Are you worried?

In part 1, Nura and Carolyn covered introductions, policies, and resources on three main categories you may be worried about - cyber, data, and staff safety. In part 2, they go over budgeting for IT when your budget may be up in the air, what to move into the "nice to have" and what needs to stay in the "must have" column, resources on how to stay mentally healthy under stress, and how to make a plan to move you and your nonprofit forward with confidence in your priorities.

Where does your IT fit into this new world? Is your IT strategy flexible, and have you revisited your IT planning, performance, and policies? As you examine your finances, what IT is essential and where can you afford to pare back without hurting your productivity and morale? Do you have some smart savings opportunities lurking in your IT budget that could help your organization in this moment? Is your cybersecurity up to date and do your staff know how to protect your organization and data? Perhaps most importantly, how are your staff coping with all this stress?

What are the top steps to take NOW to adapt your IT quickly to the new nonprofit sector reality?

Join Senior Consultant Nuradeen Aboki who answers your questions about priorities, strategy, and next steps. Nura has been in nonprofit IT for decades and has enormous experience helping our clients’ executives strategize priorities and cut through the noise to the essentials. This is a perfect opportunity to get guidance and reassurance.

The current situation for the nonprofit sector is highly changeable and changing fast. Every day there’s a new worry turning up around your mission, your funding, and your future.

What you are doing matters. Don’t burnout with worry but don’t leave your organization vulnerable either.

Learn what Nura recommends and leave with a plan for your next few months and the resources to help you sort out your nonprofit IT essentials for these challenging times.

As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

Are you worried?

The current situation for the nonprofit sector is highly changeable and changing fast. Every day there’s a new worry turning up around your mission, your funding, and your future.

Where does your IT fit into this new world? Is your IT strategy flexible, and have you revisited your IT planning, performance, and policies? As you examine your finances, what IT is essential and where can you afford to pare back without hurting your productivity and morale? Do you have some smart savings opportunities lurking in your IT budget that could help your organization in this moment? Is your cybersecurity up to date and do your staff know how to protect your organization and data? Perhaps most importantly, how are your staff coping with all this stress?

What are the top steps to take NOW to adapt your IT quickly to the new nonprofit sector reality?

Join Senior Consultant Nuradeen Aboki who answers your questions about priorities, strategy, and next steps. Nura has been in nonprofit IT for decades and has enormous experience helping our clients’ executives strategize priorities and cut through the noise to the essentials. This is a perfect opportunity to get guidance and reassurance.

In part 1, Nura and Carolyn cover introductions, policies, and resources on three main categories you may be worried about - cyber, data, and staff safety. In part 2, they go over budgeting for IT when your budget may be up in the air, what to move into the "nice to have" and what needs to stay in the "must have" column, resources on how to stay mentally healthy under stress, and how to make a plan to move you and your nonprofit forward with confidence in your priorities.

What you are doing matters. Don’t burnout with worry but don’t leave your organization vulnerable either.

Learn what Nura recommends and leave with a plan for your next few months and the resources to help you sort out your nonprofit IT essentials for these challenging times.

As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

A week in the life of the On Site Support Team - what do they do?

We’re inordinately proud of our On Site Support Team (OSST), who work with clients who need IT help in person, particularly at the nonprofit schools we serve in the DC area.

So many of us work remotely - but many nonprofits do work that can't be remote, and many of them need IT support at the office or workplace. For those clients, Community IT is proud to employ a team of customer service professionals that travel on site to keep IT running smoothly and answer questions in person.

In fact, all our On Site Support Team members have achieved HDI Customer Service Certifications.

Listen to this presentation, meet our team, and learn about a typical week filled with teamwork, expertise, partnerships with our clients, and love of helping people that goes into providing excellent IT support service.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

New auditing requirements SAS145 require nonprofit auditors to consider IT risks in addition to financial risks and mitigation. Learn from Darren Hulem, cybersecurity guru and senior manager in risk advisory at GRF CPAs and Advisors on the new requirements and how they may impact cybersecurity at your nonprofit.

Darren also explores and describes other cybersecurity threats that are targeting nonprofits, and best practices to defend against them. Darren is a certified ethical hacker and certified information systems auditor.

SAS145 is a statement on accounting standards that provides guidelines on a more holistic view of your risks and defenses that includes IT risks. This is a welcome move since for a decade at least IT risks have been growing in impact on financial crimes targeting nonprofits such as phishing email initiated wire fraud, account compromise, spoofing, and other financial compromises and crimes.

Darren provides an overview of the types of risks he sees at nonprofits and some simple steps organizations can take to vastly decrease those risks.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

Media expert and self-taught "AI Evangelist" Brenda Foster spoke to Carolyn about ways to help nonprofit staff explore and begin using AI tools to work smarter, calling AI your new assistant.

In addition to serving as Vanguard Communications’ Chief of Innovation, she is a communications researcher and strategic planner who has shaped direction and messaging for numerous successful national nonprofit and government campaigns. A former broadcast journalist, Brenda is a sought-after producer and speech, script and media writer for clients and spokespeople that include celebrities, CEOs, farmers, caregivers, advocates and youth.

