Bridging the digital divide: How Softchoice empowers nonprofits

A lot of charities are just trying to keep the lights on. They don’t have resources for tech infrastructure and training. That’s where Softchoice’s Charity Accelerator Program comes in.  

In this episode of The Catalyst by Softchoice, host Heather Haskin dives into the transformative power of technology for small charities with Joseph Byer and Jill Crowley, co-chairs of Softchoice’s Charity Accelerator Program (CAP). 

Discover how this groundbreaking initiative helps nonprofits overcome technological challenges, from outdated systems to limited budgets, by offering tailored support and mentorship. 

Featuring: Jill Crowley and Joseph Byer, co-chairs of Softchoice’s Charity Accelerator Program 

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Catalyst by Soft Choice, a podcast about unleashing the full potential in people and technology. I'm your host, Heather Haskin. Small charities, despite their critical work in addressing inequality and building inclusive communities, often find themselves at a disadvantage in the digital age. They face challenges that larger organizations can better manage, like outdated infrastructure, limited budgets, and a lack of tech expertise. But what if the same powerful tools and expert guidance available to big businesses could be offered to these nonprofits free of charge? That's the transformative mission behind SoftChoice's Charity Accelerator program. It provides small charities with the technological support they need to advance their causes and thrive in an increasingly digital world. Today, I'm joined by the program's co chairs, Joseph Beyer and Jill Crowley. They're here to discuss how this program is providing small charities with the tools, expertise, and resources they need to thrive in a digital world. Joseph and Jill, welcome to The Catalyst. Thanks. Great to be here. Yeah, I'm actually really excited about this. I love to see that there's a lot of different roles that both of you have had at SoftChoice here and you have a great backstory and I'd really love to just get a brief understanding of that from both of you as well as what your current role is with the Charity Accelerator program here at SoftChoice. It's great to be here and we're so excited to talk about CAP, but I'm a senior leader in our professional services organization and I've been at SoftChoice for, it's going to be six years in February. I've held a couple different roles in both the engineering leadership team, and then most recently now I'm leading a team of project managers. And so that's been dynamic and exciting for the last six years, but three years ago, I did an assessment of my own personal career and my goals, and I decided that I really wanted to get more involved in SoftChoice's social impact activities. And at that point, Charity Accelerator program was just launching. So I volunteered to be part of the team, and I turned out being a committee member. Running the project enablement work stream, which is our people in our team that take from charity selection into the project delivery side. And just this past year, I stepped up to be co chair with Joe. That is so exciting. I love that. Joe, I'd love to hear some more about your background as well. Yeah, I've been with Softrace now for 17 years. Um, but yeah, many roles. Came into it like an operations role, did sales, been mostly in business development, as we call it, go to market. Uh, right now, currently I am the partner programs manager. So I make sure that integrates all of our very strategic partners and workplace cloud and security with our salespeople, make sure they show up the right time and give them the right enablement to help them. Talk the talk when it comes to tech. And I've been involved in things like this for many years now. I was originally involved in one soft choice, which is our employee resource group that brings all the other different affinity groups together and make sure we're all working towards common purpose around D, E, and I. So things like that. Leading women, uh, shades of orange pride or LGBTQ plus a committee working very closely with them, but making sure that we're on the boat together and working really strongly together. Then this opportunity came along to start off this charity accelerator program, and I got this off the ground with another co chair at a time and a very strong committee, including Jill and some great people. And it's been since 2020, I believe we really got it going 2021 probably. So we've had a few years of this program and it just keeps getting bigger and better. I love the diverse background between the two of you and the fact that what I'm hearing between both of those stories is that you volunteered and that's the awesome part of this whole program that I really love. You have day jobs, you're working at Softchoice, you're doing other things and you're putting aside time to dedicate towards these charities that need our support. I'd love to hear from both of you a question that we ask all of our guests, and that is what is your purpose statement? Yes, I've got mine. My purpose statement is to lead and coach people to solve problems through team collaboration so that we deliver excellence to our customers, make a positive impact inside and outside the business, and have fun together while we do it. Fun being the most important part. I love that you put it last. So we would remember that part the most. And Joe, what's your purpose statement? Oh, it's hard to top that. That's an excellent purpose, Jill. I love that one. Mine's a little bit more loosey goosey, I'll say, but I really strive to give space and support to as many marginalized people as possible. And to find ways to build empathy in others that can do the