches and captains called her in for a meeting. She wasn’t suspended, but since the meeting, her tweets have had a different tone to them.

Similarly, athletes have been suspended from participating in the The Olympic Games due to racist tweets they published.

What is the lesson in all of this for non-profit organizations? The need for a social media policy is stronger than ever.

What is the lesson in all of this for non-profit professionals? Employees and volunteers need to understand what restrictions might exist when it comes to sharing things on their personal accounts as it pertains to your organization.

Finally, this all begs one simple question: “How does your organization know who is saying what about you online?”

I believe that someone at your organization should be assigned the responsibility of monitoring what (if anything) is being said about your organization on the internet. Please don’t misunderstand . . . I’m not suggesting that you break any privacy laws here, but if an employee has a public twitter account, it can be seen by anyone.

One way to set up something without being as much of a stalker is to set up a Google Alert to notify you when the name of your organization or a key word attached your mission is mentioned on the internet.

Share Your Successes

The Olympics are all about results. Who ran the race the fastest? Which country has the most gold medals? Athletes, teams, and news networks constantly updating their feeds with success stories.

People like good news. Non-profit organizations should share their successes, big or small, with their online communities.

Did you recently make a purchase that will improve the work that you do? Tell people about it. Were you recently awarded a grant that will make an impact on furthering your mission? Scream it from the mountaintops of cyberspace.

People will “like” the good news on Facebook and retweet the news on Twitter. This can gain you new followers and supporters.

We still have about a week left of Olympic coverage, and new stories regarding social media are bound to pop up. I encourage you to keep your eyes open and see what happens. After all, in its most basic form, The Olympics are simply one big special event that is runs by an organization. Non-profits run special events, too. What social media stories have caught your eye recently? I’d love to talk about them in the comment section below!

Why Nonprofits Should Use Skype

July 30, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, Uncategorized

Communication has come a long way since quill and parchment. Today information is sent through the air at high speeds and people can get what they need in a matter of seconds. Email is a standard in today’s communication arsenal, but today I’m going talk about voice calls. Talking is still faster than writing and today we are going to look at how Skype can help when it comes to communicating through voice.

Image representing Skype as depicted in CrunchBase — Image via CrunchBase

Skype is a powerful tool that can be a great benefit to any nonprofit organization. Skype can be used to make voice or video calls to people in your contact list. I know what you might be thinking, “we already have phones for this, Marissa”, but allow me to show you the flexibility of using Skype for calls.

Calls (voice or video) to users in your contact list who are also using Skype are free. That’s right, FREE. This can add up to big cell phone savings. How many times do you send an email knowing it’s going to take longer than you’d like to get the information you need just because everyone has a ton of email to go through? If everyone in your organization was on Skype if a person had a question, they could just Skype call them and get the information in a matter of seconds. Skype calls can be answered no matter where the person is logged in from, if that’s home, a cafe, or the cubicle next door.

By adding money to your Skype account, phone calls can be made to landlines. This is a nice feature to have if a person on your team is even found in a place with a wifi signal but no cell phone reception. Additionally, by adding money to your Skype account, you can make international calls at lower rates than you would if you used a landline phone.

Skype also allows users to attach a single phone number to their account to make it easy for calls, whether made from Skype or a landline, to be answered from anywhere. With a mobile app, Skype users are able to answer voice and video calls on the go.

Skype also comes with voicemail functionality. This can be a great tool for agencies. By simply creating an account with phone number attached to it, messages left in this voicemail box can be accessed by anyone who has access to the account; making returning calls a team effort.

One more feature of using Skype for voice calls is the ability to record phone calls. If your agency is having an important conference call, it can be easily recorded through Skype. This recording could the be posted for absent team members to listen to when they are available.

There is much more to Skype besides just making voice and video calls that can be helpful for your organization. When in a video call on Skype users have the ability to share their screens with people on the call. This feature could come in handy for Board Meetings being held online if not all of the Board Members could make it. Skype also comes with an instant messaging service that allows you to send quick messages to people in your contact list when a call is not needed. Through this chat system, documents can also be easily shared between team members.

