A Basic Guide on Cloud Computing for Charities

With the cloud offering opportunities and benefits to charities, newscaster Charity Digital look at the basic definition and explain how it could help your organisation.

With Businesses adopting or putting in place digital technology to create new or adapt existing products, services and operations, the digital transformation is changing the way organisations work across various industries.

But whilst there is growing news about organisations introducing new tech into their business like cloud computing, there are still some charities who are yet to make the move across.

With some charities already reporting improve progress, in areas such as donations and business productivity because of investing in technology; it suggests that if charities don’t try to make some kind of move to digital they risk being held back.

In The Cloud?
In its simplest terms, cloud computing refers to accessing and storing data, applications, and services over the internet, instead of using their computer's hard drive or a local server.

This would mean a charity doesn’t have to rely on expensive hardware anymore, or maintenance costs. Instead, they can access powerful tools and applications through a web browser or dedicated mobile app:

• As an example, Microsoft Office applications (like MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint) used to only be available offline. Now you can use them online through a web browser.
• Google offer a similar service, where users can, say, create a document that people can see online and collaborate on instead of writing a document that you save on your computer and then email to others.

With the cloud, you just need to sign into your cloud service to host your files and run your applications, and the files are managed remotely (AND securely) and can be available to all your staff that are given access to see it.

So, if you hear the term ‘in the cloud’, that normally means the resource or application is available on or through the internet. And with a growing number of companies starting to use this technology, there is a good chance a charity can benefit from moving some of their operations to the cloud.

But what does cloud computing mean for a charity, and could it really help them make a greater impact?

With references to Microsoft Office 365, their guide talks about the aspects of this technology and show how it can truly empower your organisation.

To read the guide, visit the Charity Digital website.