same. And I think tech can be a really great uniter between everyone. I love that build empathy in others. That's exciting because that's partly just the marketing side of what you said you have a background in, in that business development side and getting that word out. So getting the story out and letting people know that it's available is probably a big part of it. With that, it would be awesome to go through a charity accelerator program overview. I'd love to understand maybe what inspired SoftChoice and both of you to launch this initiative. And then we can dive into some of those challenges. Yeah, for sure. If you don't mind, I can start there because just seeing the culture at Soft Choice, it was a great incubator for something like Charity Accelerator Program to come along, which, you know, at the end of the day, it is skills based volunteering. That's what we're doing here. We are providing our skills of what our people do day to day and to help charities with that, do some digital transformation here. We've got a great history of, you know, giving back to the community. I go all the way back to even before my time here at Soft Choice, going back 20 years, 20 years. 2004, if you'll recall, the big tsunami in the Indian Ocean, you know, halfway around the world, there's this terrible tragedy that happened and our people couldn't just sit back and watch it happen. They had to figure out, how can we help? And so they did fundraisers and donations. This all happened organically, grassroots at Softchoice. People came together. Based in Toronto, a very diverse community of the employee group that probably had friends and family over there, but they came together, raised money, and that's really how things got started with Soft Choice Cares. So, Soft Choice Cares has been our way of giving back to the community for many years, for decades now, right? But yeah, it's a lot of the stuff that a lot of other companies can do as well. Going out to food banks, going out and helping the schools, taking volunteer hours, volunteer days. So, there's a really strong culture of that. But then on the other side, we've had a history with one of our strong partners, Cisco, in a program called Connected North. So Connected North was all about connecting the very rural fly in communities in northern Canada, mostly Indigenous communities, to make sure those schools can be connected so that they can get access to digital learning. So rather than having people fly in and all be able to give instruction and give courses and lessons there, they can actually tap into this whole vast resource of different teachers and educators that can help educate you. So I became Cisco. Cisco came to us and said, Hey, we'll provide the product. Can you provide the expertise and the actual installation? Which is what we do through our services. So, so that evolved along with our DE& I strategy. Like I mentioned, my role at One Soft Choice. Then someone came to me one day and said, well, Hey, we do this great volunteering stuff, and then we have this other project with Connected North. Is there something else we could do? Where's the next Connected North? How can we seek them out ourselves? So we put this committee together to figure out how do we find these charities, figure out what it is they need, and then treat them like a customer, essentially, and help them with digital transformation. And so that sprang up organically again, but with a very clear intent and purpose in mind, and you know, started the committee and opened it up to other like minded individuals that wanted to help make it happen. That's a really great overview. I love the perspective of starting from an event that happened and everyone coming together. And then we love this. Let's keep doing it. Let's keep doing it more. And now you said it's been 20 years. Amazing. I think that the big thing that inspired the actual Charity Accelerator program was just seeing the impact that Connected North initiative had. People actually working on a set mission, helping directly in that community. It just transformed the whole idea that like, what if we could take that and replicate it? That's the amazing thing that kept us. You know what? I just heard from that. It sounds like you have built a community and that that really does add culture and success and excitement and giving back empathy. All those emotions so inspiring as you've worked together and worked on this project for a long time. I'd love to hear what are some of the biggest challenges that these small charities face in terms of technology. Yes, what we've found in the last three years that we've been working directly under the cap umbrella is that these small charities really don't know much about technology. So their primary mission is supporting their marginalized communities or whatever their not for profit mission is, that's where their dollars and focus goes. So when they think of technology, they think of computers. Mice and a phone, maybe. So as we've worked with them, they don't even know where to start. They know that their setups aren't the greatest, but they do not know where to start to make it efficient at their charity. So that's been the best part of it is just figuring out how do we come in and say, you know, you could probably do this a little better and it just transforms how they work internally. I love that. And as I think about some of the customers I've worked with over the years, and remember when I come in contact with someone that is a non for profit, they typically don't have a budget for IT, which sounds counterintuitive, but it's necessary. So to have the ability and program to be able to find these charities and offer them something that can transform their business, it feels like an incredible thing to