Project Connect Update

You and your staff have more important things to do than fight with your technology! Instead of spending hours of frustration trying to do it yourself, let us help you!

Project Connect offers Live Help for staff of all Ohio nonprofits! If you are having problems with a Microsoft Office or Adobe product, simply go to www.pclivehelp.org and complete the form. Follow the directions, and then we'll be able to see your computer from our office. We can then walk you through the problem.

Thursday, May 18, 2006, 10:30 a.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Blue Canyon Kitchen & Tavern, 8960 Wilcox Drive (SR 82 & I-480) Twinsburg, OH 44087
$30 members • $40 non-members
Reservations Required • Deadline: Thursday, May 11, Noon

The Western Reserve Planned Giving Council, LEAVE A LEGACY^® of Summit, Portage, Medina, and The Association of Fundraising Professionals North Central Ohio Chapter are sponsoring the first annual Planned Giving Institute. Featured speakers will be Paul McFadden, “Donor Motivation in Making a Bequest," and Maria E. Quinn, "Gifts from the Heart."

The Medina County Women’s Endowment Fund of Akron Community Foundation is now accepting proposals for its 2006 grant distribution. The deadline for application is June 2. Last year, the fund awarded grants totaling $5,900 to programs that support women and children in Medina County. Grant recipients will be announced in August.

To receive an application form, or for more information about making a gift to the Women’s Endowment Fund, contact Valerie Rapp at 1-888-845-3100 or 330-725-3100. You can also download a copy of the application online at www.akroncommunityfdn.org/medinawef.

The Medina County Women’s Endowment Fund restricts its grantmaking to the geographic area of Medina County. Only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are eligible to receive funding. The Women’s Endowment Fund was established in 1998 to improve the quality of life for women and girls in Medina County. Over the years, it has grown to $193,000. The mission of Women’s Endowment Fund is to provide grant funding to organizations and programs in the Medina County area that support women and children, to serve as a catalyst for needed projects and to assist women in their growth as philanthropists. The fund encourages the advancement and full participation of women and children in the community and in society. In addition, it supports organizations and programs that create opportunities for the educational, physical, emotional, social, artistic and personal growth of women and children.

Philanthropist Abigail Disney to be featured speaker at this year’s Women’s Endowment Fund Annual Event

Abigail Disney, philanthropist and granddaughter of Walt Disney Co. co-founder Roy O. Disney, will be the featured speaker at the Women’s Endowment Fund of Akron Community Foundation’s 2006 annual event.

The event will take place April 26 at the Hilton Akron/Fairlawn beginning with a 6 p.m. reception, 6:45 p.m. dinner and 7:45 p.m. program. The cost for individuals to attend is $50. Prices vary for patrons, friends, supporters and table sponsors. More details are available by calling Akron Community Foundation at 330-376-8522.

The Women’s Endowment Fund of Akron Community Foundation was established in 1993 as a permanent endowment committed to encouraging the advancement of Summit County women and girls. Grantmaking focuses on creating opportunities to support the educational, physical, emotional, social, artistic and personal growth of women and girls. This year, the Women’s Endowment Fund awarded grants totaling $36,066 to eight Greater Akron nonprofit organizations. Since its inception, the endowment has grown to more than $1 million and has awarded $208,698 in grants.

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Knight Foundation’s commitment unchanged by Knight Ridder sale

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation remains committed to its founders’ intent to support journalism at home and abroad, and civic advancement in the communities where they owned newspapers. The sale of Knight Ridder to the McClatchy Co. will not affect the foundation’s operations.

Jack and Jim Knight founded both Knight Foundation and the newspaper company that became Knight Ridder. However, the two organizations are separate legal entities and function independent of each other.

Knight Foundation will continue to support journalism and free speech, and to build strong communities in the cities and towns where the Knight brothers operated newspapers, just as they intended when they created the national, independent foundation that bears their name.

“Jack and Jim Knight founded Knight Foundation to give back to the communities that gave them so much and to encourage the kind of journalism excellence that was the hallmark of their careers. That is the mission they gave us, and we intend to fulfill it. We will remain a national foundation that honors our local roots,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president of Knight Foundation.