Have you been dabbling in AI but don't really know what to try next? Are you worried about the impact of AI tools on your nonprofit but don't really know what questions to ask? Concerned about security? Have you set up your AI Acceptable Use policy yet?

Brenda walks through these considerations and more, while firmly coming down on the side of enabling your staff - no matter your general tech-savviness - to learn to use the AI tools you want and feel comfortable with, to achieve your mission and decrease the "busy work."

Listen for Brenda's "Five Questions to Ask" mid-episode, which distill her experience adopting AI tools at Vanguard and with their clients into questions to use to inform your philosophy, policies, training, and expectations around AI.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

2025 Nonprofit Cybersecurity Incident Report: Keeping Your Nonprofit Secure

Community IT CTO and cybersecurity expert Matt Eshleman delivered our annual report on trend lines and took questions live and online in this popular annual webinar.

In part 1, Matt discusses the landscape and background of cybersecurity attacks nonprofits face now, goes over the lingo and acronyms, and introduces new trends in attacks and protections. In part 2, Matt discusses the data from 2024 and takes questions.

Is your nonprofit prepared?

Drawn from anonymized data from the calendar year 2024 of cybersecurity incidents across end users in hundreds of our small and mid-sized nonprofit clients, this report shows changes in attacks and emerging threats.

Using this real and timely data, Matt walks through recommendations and outlines the practical steps your organization can take to prevent the most frequent attacks.

He covers new threats and training best practices for your nonprofit staff around evolving cybersecurity issues, including a spike in online and in-person harassment, wire fraud, AI-enabled scams, smishing and vishing, adversary-in-the-middle MFA attacks, and other new and disturbing trends.

You may also be interested in downloading the free Cybersecurity Readiness for Nonprofits Playbook to review a framework for focusing on your cybersecurity fundamentals, or using any of our free cybersecurity webinars and podcasts to learn more about specific protections you can take.

As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.

Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

2025 Nonprofit Cybersecurity Incident Report: Keeping Your Nonprofit Secure

Community IT CTO and cybersecurity expert Matt Eshleman delivered our annual report on trend lines and took questions live and online in this popular annual webinar.

In part 1, Matt discusses the landscape and background of cybersecurity attacks nonprofits face now, goes over the lingo and acronyms, and introduces new trends in attacks and protections. In part 2, Matt discusses the data from 2024 and takes questions.

Is your nonprofit prepared?

Drawn from anonymized data from the calendar year 2024 of cybersecurity incidents across end users in hundreds of our small and mid-sized nonprofit clients, this report shows changes in attacks and emerging threats.

Using this real and timely data, Matt walks through recommendations and outlines the practical steps your organization can take to prevent the most frequent attacks.

He covers new threats and training best practices for your nonprofit staff around evolving cybersecurity issues, including a spike in online and in-person harassment, wire fraud, AI-enabled scams, smishing and vishing, adversary-in-the-middle MFA attacks, and other new and disturbing trends.

You may also be interested in downloading the free Cybersecurity Readiness for Nonprofits Playbook to review a framework for focusing on your cybersecurity fundamentals, or using any of our free cybersecurity webinars and podcasts to learn more about specific protections you can take.

As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.

Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.

In today’s interview, Carolyn talks with Tiff Parker, an IT Business Manager at Community IT. They talk about her background, how she got into a technology career, and what brought her to Community IT in this role. Tiff reflects on her early interest in GIS Geo Information Systems mapping, her years as an “accidental techie” at a nonprofit with increasingly senior roles and responsibilities as she gained experience and expertise managing nonprofit IT, and her move from nonprofit IT Director to her role now providing technical and strategic guidance to multiple clients.

The Community IT ITBM service provides an outsourced IT manager to clients at a reduced cost to hiring and having an IT manager on staff. These managers are a resource dedicated to matching technology solutions to clients’ business needs. To do this well requires an ongoing conversation with the client to continually understand their business needs, and then effective communication with client staff and leadership about the ways specific technology solutions can meet those business needs and how to budget for technology.

The ITBM makes recommendations on IT investments, training programs, maintenance, and licenses. They help the client be forward-looking, and act as a vendor-agnostic, trusted advisor with deep knowledge of the nonprofit IT software and platforms available. Because Community IT works in partnership with clients to manage long-term IT needs, the ITBM relationship with the client makes them a true asset.

Tiff Parker joined Community IT Innovators as an IT Business Manager (ITBM) in October 2023. She brings over 17 years of experience working in nonprofit technology.

As an ITBM, she guides clients through implementation of effective technology investments and utilizing efficient IT services in direct support of their missions. She also assists clients with long-term planning, budgeting, and strategic goals.

Prior to coming to Community IT, Tiff was the IT Director for an environmental nonprofit where she was responsible for the overall vision, planning, implementation, management and support of their various information systems, data, policies, and processes.

Tiff graduated from Virginia Tech in 2007. She holds the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals MS 900 certification.

_______________________________
Start a conversation :)

• Register to attend a webinar in real time, and find all past transcripts at https://communityit.com/webinars/
• email Carolyn at cwoodard@communityit.com
• on LinkedIn

Thanks for listening.