be a part of. Joe, anything to add on those challenges? Well, I'll echo what Jill said. They don't know what they don't know. They're going day to day. They're keeping the lights on. They may be using some platforms out there that one person signed up for, and then went and grabbed another platform to do a different thing, and they didn't realize that initial platform they have already does that. So, what they really need, and we're trying to provide here is, if nothing else, tech mentorship. Just guide them along the way. No one has these conversations with them because, well, let's be honest, You know, we're a company, we're out to make money, we're a profit driven business, so we want to go where the money is. And if, yeah, they don't have the budget necessarily, then, yeah, they don't get to have that conversation unless they reach out and make that effort. And tech might be scary to some people. If they're not already involved in tech, like things like all these passwords on everything and all these cloud based apps and now AI, there's so much potential in like properly setting up the right infrastructure. And it's just going to make their lives easier, they just got to take the time to do it and plan it and have a strategy. No one sits down and has that strategy talk with them. And then things change so fast. Like I mentioned, AI, that wasn't even a thing. Now charities are actually asking us, this might help us. We think, we don't know, but it just goes to show that things do change and you can't just set it and forget it. They can't just implement a solution. And that's specifically how we set up the Charity Accelerator program. We can't, we're not just going to come in, install something and say, Peace out, you're on your own. Want to make sure that it's something sustainable. They can take care of themselves and continue to get the mentorship and support after the fact. So this stuff has to be maintained just like any other area of the organization. So it sounds like we're dealing with not only budget issues, but maybe skills gaps as well. Someone in house that understands what they need, what they don't have, what's available, what might actually accelerate what they're doing. And then you mentioned also that ongoing support to be able to Not just put a Band Aid on it and leave all very important parts of the process and something we might not always think of any other challenges that we've seen in this program, just for soft choice, actually working with the not for profit charities. The pace is so different than working with our corporate customers, so we've all had to realize, like, they're there to support their mission. They're so thankful to work with us, but we need to work at the pace that they work at, which has been a challenge for us to get used to. You know, it's funny you hear the opposite sometimes from customers, like, why can't we do this faster? Let's do this faster. Um, so to hear that they just need you to go at their pace, that, that sounds like they have limited people available to stay in these projects because they're focusing on the task at hand. Another area of not skills gap, but people gap almost enough people in time. I'd like to ask also about. Some of those key technological areas that charities generally need the most support. So if you look at the customers or at the organizations, the charity organizations you've helped in the past and that overview umbrella view of them, do you see a trend where they generally need that support? Yeah, so far we really have, so we've helped five official charities so far with another couple coming on this year and the main theme has been collaboration. How do they safely and securely collaborate with themselves as an organization as well as sometimes with the people that they are supporting and whatever their programs are running. So it's really been anything from speaker pucks. And running teams meetings that we've taught them to having a SharePoint site and collaborating with documentation, you know, that we've really tried to transform the way they collaborate. And it's been really impactful from what they've told us from what they had to what they have now. Honestly, I thought you were going to say security. And so I wouldn't have thought of collaboration as being the biggest problem, because I was assuming like with a small organization, they're probably not thinking about their internet of things and all the devices in there, maybe they have a lot of wireless access points that are available to be hacked into. Maybe those are challenges, but I didn't even think of the fact that that easy thing, that collaboration, that thing that we use every day, that isn't a problem at all is the biggest problem. Yes, we have to usually educate them about the security. I'd say we've been doing this three years. This cohort of charities was the first one that actually said the word security. They are evolving, just like Joe said, things are changing, and obviously, you know, they read the news, they know what's happening, so they know security, but really, we gotta start at the real bare bones of things, and that's been the collaboration technology. And I will say, knowing what they know, like, they're asking about security, and they're asking about things like antivirus. Well, okay. Well, that's like a 10 years old questions. Hey, what do we need for antivirus? There needs to be a security posture and structure. And so when they say that it really, I think that in the applications this past year has really set off a light bulb going, yeah, we need to be having deeper security conversations. And we are doing that. We're trying to, to reach out with them and do like even webinars for any charity that applies. It's. That's on the horizon. So just give