New Bauble: Google for Nonprofits

Last weekend I discovered that Google has a a program to provide many of their premium services for "free" to nonprofit organizations. Well, Toastmasters is a nonprofit organization, an official 501(c)(3) in the United States, so I decided to see what I could do. Turns out, all I needed was my club's Employer Identification Number (EIN) and the official street address as filed on our 990N form. I plugged in the info and went running.

It all began this past Sunday night with the Google for Nonprofits page. To join I had to first be logged in with my own personal Google account, then I was provided the nonprofits application form where I entered the club's EIN number and I believe the name and address. At this point I was left to watch my status on the entry screen looking at the for confirmation. The hardest part was reading all the notices that I could be waiting weeks to months for approval, but in fact I had access early Monday morning. It turns out that while waiting for approval the 30-day trial for Google Apps for Education can be created and the account and services can be set up.

Next I had to set up an admin account for my club's domain. The club did not have a domain yet, so I chose one. Eventually I did have to shell out $12 for a one year registration because without it Google Mail accounts cannot be set up and Google Sites are not nearly so effective.

Once I had access to the Control Panel I was able to do a lot more of the configuration. I first wanted to make sure I migrated existing resources over to the new account, so I set up the admin account's Google Mail and reset the club's Twitter account and Blogger blogs to this account.

When I went to set up a Google+ page for the club, I ran across the most obnoxious of Google's policies. First, I could not set up a page for the club until the account had a Google+ page first. Then, I could not set up a Google+ page unless my account had a "real" name. I had no intention of using the personal Google+ page anyway, but I did have to go through a few contortions to reset the account's name to the organization name for Google Mail and other services. However, for Google+, I had to leave the visible name as my personal name. That's my only real rant here, though.

Then I created accounts within the domain for the officers, making sure to make the account names the office names. I envision these are primarily for use for Google Mail and Google Drive.

I set up the a YouTube account for the club and created the first playlists using videos from the club already online. Then I used Picassa to upload several pictures from the club, which actually was the Picassa program installed locally uploading pictures to Google+.

Next I explored what Google Sites provided. I must say I was not surprised but certainly happy to find templates for Toastmaster club sites already available. I chose one and then tailored the template to my specific club, replacing pictures with some of our own, putting up a video of our club president's inaugural address, adding our Twitter feed, including our calendar, our blog, and of course links to email our officers at their new Google Mail accounts.

I also set up a Google Group for the club, which I believe could function very effectively as an email list for the membership. I am still exploring how that will work.

Now that these are all set up, our existing toastmastersclubs.org web site can probably be completely replaced. There are pros and cons to this. On the pro side, all of the functionality of the toastmastersclubs.org site that we cared about is recreated and much of it enhanced. For example, all email will be archived, uploading and managing documents is MUCH easier, the web site looks much more professional and is FAR easier to manage and update. On the con side, the administration of the Google accounts will be a bit more complex, although compared to that awful administration GUI the toastmastersclubs.org site has, I do not personally consider this a con but that is also my software engineering experience displacing my objectivity.

Next steps, then, are to transition the web site and have our listing changed with Toastmasters International's web page and our District's web page. I need to make sure that Google does indeed approve our nonprofit status, plus I want to add more to the web site, archive documents, upload more videos and pictures, and educate the club officers and members. I do believe a speech is in order.

Communication, enhanced!


Want a peek? Here you go! More I'm sure is yet to come, and happy to hear suggestions!

Google Site: http://www.centralfloridafacilitators.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cff9958
Google+: https://plus.google.com/102542081545545421781
Blogger: http://centralfloridafacilitators.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/241930195386/