Announcing our new Help Desk program

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Tackle is excited to present our newest service offering, Help Desk!

In a nutshell, Help Desk is perfect for those small or inconsistent CRM and online fundraising projects that pop up from time to time. For a small monthly administrative fee, you’ll gain access to our team of technology experts and only pay for the time we actively spend helping you.

We wanted to provide a service that truly helps nonprofit teams overcome technical roadblocks so they can focus on what is really important—growing your organization.

Our team has been working hard at launching this new program and we know many nonprofits will benefit from this on-call format, especially as we navigate this “new normal” we have found ourselves in.

What sparked the Help Desk idea?

We encounter a lot of organizations that often need occasional technical help, but cannot commit to a large support retainer. Often these nonprofits are on the smaller scale or have some sort of in-house technical support already.

On our side, it is challenging to write proposals for projects that only require a handful of hours. But our team has a passion to help nonprofits, no matter their project size, so we decided it was time to brainstorm a new way to serve these organizations. And thus, Help Desk was born.

With Help Desk, we set up an umbrella agreement that allows us to promptly answer questions and easily scope out work for approval via email. That allows our team to focus less on selling you something and more on helping you quickly. It truly is a win-win for both of us.

What are the top benefits of Help Desk?

Tech Team Access – You have a full CRM and fundraising technology team ready to help you on demand when you need it.

No Retainer Fees – There are no large retainer fees you have to commit to. You will be set up with a small monthly administrative fee to have access to our Help Desk platform and then you will just be billed for the work we do.

Ongoing Relationship – Over time we become very familiar with your systems and needs, so when a major project like a migration comes up, we can often skip a lot of discovery steps. This saves you time and money.

What kind of organizations are the best fit for Help Desk?

We specifically designed this for nonprofits with platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, online marketing software, and/or digital fundraising systems. We serve both smaller organizations without full time technology staff, and larger organizations with technology staff who are too busy to provide front-line user support or need occasional help with larger projects.

Universally, you want to get the most out of your technology and we want to help you achieve that.

What are examples of situations that Help Desk addresses?

Every organization has a unique set of technical or strategic circumstances and struggles. Our team can address them all, from day-to-day issues to long-term technology tactics.

Here are just a few scenarios our team is equipped to handle.

  • Major Platform Change – Our CRM or Online Fundraising platform has an upcoming change (upgrade, release, feature retirement, security warning, etc.). Will our organization be impacted? Or maybe it already happened a while ago, and you’ve been ignoring it. And it DEFINITELY impacted you. How difficult will it be to fix it now?
  • Data Detective Work – How the heck did THIS person’s information get changed in this way?
  • Input on Technology Strategy – We’re about to launch a new campaign that uses our platforms in a somewhat different way. And we’re also interested in exploring some things in the future in a kinda-related somewhat different way. Is there anything else we should be thinking about here?

We know one of these questions has come up for you in the past. Folks at all levels of an organization have all kinds of good ideas about how to make their jobs easier and better. But without the kind of broad nonprofit tech experience Tackle brings, it can be challenging to know where to begin.

With Help Desk, you can turn to us to help you navigate any technology issues, big or small. We have experience working with all sizes of nonprofits and can help you navigate best practices and talk about red flags we might see down the road.

What does the small monthly fee cover and how many billable hours do you typically spend per client?

The monthly administrative fee covers your team setup in our online help desk system. This includes progress monitoring 24/7 and access to our team.

Help Desk’s pay-as-you-go billing provides you with flexibility to adjust your spending. Every client has different and various technology needs. We will work with you to set up boundaries for pre-approved hours per month, and will communicate with you when you are nearing that boundary. For work that will take longer than those pre-approved hours, we will work with you on getting approval to move forward so you don’t have any surprises. You also have the ability to limit how many people on your team have access to Help Desk so you have control over what is a priority for that month.

How do you sign up?

Great question! We’d love to set up a time to chat with you and take the next steps to getting your team signed up for Help Desk. Simply contact us through the website or send a note to Ryan directly.

Learn more about Help Desk here.

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Preparing your employees to work from home

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With news of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading into even more communities, talk of the need to work from home is high on everyone’s minds.

While some offices are easily set up with the flexibility to work from home, there are many organizations that are not. Can your organization continue with “business as usual” if everyone is working from home?

In cases where closing an office altogether isn’t possible or practical, maybe consider reducing the in-office headcount. This could mean maintaining the minimal amount of in-house staff while allowing others to work from home. Or rotating work from home days or staggered 4-day work weeks. There are definitely options for reducing social contact.

Now for any organization facing the possibility of transitioning your employees to remote work, there are many things your organization should be doing NOW to prepare.

Start with a clear communication plan with your employees about what your plan is if they are not able to come into the office, and check out our guidelines below on where to get started.

Hardware & Software

What is your organization’s existing policy for staff working from home and/or using personal equipment? Start there. And note that you might have to make some updates or temporary exemptions for this situatiton.

If possible, try to avoid having your staff attempt to work using their personal equipment. Besides being a data and security risk, this is also likely to lead to support challenges for your IT team.

This means you will need to figure out how to provide the necessary hardware and needed software for your employees, especially if you do not have enough laptops for every employee. Now is the time to look into purchasing some more laptops. Or, at the very least, figure out how to help your employee set up their office desktop computer at their house. Although if that is the case, please keep in mind that not everyone is tech savvy so you will need to have a technical person on staff prepared to help with this—before the need to work from home is necessary.

It is also important to make sure the software your employees use are up-to-date and ready to go. Is Microsoft Office loaded on their laptop? What about any design programs? Email accounts?

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Ways to stay productive when working from home

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Did you know the Tackle team is spread out across the country? That means we do a lot of remote work, so we are basically experts at working from home.

I personally have been working from home in various roles now for over eight years, and I absolutely love it. In fact, my husband also works from home so we are like the ultimate work-from-home power couple. It took a little bit of trial and error to figure out how to productively do this, especially adding a couple kids to the mix, but I truly think it’s a great option that employers should genuinely explore (but more on that in another post).

If you find yourself new to the work from home club or struggling to get your work done at home, I thought I would share some tips on how to be as productive as possible while working from home.

Have a designated work space

Make a desk space in your house, whether it’s a small table tucked in a corner of your living room or an actual office in your basement, make sure you have a space that is designated to get stuff done.

And no, your bed doesn’t count.

I would probably also take it one step further and say to designate this space ONLY for work. When you know your desk is set aside for working time instead of say, watching movies or posting on social media, you will less likely find yourself doing those things in this space during working hours. Besides, I think only using this space for work helps with tax write offs, although I am no tax expert.

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Things to know about the Salesforce Lightning switch

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If you are an avid Salesforce user, I am sure by now you have heard about the upcoming mandatory switch from Salesforce Classic to Lightning. In this blog series, the Tackle team addresses some of those looming questions you might have about this important change.

Jeff Miller, our Salesforce expert, weighs in on some of the changes in Salesforce Lightning vs. Classic. Check out what he has to say about the switch.

 

PART ONE

What is different from Salesforce Classic?

The user interface is significantly updated, making it substantially more flexible and modern, and much more customizable to an organization’s specific business needs and processes.

The look and feel of Reports and Dashboards changes quite a bit with Lightning, as does the design/editing process, though much of the underlying functionality carries over from Classic (including many familiar quirks and limitations).

In addition, most new Salesforce and 3rd Party App features are built with the Lightning interface in mind. Lightning also comes with some new architecture that will allow Salesforce to build new features that Classic couldn’t support.

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