them a good security 101. Like, why do you have to have a password on everything? What is multi factor authentication? Just so they know that it's more than antivirus. When someone says antivirus, I think of the 90s for sure, or maybe the early 2000s. So, and that also tells me that they might be using home devices, which are not secure. Because you maybe do need antivirus on a home device if you're not dealing with enterprise licensing. So very interesting to kind of take yourself back a little bit in time almost to see what they've been putting their money and effort and time into the thing that that charity is based on and not necessarily their infrastructure. As far as that selection process, I can think of so many charities already as we've been talking that I would love to put in front of you that are here in my area, but I'm sure there are many across North America that, that might benefit from this program. So I'd love to learn a little bit more about that selection process. So Joe, if you wouldn't mind telling us, How do charities apply? What factors do you consider when choosing those participants? Do you ever have to say no? How does that usually work? Yeah, it's, and it's something that we've had to evolve and iterate as we go. I'll say, I think, you know, out of the gate, I think we had a really good, strong plan on how to vet the charities. So that's one thing. First, we've got to find the charities. Then get them to apply and then look at that application. So to your point, like if you're starting to think of charities right now, well, that's why we're doing this. We want, if there's a charity listening today, we want them to go to the website and see when the next cohort is available and, and what all is involved. But so first thing is just getting the word out. That happened a little organically, the stuff on social media, got the word out. And we've been getting about a dozen or so charities with each time. We've done it three times that we've opened up this window for applications, but then the application itself, like, you know, be honest, it is. It's a rigorous application. It's a 10 page document that they need to answer some pretty serious questions. You know, we, we ask questions like, what is the current state of your technology? Or what, what's the day in the life of, of people that work for you? Like how do you actually operate? And where do you think tech can help? Um, again, You know, want to make sure they're kind of thinking openly, like, how can this transform your business? Not just like, hey, we need new computers. It's like, no, no, how can you make things better? How can Softrace make things better? And also to back to that point of we don't just want to drop the stuff on their front doorstep and then say hey Good luck Walk away. We need to make sure there's owners people that will be accountable and own it on their end To say, okay, this is something that we're going to champion. We're going to make sure that it's fully implemented. We will be the one to do the knowledge transfer with. We even ask them to rate themselves on a scale of one to five. How are you with security or sharing files and, you know, network access, things like that. And then we have to, you know, carefully pour through those, uh, applications. We come together as a committee. Got a whole rubric and we rate them, we rate them individually and we score these charities. And then when we come together and say, okay, well, who scored the highest? And let's talk about this and why we come to an agreement. And it has to be a project that we can do. It has to be within our wheelhouse. It'll be the workplace, cloud or security and services that we can provide. So we take all this into account and we, we come to a very specific decision on which charities we want to approach. So they need to have some sort of, you know, tech presence as it is and understand the power of tech. They need to have an owner on their end, and they need to have, you know, be very specific and clear about their goals and what they want to do to achieve, um, efficiency within the organization. Oh, that seems very simple. So, so really they just need someone in house to manage it, a starting point and a need defined. Yep, basically. And I'd add one more. Their charity needs to align to advancing inclusion and diversity in marginalized communities. It's not just any charity. So when you think about the word marginalized and what that means, maybe not everyone understands that. So do you want to dive into that just a little bit? Sure. I'll pick one of our finalists this year as an example. So, their mission is to advocate for renters rights for new immigrants of a country, for those that English is the second language. So, it's those types of communities that maybe have a disadvantage coming in to the country and we're working to make them on an even playing field. That's incredible. I love hearing that. So, Joe, I'd love to hear a success story. I know you've brought a clip to share. What has the impact been so far? Who is this customer? And can you share the success story a little bit before we listen to that clip? Uh, absolutely. Uh, there's. There's an organization we worked with in the past year called The Learning Place that are based in the GTA here in Toronto, and they, uh, provide adult learning for digital literacy programs for newcomers to Canada or people that are developmentally challenged. You're going to hear now from Amy. She's the program manager there, and she was super excited to get this program off the ground when we told them that they were actually a recipient of CAPS. Like her eyes lit up and she was. So excited and well, you're going to hear from her on, and you're going to probably hear her excitement and, and how the project