IT Security/ Robust Social Media Platform For Small Charity

[DRD]

I am involved with a tiny charity that only pays a part time cleaner/ care taker. Annual turnover is around 20k and we run at break even. As such we have historically used personal email accounts/ free/ low cost IT services like Facebook.

Is there a robust/ cost effective way that we can have a central e-mail account for our Treasurer, Facebook page, maybe a website, mobile phone ..... that "belongs" to the charity and is controlled by us so that

1. no one could change passwords when prompted by the system, but forget to tell the rest of us and then get hit by a bus leaving us in the lurch ?
2. no one individual can just go rogue and delete the accounts ?

Thank you


D

 

[DAFlippers]

Have you thought about Google Docs?

David

 

[Nutty]

Microsoft Office 365 offer free licences to Registered Charity, this includeds the use of Microsoft Exchange for email.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/enterprise/nonprofit-plans-and-pricing

 

[Fantazia2]

I think the issue here is you going to need a top level admin account/control panel to manage the email accounts to do what you want, but it still comes down to people having access to that who could end up doing the same things in a malicious sense, but having multiple admins would help with the hit by the bus scenario.

Does the charity have a registered domain name or are you just using things like @gmail.com or @outlook.com accounts, not sure if you would need this with google accounts or if you can invite them to be managed by another google account.

 

[DRD]

Thanks for responses. We don't have a domain name.

Most of our volunteers are 65 years plus so we need really simple, robust stuff. Even changing an old oven to a modern one with a digital control panel caused problems. The old school radiator thermostat was OK but installing an aircon unit was opening the gates of hell.

Somehow we need multiple admins so no single person can lock it all up/ delete everything either by error/ malice/ death etc.

 

[Fantazia2]

This might be a bit complicated for your users, but Im not aware of any other way you could do what you want based on my experience, someone else might know better though.

In gmail I believe you can delegate access to an your account from other gmail accounts, so you could have whatever the main email address is setup and have the login details stored somewhere but not used by anyone and then other users have their own login to gmail with their own password and then have delegated access to the charity mailbox so read/send email.

No idea if you can do the same with Microsoft/Outlook accounts.

 

[ChrisH]

I would suggest getting a domain name and using Microsoft365.
ChartityTechnologyExchange used to be the partner for M365 charity licencing.
You will need someone to do the initial setup, but it's not complex assuming email is all you need.
For the social side to do it properly I would look at using SingleSignOn via the M365 infrastructure.
If you have a couple of global admins then you are covered for everything other than malious deletions.
MFA on all accounts.

 

[Nutty]

Don`t mess with gmail etc.

Office 365 would be free, buy a domain e.g mycharity.org place it into Office 365 , use all Office 365 basic free licence for emails, all will be 50gb mailboxes with 2 Factor Auth everyone would have a @mycharity.org email address. You have a central admin in control of everything, passwords. username etc. A standard user cannot do much damage apart from messing with their own email.

I know money is tight but I would have a word with a local small IT company that deal with Office 365. They could be the global admin.

 

[Judderman]

I used to be chairman of an even smaller charity (with a similar age profile for most of the volunteers) & even we had a domain. All fell apart over lockdown.