The first thing to address was email. The charity was running on personal accounts that offered no security, no ownership, and no GDPR compliance. I researched the options, applied for Microsoft 365 Nonprofit pricing on their behalf, and secured them a properly licensed setup at a fraction of the standard cost. That gave them professional email addresses they actually own, Outlook across desktop and mobile, shared calendars, and data stored securely within Microsoft's infrastructure rather than scattered across personal accounts.
The GDPR side of this matters more than people often realise for a charity. Trustees handle personal data about residents and beneficiaries. Running that through personal email accounts, with no audit trail and no control over where data lives, is not just poor practice. It is a compliance risk, and one that trustees can be personally liable for. Moving everything into Microsoft 365 put them into a properly governed architecture, with data held in secure UK data centres, appropriate access controls, and the ability to manage and account for personal data in the way the law requires.
I also set up and configured the laptops the trustees use: installed the software, connected everything to the Microsoft environment, and put remote access in place so I can support them without needing to visit every time something needs attention.
When Microsoft changed their nonprofit offering, I worked through the implications with the charity, migrated their accounts to the updated free tier, and helped them secure lifetime software licences to keep running costs as low as possible. They did not have to navigate that change alone.
I continue to support Bewdley Almshouses on an ad hoc basis. They get help when they need it, without paying for a contract they do not need.