really affected her and the learning place. Let's hear it. Before SoftChoice and before our project with SoftChoice, we had a system that was very flawed, very slow. We had a. Cloud system essentially that was not working for us and we noticed files would go missing or, you know, things, things that were just not where they were supposed to be, but it was, it was outdated technology as a nonprofit. We put our clients and our learners first, and sometimes we don't have the resources we need. to keep up to date with current technology and applications. So we may do with what we had, but after soft choice came in and you guys were able to completely revamp our network, our infrastructure, implementing the Microsoft 365, like I can't tell you how it's been night and day for not only us as staff, we are able to collaborate more effectively. We're able to communicate more effectively. But even our learners, we've been able to change how we're teaching in the classroom. I'm able to have shared files in our computer lab now. So that way, all of our learners have access to information, whereas we used to do things very old school, putting into a USB, making sure like each computer local device was set up. But I mean, it's a computer lab. Information should be able to be shared. B is as simple as a click of a button. Especially when you're teaching low level learners, you wanted to make it as simple and accessible as possible. Now after our Soft Choice project, we are able to do those types of things. So technology and the revamp that we've been able to go through with Soft Choice has been Completely like eye opening for us and I sometimes think back to those times beforehand. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I wish, I wish this had happened sooner. Like it's been, it's been excellent. It's been wonderful. I wish this had happened sooner. So that really tells you it's not necessarily like the security gaps that every organization is dealing with right now. It's something that causes them to not do what they need to do as fast. That's what it sounded like overall to me, like the, the integration of having SharePoint and not having to use a USB and walk around a computer lab and plug a USB into individual computers. But to be able to just access their information, simple. I want to know more about this charity. What are they learning? Um, what's, what did you accelerate? Well, they're learning how to use, you know, digital tools, uh, like in the Microsoft Office 365 stack, like just using things like Word and email, and just, you know, leveling up their digital skills. In the workplace. So it's all this very basic stuff that, you know, we've been doing for years, but if someone's coming from a new country, there's never done that kind of work before, and they want to get into that kind of like office atmosphere where they're working in a digital environment, like this is totally new and foreign to them. So being able to teach the tools. Is very helpful, especially when the tools are all working properly and that whole infrastructure is working so you can see like they are tech minded. This charity is tech minded, but they knew what they weren't able to do. And they wanted to, you know, fast forward to this time when everything's working a lot better. Right. So that's really helped them. And it's made just their courses are fuller. Now, it used to be harder to advertise what they could do or say, you know, accommodate as many students as possible. Now they're getting full courses and they're able to go back to the ministry, which supplies them with funding and say, look, how full our classes are. We need to start doing night classes. Wow. That's really cool. There's definitely a big impact created there with that one charity. So imagine that greater impact with the charities over the 20 years that Softchoice has been able to help. But that also begs the question to the greater tech community, why is it important that we For us being in the tech community and for others in that community to step up and support these nonprofits, especially those that are addressing inequality and promoting inclusion. Why is that important? Well, we think it's very important. When Joe and I talk to people about the Charity Accelerator program, it's we have power in our people. People don't realize that what they know and do in their job every day. Can literally transform a charity, helping people that need it. You know? So when we go talk to people, you know, you guys have so much knowledge. Can we use you for a couple of hours to talk to this charity and figure out what we can do for them? And we're pulling people from our sales organization, our pre sales organization, our vendor. Contacts and our vendor management organization, our delivery team, and for every single person to donate a few hours of their time totally transforms the learning place and how they work. So it's, the power of our people is so key, and I think if a lot more technology companies did something like this, where, as Joe said, it's a skills based volunteering, you do it every day at your work, donate it to somebody else, and it can really transform how they work. I didn't even think about the fact that the hours we're offering up are more than just professional services hours. You mentioned free sales and partnerships and a web of other things that those organizations might need assistance with that we can do. Where else are we impacting them in our organization? What other parts of our organization are part of this program? Well, it's growing as we work through it. So even from the very first year, three years ago that we started officially charity accelerator program to how we operate today, we've changed a little bit. We find the best and most successful