Skype is a feature rich application that has a lot to offer a nonprofit organization. I have seen where using it has increased communication between team members just due to the pure flexibility that comes along with it. Do you think Skype is a good fit for your agency? Do you already use Skype? If so, what do you use it for the most? Let talk about it in the comments below!

How to Keep Social Media Updated While on Vacation

July 23, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

Vacation season is well upon us so I thought in this post, I would focus on some applications that can help you keep the social media train running while you’re away.

In my mind, I see running social media as a customer service position. So it is important that while you are on vacation your community doesn’t feel left behind. Planning out your posts is an important step to make sure that your social media plan doesn’t skip a beat. There are many templates out there that can help you lay out what you are going to post and to which network. It is important that this plan is a detailed as possible and shared with a teammate who might be looking over your social media sites while you’re away.

After you’ve planned everything out you can actually schedule your posts to be posted in the future. This can be done in a couple of ways. First, Facebook recently added scheduling functionality. When you are typing a status update on your organization’s page, you will see a clock in the bottom left corner of the box in which you are typing. Upon clicking on it you will be able to assign a time that you’d like this post to be published. All posts are then accessible through the Activity Log in the page’s admin panel.

Third party applications can also help with the scheduling of posts on Twitter. The most popular application is Hootsuite. Hootsuite can also schedule facebook posts, so it might be the all-in-one solution for your and your team. Other social media sites such as Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+ do not seem to have scheduling functionality at this time. It will be important for you to leave your plan with someone who will have access to updating your sites while you are out of the office.

In addition, if your organization runs a blog, you can have those posts either waiting as drafts to be published or scheduled to be posted using your blog management software. That way, the blog doesn’t look like it has skipped a beat in your absence.

Even though you have taken the time before your vacation to schedule the posts to be published, I would recommend that someone still look over those posts and have the ability to cancel their publication if needed. Part of having a strong social media presence online is being current and sometimes something happens that needs to be posted over a post that you planned out a week ago. If you can, avoid sharing log in information with your team member and either make them an administrator on that site or set them up using a third party application such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck or Sprout Social.

Outside of planning social media posts, make sure you have your email covered as well. Don’t forget to activate an out of office message to be sent when you get an email while you are on vacation. Don’t forget to give people a place to go if the need an issue attended to in an urgent manner and let them know when they can expect to hear back from you. Out of office messages are able to be set up in both Gmail and Outlook and other email programs.

If your company uses gmail for their email service there is one plug-in that can help you send emails while away from your desk. The service is called Boomerang and using it allows you to schedule emails to be sent in the future. This could be helpful service if need to send a reminder to your team while you are on vacation.

Planning to go on vacation can be stressful. This is specially true when you work with social media because being connected is part of the job. I hope these tools can help ease some of that stress. What tools to you use when planning for vacation? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Which blogging platform is right for your non-profit organization?

July 16, 2012 DonorDreams Mondays with Marissa, technology

We all know that having a website is an important part of any social media strategy, but along with that comes having a blog. Many times these are the same thing, and the blog serves as the main content on the site. Other times, a blog is a supplemental part of a site. Either way, finding the platform that is best for you and your organization is key to blogging success.

Some questions to ask yourself before setting up your blog:

Who will be blogging? Will this be a solo or group project? Different platforms allow multiple authors, which is important to keep in mind. Also, I recommend making one person in charge of editing and layout, which means that person needs to be more knowledgeable on how to make changes.
What type of content will you share on the blog? Will it primarily be text, photos, videos, or a combination of all three? You might find after looking at different options that one is more suited to your content.
Will the blog serve as your main site or will it supplement your current site? Either way, you need to choose an option that works with you current website, brand and logo.

After thinking though a few of these questions, now the actual research can start on which blog platform is best for you.

