IT infrastructure is hard work for any organization. Having worked at a non-profit prior to coming to Google, I know that the combination of long-standing legacy systems and limited resources certainly doesn't make things any easier. Now that I'm member of the Google Apps team, I spend my time working on simple but powerful communication and collaboration tools for organizations.
Since we first launched it in August 2006, Google Apps has become one of our most flexible offerings. It's helping to meet the needs of family domains, businesses of all sizes, Internet Service Providers and universities. And starting last summer, we extended the Education Edition of Google Apps to registered 501(c)3s.
You may already be familiar with Google's standard suite of free hosted services, including private-label email, calendaring, and online-document sharing. But the Education Edition offers a number of value-added admin features at no additional cost, including e-mail migration tools, phone support for critical issues, and extensibility APIs. (Ads are also optional, in case you're curious.)
There's no need to take my word for it, though: check out our success stories from organizations that have already made the switch, including the Nonprofit Technology Network, Mercy Corps, Idealist.org, and the East Bay Community Recovery Project.
At the end of the day, enabling good works through Google Apps — in any capacity — both inspires and humbles us. We're excited to offer this worthy sector a low-investment, feature-rich IT choice. Find out more or apply for an account.