A guide to help you understand what the Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE) is, how it affects the licenses you buy, and the benefits of moving to NCE from an Enterprise Agreement (EA). If you are a nonprofit organisation that uses Microsoft 365, you may have heard of the New Commerce Experience (NCE) that Microsoft…
Adopting a hybrid model of in-house and outsourced IT allows charities to address challenges with resourcing, removes significant HR overheads, accelerates IT strategy, and mitigates against staff frustration with IT support caused by unplanned absence and changing priorities. In this blog, we explain what co-managed support is, the benefits, and how to ensure you can…
Over 600 charities responded to this year’s Charity Digital Skills Report. The headline is that it has been “a year when tech use across the sector has evolved, yet overall digital progress remains static”. Leadership teams are listening. 80% of charities now view digital as an organisational priority. However, moving this priority into execution is a…
With the flurry of recent news on cyber attacks, we provide a short summary of the big stories, and what areas charities can look at to address similar threats. Recent news stories Synnovis CEO confirms ransomware attack at London hospitals Reports suggest this was a traditional ransomware attack on a key supplier, Synnovis, within the…
Email communication, while convenient, often becomes the Achilles’ heel of data privacy. The misuse of ‘Carbon Copy’ (CC) and ‘Blind Carbon Copy’ (BCC) features in emails is a common cause of unintended data breaches. So, should we use CC, BCC, or neither? Let’s explore further. The Pitfalls of CC and BCC CC is a way to…
We are excited to publish our Charity Technology Leaders Report 2024. From January to March 2024, we conducted our second annual survey of charity technology leaders to understand the sector’s priorities, risks, challenges and opportunities around IT. The report summarises the key findings for charity IT leaders, draws out the main themes and trends, and…
As of February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders (e.g. marketing mass emails using tools like Mailchimp) to have a DMARC policy in their website domain. Emails must pass DMARC alignment and meet various standards. This change is aimed at improving email security and reducing spam, as per this guide. For charities, this means…
In the rapidly evolving landscape of telecommunications, there is a crucial date that charities should be aware of: the switch-off of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) in December 2025. This transition will mark a significant milestone in the journey towards fully digital communication infrastructures. After this date, all traditional copper phone lines will cease…
In 2023, the UK government published two reports that were important for the nonprofit sector – the NCSC’s Cyber Threat Report: UK Charity Sector, and the Cyber Security Breaches Survey. These reports share common themes around the importance of authentication, security updates, updating firewalls, and crucially, Cyber Essentials as a useful framework to help protect your…
As part of our commitment to the local and global environment, Smartdesc have been working in partnership with World Land Trust (WLT) to offset our unavoidable carbon emissions. We are proud to announce that we have been awarded their Carbon Balanced Certificate. So, what does this mean? Using the Carbon Calculator created by WLT, we…
