Volunteering Matters (VM) bring people together to overcome some of society’s most complex issues through the power of volunteering. They partner with communities to overcome adversity – tackling social isolation and loneliness, improving health, developing skills and opportunity and making sure young people can lead change. VM approached Smartdesc as they wanted to move away…
Missing People is the only charity in the UK which is dedicated to bringing missing children and adults back mtogether with their families. Missing People were looking for an external partner to review their approach to IT & Digital and establish a strategy aligned to the organisation’s ambitious five-year plan. Challenge Missing People required new…
The Hampden Group, a family-run company, over 40 years old, provides specialist insurance, investment and financial support services. It has grown to become the largest provider of Members’ Agency services in the Lloyd’s insurance market, managing in excess of £2.3 billion of client assets per year. Challenge With the organic growth of the company over…
Centre 404 is a charity that offers vital support services to people with learning disabilities, autism and their families across 7 London Boroughs. The charity brought Smartdesc on board to support and improve their IT estate. Challenge Centre 404 were using old, disjointed IT systems that needed overhauling and consolidating. This meant they were facing…
Situation Mind, the National Charity, were running an on-premise server estate, associated IT Infrastructure and end user hardware that was reaching the end of its life. They were also undertaking a large office move to a modern workplace, located within the Cancer Research UK Head Office in Stratford. They asked Smartdesc to seize this opportunity…
Challenge When Smartdesc first began working with Mind, the IT Infrastructure required investment, and a great deal of foundational work was carried out on the IT Strategy and Support, Governance and Digital Transformation and Change areas of the charity. The organisation had been experiencing an extremely fast period of growth, and Mind needed some expert…
Aspens provide support to children, young people and adults with a range of disabilities, complex needs and those on the autism spectrum. Following a large and complex merger, the new organisation needed an independent strategic review, audit and roadmap to develop a holistic IT strategy. The new charity wanted to ensure the organisation has a…
Terrence Higgins Trust is the UK’s leading HIV and sexual health charity. They support people living with HIV and help those using the services to achieve good sexual health. They are an organisation that pride themselves on placing the service user and their privacy first. Challenge Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) were already using the services…
Welcome to the Smartdesc October newsletter. This month we discuss how you can can strengthen your charity’s cyber security posture and offer the following resources: A blog on cyber security takeaways from our recent roundtable, and another on vulnerabilities you should be aware of Free Microsoft Cloud Security, Information Governance, and Cyber Security assessments The…
Last week we held our third Quarterly Charity Technology Roundtable, hosted by Microsoft Tech for Social Impact. In this blog, we summarise our discussion on cyber security, including risk management, BYOD, reducing risk of human error and systems gatekeeping. Compliance Frameworks, Risk Management, Reporting It is good practice to define the framework(s) or standard(s) that are…
