Google Apps for Non-Profits?

[cw4u]

Has anyone switched over their church staff to Google apps?

I'm just not very pleased with our current solution with our ISP. We run an exchange server on SBS, but it's a hassle to manage at times. We've had several hackers come in and send spam from our server. This is a headache in itself.

Then, like today, our ISP's email is down for an entire today. Something that is totally unacceptable to me.

Google just seems to be a better solution for a college student managing about 15 full time staff computers. haha.

[Donald V]

We switched to Google Apps last October and never looked back. It has been hassle free and easy to use. Everyone on staff uses the calendar and docs for collaboration and we even setup the resources as our rooms for room booking. Easy. And it is free for non-profits!

Donald

[wvpv]

i've helped a couple of churches get set up with google apps. i actually use it for my family. it's awesome.

Our church qualified for the beefed-up education edition, but i think they may have restricted it since then.

[cmchamp]

I just got our school set up last month. We had no unified email before, and the MS licenses to keep all staff current is too costly. All our students will get their own email accounts as well

[cw4u]

Well, I migrated most users over last night. I've still got a couple more to do. Domain is verified and I'm almost ready to make the "big switch".

I've also got the entire staff off of outlook. That'll save us licensing costs when we transition from Office 2003 and 2007 to OpenOffice.

Now, just to repurpose the exchange server to WSUS and see about the possibility of running ACS server side data on linux.

[Arlin]

Personally, I prefer gmail's web interface (I also install gmail notifier so I don't need a browser window open ALL the time).
To bad I cannot convince all the rest of our staff to use the web interface too (some, but not all).

[cw4u]

Well, we're kinda forcing ours to switch over. haha. But it's not as bad as it sounds because most only use email for just that, email. Only one or two use the calendar function in Outlook and I'm doing some 1-1 training with them tomorrow.

After anxiously waiting for our mail to bounce to Google for about two hours, it started coming in!!! I was a happy guy when it did.

The spam filtering is already working miracles. Somehow my brand new account (3 days old) already is receiving them but Google is blocking them just how I wanted.

I'll keep you guys posted on the transition.

[matt326]

Originally Posted by Donald V

We switched to Google Apps last October and never looked back. It has been hassle free and easy to use. Everyone on staff uses the calendar and docs for collaboration and we even setup the resources as our rooms for room booking. Easy. And it is free for non-profits!

Donald

Just wondering what app your using for your room bookings?

[cmchamp]

Changes since I last set up a non-profit in January.
The "Free" version now only provides 10 users.
The Under 3000 members non-profit is an extension of the Education version and requires an application process which I'm currently getting ready to begin for my church.
As for room bookings, "Locations" can be set up in conjunction with the Calendar so that when an event is scheduled, it can be assigned a room as a Location. Other than a spreadsheet, there is no App for that directly from Google. That doesn't mean that their App Marketplace doesn't have something available. I haven't looked.

[cw4u]

The biggest problem for us with the education upgrade was the non profit tax number. Somehow, we are listed under our statewide organization for non-profit status and not as an individual church. So our state organization had to send us the original determination letter from the IRS and I was able to send that to Google for them to work.

[bggowing]

Look up the LABS within gmail. There are a bunch of neat features that will help especially for Outlook users. You'll be able to set up nested labels for instance. You can also turn off conversational mode under the General Setting tab. That will keep the Outlook users from going bonkers as having to see threaded email conversations.

[Donald V]

Originally Posted by matt326

Just wondering what app your using for your room bookings?

I'm just using the resources part built in to the google calendar. As an admin, you can log into your dashboard and then go to the calendar settings. There is a resource tab and we just added all of our rooms, projectors and other things that people use.

We have a master calendar that is shared with the staff and they can add rooms to the events on the create event page. It works pretty well.

Donald