Remote IT Management and Strategic Support Improve Technology at a Flagship Nonprofit

Goodwill of Greater Washington is a flagship nonprofit in Greater DC with annual revenue of more than $21 million. Its mission is to educate, train, employ and place people with disadvantages and disabilities, creating a stronger workforce and a more vital community while building dignity for the people served through the removal of barriers to personal success. The organization is perhaps best known for its nine Goodwill Stores in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Revenue generated from these retail stores is used to train people in three industries – banking, construction, and janitorial services. Each year hundreds of people graduate from Goodwill’s training programs and are placed into numerous job sites around the Greater DC area.

Managing the technology for a multi-site organization was a real challenge for Goodwill and left them with no time to be proactive or think strategically about their IT. Goodwill’s systems were not integrated across their multiple sites and the IT staff spent the vast majority of their time "putting out fires." It became clear to Goodwill’s management that as a complex and growing organization, they needed leadership around critical technology related issues. In January 2008, Jeff Cole, a former Capital One executive with more than 20 years of management and leadership experience was recruited to be Chief Information Officer (CIO). He was asked to report back to the board within 60 days of starting with an assessment of the state of Goodwill’s infrastructure while stabilizing the network and trimming costs wherever possible. Jeff needed a strong partner to provide both strategic direction and tactical support to the organization in this short time frame.

NPower Greater DC Region went right to work installing NPower ON! a remote technology management solution for Goodwill’s workstations and servers. This provided a detailed inventory of Goodwill’s network and identified the organization’s vulnerability to security threats. To stabilize the network, NPower began a comprehensive plan of patches and updates (from the manufacturers) on all of their machines through NPower ON! Patches were applied to the machines at night to minimize disruption to Goodwill staff. Next, NPower assessed the security of the network by remote testing of backups and confirming that firewall configurations were up-to-date. In addition to assessing and securing the network, NPower provided advice and guidance to Jeff Cole (CIO) and other onsite IT staff regarding best practices in network management.

By partnering with NPower, Goodwill’s network has been secured. NPower deployed over 2,000 patches to their entire network in sixty days through NPower ON! Since then, they have been saving approximately $4,000 per month while having the support of a team of technicians with broad technical expertise. "The most significant benefit of outsourcing our IT support to NPower," says Jeff Cole, CIO, Goodwill of Greater Washington, "has been having someone to turn to, ask questions of, and advise us. This helps me sleep better at night – just knowing that they ‘have my back!’ When I have questions or just want to double check my thinking, I can call on NPower to be an objective advisor."