WordPress

WordPress is a very popular free blogging platform that powers many of the sites you visit today – this one included. WordPress’ claim to fame is that they make it super easy to get a blog up and running and offer many plug-ins to make the site customizable.

There are two versions of WordPress — WordPress.com and WordPress.org. One might work better for you based on the needs of the blog.

WordPress.com allows you to create a free blog on WordPress’ servers. You get most of the features behind the WordPress platform without having to install it on your own server. While you never have to worry about updating software, your blog might have a domain ending in “WordPress.com”. It is also a social network that people use to follow and read all of the blogs to which they subscribe.

WordPress.org is the full featured free WordPress suite hosted on your own server. It is widely popular due to its ease of use and because it is free. It is easy to use for novice web designers, and it becomes more powerful as the user develops a familiarity with plug-ins or basic html.

There are a plethora of resources out there to build your site using WordPress. A simple google search will lead you in the right direction.

Squarespace

If you want a super easy to build professional looking blog, look no further than Squarespace. Squarespace is not free, but in my opinion it is worth the money. Depending on the plan you choose, you will be given web space, a domain, and an easy to use interface that allows you to customize your site through the simple act of “dragging and dropping”. This provider makes it easy to build a site that doesn’t look like created by a cookie cutter template approach. They also offer the ability to edit code if needed.

Other Options

There are a few other options out there. Tumblr is a social network built around blogging. The audience at Tumblr is on the younger side, but if that’s what you are looking for, it just might be the right place for your organization to share content.

Blogger is Google’s free blogging service and has been around for a long time. It is well-known as a starting place for new bloggers.

Finally, you can always code your own site. However, if you are going to do that, I always think it is best to consult with a professional.

I hope this post got you thinking about which blogging platform is right for your organization. If you currently have a blog, I’d love to hear the pros and cons of the system you are using. Also, if you have any questions on blogging services, I’d be more than happy to answer them using the comment section below!

Two Things You Can Do to Make Your Photos Look Awesome

July 9, 2012 DonorDreams Mondays with Marissa, technology

They say that a photo is worth a thousand words. When it comes to adding photos to your blog posts or posting photos to social networks, why not make your photos look the best they possibly can?

I know what you might be thinking – Marissa, I am not a professional photographer, nor do we have the budget to hire one. Well, today I’m here to show you a few things you can do to make sure you are putting your best photo foot forward.

Take Photos of Everything
I cannot stress this enough. If there is an event going on, photos need to be taken. Thanks to digital photography there is no limit as to how photos you can take so snap away. When it comes to photos, the more options you have the better. Even if you don’t use these photos to showcase this specific event, you might be able to use a photo take at that time for something else.

Don’t forget to make sure you have the permission to take photos of people you are photographing.

Also, if you don’t have someone on staff that is available to take photos, put out a call for volunteers. There might be a local up-and-coming photographer who could lend her talents to help out your organization.

Cropping

A picture cropped without and with the rule of... — A picture cropped without and with the rule of thirds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After you’ve sorted through all of the photos and picked the ones you want to use chances are there is some editing that will need to happen. One of the easiest ways to take a less than awesome photo and make it a dynamic addition to your post, is to crop it. This is a feature you will find in most photo editing programs.

When cropping it is important to keep in mind the goal of your photo. What do you want the audience to focus on? Sometimes you might have a great shot of a lot of people at an event but 70% of that photo might be taken up by the ceiling in the room. By cropping out some of the ceiling the viewer’s focus is shifted to the people instead of the size of the room.

Also, you can crop images to follow one of photography’s golden rules: The Rule of Thirds. The basics are this, if the object of your photo is lined up along an imaginary tic-tac-toe grid, your photo will be visually interesting. Even if the original photo didn’t follow the Rule of Thirds, by cropping something out, you can change that.

