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…
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…
Keeping on top of the ever-changing licensing needs of your organisation can be a demanding job. Now, more than ever, it’s critical to ensure your Microsoft license estate is lean, optimised, and as cost effective as possible. As Microsoft partners and non-profit specialists, we are qualified Direct Cloud Solution Partners (CSP) who can help you navigate…
Since its arrival in November last year, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. This powerful new chatbot with seemingly endless possibilities took 3 months to reach 100 million users; Facebook took 4 years to reach the same milestone! Microsoft is leveraging some of this technology to introduce AI into Microsoft 365 this year –…
Welcome to the Smartdesc March newsletter. Lots of organisations are asking us about how they can move their telephony into Microsoft Teams and refresh their internet connectivity ahead of the traditional phone network switch off in 2025, so we’ve compiled the following resources for you: A non-technical guide on how to move telephony into Teams, and…
Welcome to the Smartdesc January newsletter. We are NCVO-approved IT experts specialising in the charity sector, enabling nonprofits to achieve more with technology and modern ways of working. This month we focus on how charities can be more cyber secure and offer the following resources: A framework on how to prepare should you ever experience…
Welcome to the Smartdesc December newsletter. We are NCVO-approved IT experts specialising in the charity sector, enabling nonprofits to achieve more with technology and modern ways of working. This month we focus on how charities can simplify and consolidate their IT infrastructure, reduce costs and use technology to enable better hybrid working. We recently migrated the national…
Challenge The 2022 Charity Digital Skills Report underlined the significant increase in adoption of cloud services that the nonprofit sector has seen in the last 2 years. As a result of the pandemic, 82% of charities see digital as a much greater priority, and 83% have begun offering new online services during this period. This…
According to our partners at the NCVO, charities are at the front line of the cost of living crisis. Supporters are reducing their giving as they control their personal finances, whilst demand for charitable services goes up and inflation increases the costs of running those services. The NCVO are offering support and resources to their…
Optimising Microsoft 365 for nonprofits The last 6 months have been a time of fantastic innovation and lateral thinking around Digital; people have worked extremely hard to keep operations running in the face of adversity. Charities reacted very quickly in March and, as offices were abandoned in apocalyptic style, many ended up dumping data onto…