Knight Foundation will continue to find opportunities to leverage its funding in ways that help to transform communities for the better. For more information, visit www.knightfdn.org.

Do you have a wireless network (WLAN) in your office? Is it secure? If your answer is no, or I don't know, read on.

Wireless networks are incredibly attractive to nonprofits. Thanks to the ease of deployment and relatively low costs, a small office network is possible without having the place re-wired. However, most of us are so excited by the thought of having complete office Internet connectivity in the space of a few hours, that we fail to consider the security of our network. Just as your wireless signal travels around your office to enable all of your wireless-equipped computers access to your Internet connection (and the other computers on your network), so too does it offer this functionality to the guy with a wireless laptop in the next office. Or on the street, sometimes driving along in a car looking for just such an opportunity.

Blocking the truly dedicated hacker requires extensive security measures, but for most of us, discouraging unauthorized use of our Internet connection and protecting the data that we send out is sufficient. If you have installed your wireless devices yourself, the documentation that came with your router will tell you how to get into the administrator console. If you're not comfortable making these changes yourself, contact your regular technical support provider, or Project Connect.

Note: These changes are best made from a computer connected to your router via Ethernet (in other words, a cable). If you don't typically operate this way, run out and buy a length of cable just for this purpose - if you make a mistake while configuring your router, you can cause your wireless access to become dysfunctional.

First, change your administrator password. All routers from a particular manufacturer ship with the same password, so if I can get into my router, I can get into yours. Also turn off remote management, which will keep anyone from accessing it via the Internet.

Next, change your SSID. This is the name of your network connection, which is also a factory default, which means again that yours is the same as mine if we bought the same router. Then, turn off SSID broadcast. This will immediately impact all the computers on your WLAN - they will need to have the exact SSID set for your network. Try to use something a little harder to guess than the name of your organization, or your address.

Third, enable WEP with 128-bit security, and set it to required. This encrypts data to and from your computer, which means that the casual observer can't steal your credit card numbers. Choose your own password - there should be a passphrase generator on the administrator console. This will generate a key - write this down and put it in a safe place. Add the key to the Wireless Connection Manager on all approved machines.

These three steps will make you considerably more secure than you were, and more secure than most, which means that free Internet will no longer be available from you. Again, all of these measures are not impenetrable, they just make things less convenient, and most evildoers will choose to move on to an easier target.

Project Connect now offers classes "on demand": just call or e-mail to have your name added to the list, and as soon as we have enough folks registered, we'll schedule the class. This way, we can run whatever classes you need, when you need them!

Get on the list for MS Word and FrontPage! FrontPage is offered in three sessions, or sign up for the whole Web Developers' Series and get PhotoShop for the Web to create your own graphics and touch up those photos for Internet use. Word is offered in five sessions, from beginning documents to advanced desktop publishing. Complete descriptions of each course are on our website, https://infolineinc.org/connect/training.htm.

Missed it this time? The Microsoft Access waiting list is filling up again, so it won't be long before we hold it again. The first session will focus on identifying what needs to be included in a nonprofit-related database and how to structure it so that the database will be easy to use and easy to retrieve useful information. Over the next 3 sessions, we build our databases, using forms, queries and reports to aid data entry and data extraction. Access 5 covers troubleshooting and database maintenance. We recommend you sign up for the entire series, as each class builds directly on the previous one. Complete descriptions of each course are on our website, https://infolineinc.org/connect/training.htm.

If you have always wanted to learn more about the database you're currently using, or think that creating one will improve how you handle information, please sign up! Send an email to and let us know you're interested.

Don't forget - we also offer custom sessions. Just get a minimum of 8 people together, and we'll do a special session just for you. You don't all need to be from the same organization, so tell your friends!

Don't buy anything technology-related until you've visited these three websites first!! They offer significant discounts for nonprofits with Microsoft, Dell, CDW, Adobe, and more!

As always, we are interested in hearing from you to learn how we can best meet your technology and connectivity needs. Give us a call at 330-315-1335 or e-mail us at .