How to set up Google Apps for Your Nonprofit Domain

I am working on a new web site for the Christian Montessori school my daughter attends. They are a new 501c3 organization and are setting up their email for the first time. Since the wonderful people who run the school are not geeks, I am trying to make email and the like as easy as possible.

I am a web designer NOT an IT specialist. I do not do this sort of stuff normally, so I thought I would share my experience with you, so IT geeks feel free to add your input.

Google Apps for your Domain

Google extends its free offer to educational institutions to registered nonprofits. Basically, your nonprofit can use Google's office applications and Gmail for free. The reason this makes life easier for most nonprofits is that:

1. Managing all your organizations email accounts is web based and maintained by Google
2. Users can send and receive email via Gmail that is available to them anywhere
3. Gmail virtually eliminates the need to put storage restrictions on email accounts
4. Gmail makes spam manageable without  being complicated

To start this process you must have:

1. Your 9-digit Federal Employee ID Number
2. Administrative control over your domain's DNS (In my case, this is the account information for Godaddy and Dreamhost.)

Google does a nice job leading you through the process and the control panel is nice enough. You need some geek in you and the freedom to feel like you can make a mistake. Since this is the first time I have done this, I was had this freedom because there where no active emails or even a working domain.

Google has a great document outlining the Google service activation process for nonprofit webmasters. Or you can hire a service to help you.

If you are doing this to an existing domain, I would love to get your feedback and add it to this article. Tip: Google explains how to change your MX Record to prevent losing emails in the process.

Verify your ownership of the domain

Google requires you to verify that you own the domain you are asking them to essentially host. You can do this either through changing a CNAME record or uploading an HTML file. I chose to upload a html file which was fast and simple. Warning: I was a bit confused that I did not get immediate feedback as to whether Google verified my domain or not.

Set up your account

Start here with Google's instructions.

First thing to note is the Email is NOT initially activated. You need to activate the email (by making changes to MX Record for your domain). Google does a great job giving you a step by step instructions for many popular of web hosts. I followed how to change the MX Record for Dreamhost.

You can set up your email accounts one by one or bulk upload the information.

You can then configure your preferences for the Start page and other Google applications (i.e. chat or Calendar). In our case, I disabled the Web Page creator to limit confusion. We will be using Expression Engine to power the web site and deliver targeted email communications.

You can also add your own logo and do other nice custom things.

Using the Start page

The reason I'm using this service from Google is that I can send my client simple instructions on how to get their mail. Basically, I just send them to the Hand In Hand start page.

This was a quick 5 minute customization of the start page. Basically, I will lock the left column and reserve it for email, calendar and eventually news specifically for teachers and staff. From here, my client will be able to check their email and calendar. Eventually, we will add documents and spreadsheets. But I do not want to overwhelm of complicate this process right now.

By Tim Bednar, founder Plaid
Software for people focused on ministry not software