Non-profits Can Profit from Online Backup Utilities

I was watching the local news (King5) and one of the stories "Thieves hit AIDS support group on eve of World AIDS Day" concerned how a non-profit organization was the victim of thieves. The leader of the non-profit organization was mostly concerned with the stolen laptops that contained all their information regarding upcoming charity events. In light of their tragedy I thought about other non-profit organizations out there that might face a similar issue.

During what is normally the season of giving, often times non-profits are the targets of crime. This is usually because it is this time of year that most of their donations are received, especially if they offer items like food, clothing or toys. Although the loss of money or articles that are supposed to be going to the public hamper these non-profits, they can usually rebound rather quickly once the public is made aware of their situation and doubles their efforts to support the cause. What is more devastating to the non-profit are things like their financial statements, planning, donation lists, etc. It is in this area that I wish to offer several options to non-profits for data storage.

The web site www.adrive.com offers a free 50 GB of storage that is meant for individual use, which will usually be adequate for a non-profit organization, as most of the time it is individuals that volunteer their times that maintains part if not the majority of critical data. This company also offers other pay plans that start at $6.95 a month and go up from there based on need. The free storage version does not offer file history or file recovery, so with the free version they will not offer a guarantee of data safety. Whereas the other plans do offer this service.

Norton Online Backup ( www.norton.com ) offers a nice plan that will allow you to backup up to 5 computers (MAC or PCS) for the low price of $50.00 per year, so this is less than $4.20 per month for 25 GB of secured storage, and one can add storage as needed. Their software to help synch things up is fairly easy to use, and allows multiple people to use as needed. Their solutions does automatic archiving of your data, just in case you need to revert to the last version just after you uploaded the current copy that had some major pieces missing. The archival process will allow you to revert back easily to the previous version of the document or folder and put back on track.

Here are a couple of options, one free with options to upgrade and one that I am sure the leader of the above AIDS support group wishes he had used as he mentioned in the news report that getting the data back in place to ensure that the non-profit will be able to continue forward will cost thousands of dollars in work hours to rebuild financial statements and donor lists, etc. Before you are in desperate need of a file, go out and find a good online backup utility and backup all of your files.

www.king5.com
www.adrive.com
www.norton.com