way to do it is try and mirror how we work at soft choice. Using the charity as if they were a paying customer. So we didn't used to have, you know, sales reps, I'll say on a charity. We changed that this year where we have sales champions that champion the needs of the charity throughout the organization. And just by doing that one change, it's pulled in. Oh, I know someone at Google. Oh, I know someone at Microsoft. And you can just see the wheels expand and expand as we try and mirror it the way that we work at soft choice. I love that. So they're being treated as any other customer and given that full breadth of our capabilities. Absolutely amazing. So as we think about that support and the, the community that we've built and the impact that SoftChoice and other companies doing this have created, what are we looking at in the future? What are the long term goals for the Charity Accelerator Program at SoftChoice and how do both of you envision it evolving in the next few years? Well, I think the sky's the limit, honestly, like it would be amazing if I could get every single employee at Softvoice to be involved in some way, shape or form in a charity accelerator program, whereas the committee that's helping, you know, devise our strategy and our governance around this, or is it actually getting involved with the charity? Because we could tap into everyone. People in finance and events coordination can be giving some mentorship and guidance to these charities as well. Let's, you know, that's something we need to build up towards. We obviously want to keep onboarding more and more charities and then keep them along as partners. Again, we are continuing this partnership with TLP, for example, just to find other ways, other programs they could tap into within our partner community. So bringing the partners in more, making sure that they're more involved. They have to. Programs like this too, we just got to find them. We've got to help them navigate them because we know how they work. But, uh, I mentioned earlier too, just like we get all these applicants, we get like a dozen or so applicants. We've got 30 or 40 different applications from charities over the years. We've been able to do five projects that we could actually execute on, but all these charities that express concerns around security or how to manage devices. So what is the potential of AI? We want to start doing these really quick hit one on one webinars for them, where they can come in and learn from some of our specialists. And they may even partner with them and just give them further mentorship. We want to see what that looks like. I envision a point where we could take an entire sales team to Jill's point. There's so much talent here that. They don't know how powerful and how amazing their knowledge is to the average organization that doesn't get to talk to the vendors that we talk to and have these conversations. Imagine having a sales team, just calling down for an afternoon on a Friday. Like you're going to talk to charities today. You're going to ask them what their goals are. You're not going to sell anything, but you're going to help them figure out what their digital strategy is if they're open to that. So, I mean, there's still a bunch of ideas, uh, up in the air here, but sky's the limit. I love that you called out the salesperson as being involved because many might think of a salesperson as selling you something, but really, if you think of a salesperson as a business network, a relationship network, of someone that knows, like you said, people at Amazon, people at Google, people at Microsoft, people at our largest partners, people at Amazon. Some of our security vendors and our backup disaster recovery vendors and on all of the things an organization might need to support their environment, that salesperson has that network and that's an incredible network to have access to. So that's a piece of this story that I, I hadn't thought of. So I'm really glad that you mentioned that. So I would love to direct our listeners and I know we have so much more we could talk about with this, but really where can we learn more? Where can our listeners learn more about the charity accelerator program? We would love for our listeners to learn more, uh, on our softchoice. com website, we have a social impact section right on there. And in that social impact section, there's a program with all of our FAQs. We have a contact email address on there, or reach out to either one of us on LinkedIn. We'd be happy to take any question. Love it. Anything else to add, Jo, before we wrap things up? Uh, just it's been an awesome ride and thanks for this opportunity to really evangelize the program. We're just finding more and more ways to get the word out. We're sitting here hacking away and our whole committee's hacking away. Our volunteers are doing amazing work and we just, we want to get the word out. So, uh, thankful for this opportunity. Wonderful. I so appreciate you both being here. As we've heard today, technology isn't just a tool for business. It's a game changer for nonprofits too. Through SoftChoice's Charity Accelerator program, small charities that might not otherwise have access to cutting edge solutions can now modernize their operations and Connect more deeply with their communities and continue making meaningful impacts. Thanks to leaders like Joseph Beyer and Jill Crowley, the power of technology is being harnessed to close the digital divide for organizations that need it most. Do you have a charity in mind? If you're inspired by what you've heard, please head over to softchoice. com. To learn more about how tech skills can drive positive change for causes that truly matter. I'm Heather Haskin and this is The Catalyst. See you again in two weeks.