Color Correction
There’s a lot that a person can do to change the color tone of a photo, but I won’t go in to all of the details here. I just want to focus on a quick color correction trick that can make your photos look the best they can. Many photo programs have an auto correct feature that automatically changes the saturation, contrast, brightness and exposure of your photos. This feature can become your best friend because most of the time it is one click that can save your photo. I will say that sometimes it doesn’t make your photo look its best, but in those cases you can go in and adjust each of those elements individually or just use the photo without any color correction.

Correcting the color of your photos can really make an impact. Many times it makes the photo look more realistic.

Photo Editing Programs
To crop and correct color you do not need to spend thousands of dollars on photo editing software. Most times your computer already comes with the software to do it. iPhoto on Macs is a dynamic program that organizes your photos as well and has an editing suite to help you make your photos look their best. Depending on the version of Windows you are using, Microsoft has basic photo editing tools also built in to their operating system to help you along.

If you are looking for a fully featured photo editor like Photoshop, but without the price tag, there is GIMP. GIMP is a free program with most of the features of a high powered editing program. Also, if you upload your photos to Google+, they have a pretty great editor built into the photo section of their site that is free to use as well.

Photos can make a big impact on your web content. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to make your photos look like they were shot by a pro. Just by cropping and correcting the color the photos on your site can look like a million bucks.

Do you have any photo editing tips you’d like to share? What photo program works best for you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Don’t Forget to Backup!

July 2, 2012 DonorDreams Mondays with Marissa, technology

As I write this, the house I live in is currently without power and will probably be without power for quite some time. Upon hearing this news, the first thought that went through my head was, “Oh, I hope my computer was turned off.” I had documents and projects at various stages open, which got me thinking that I should probably have a better backup system than the one I currently have.

Everyone knows that backing up your data is important,; but how many of us actually do it? Today, we are going to look at a few options to help you set up a backup system that will work best for your non-profit organization.

For the purpose of this post, I will be focusing on how to backup one single computer. However, based on the size of your organization, you might have a need to backup a server or several computers at once. Please talk to your IT Department about possible solutions in situations like these. If you’re too small to have such a department, then consult with a volunteer with a technology background.

First things first . . . remember that data is sensitive and the first step down this road is deciding what needs to be backed up and when. Additionally, you might not be able to save all of the data that you want, and there might be some data that only needs to be saved for a certain amount of time.

A basic backup plan usually entails having a local copy of your data as well as a copy that is stored somewhere offsite. Of course, the reason for offsite storage is to protect you against loss of data due to a disaster such as fire, tornado and any other “act of God”. Additionally, both of these backups should be done on a consistent basis. The easiest way to make sure this happens is to hook up an external hard drive to your computer and use the “backup functionality” that you will find in both your Windows and OS X Operating Systems.

In Windows, you can find the backup function in the System and Maintenance section of Control Panel.

For OS X users, Time Machine (found in System Preferences) can help you set the schedule for data backup.

There are also some solutions for saving your data in “the cloud”. This can be a great help because users don’t have to worry about owning an external drive, and your data will be able to be accessed from anywhere.

Using a system such as Carbonite, can help you back up your data without having to think about it. You simply schedule your backup and data is uploaded to the cloud as you go about your day-to-day tasks. It’s that easy. Also, cloud backup sites can be quite cost-effective as they usually do not cost much. There are a few other services that you may want to check into such as Sugar Sync and Mozy.

There are a few things you can do to help prevent disaster when it comes to backing up data.

Save your document often. Get in the habit of saving your document after every paragraph or major change. This will ensure that the most recent version is available if your computer crashes.
Plug your computer into a surge proctor with battery backup. This gives your computer a little extra power if the power goes out. It also gives you a little more time to close your documents and turn off your computer properly.
Start using cloud based services where possible. Cloud applications usually save projects automatically, and you won’t have to worry so much about having access to data when power is not available.

I hope this post has you thinking about the best way to save data for your non-profit organization. Once set up, data backup is one of the most automatic forms of maintenance you can do for your computer.

What’s your data backup policy? Or have you fallen victim to a computer crash and had a backup to save the day? I’d love to hear your stories in the comment section!