IAM for Nonprofits

Identity Access Management Solutions For Nonprofits

Nonprofits are some of the most important players in our society. They look out for our vulnerable populations, creatures and resources, all with limited budgets. As technological requirements continue to evolve, many nonprofit organizations fall behind in security practices and limit their teams’ efficiency with outdated systems. Nonprofits need a solution that acknowledges their limited budgets while allowing them to keep up with modern security and functionality requirements.

Fortunately, Optimal IdM’s identity management for nonprofit organizations makes it simple. With the OptimalCloud, we can provide a comprehensive nonprofit identity solution and help you find operating success at a cost that works for your organization and its industry demands.

Why Optimal IdM Is Important for the Nonprofit Industry

Nonprofit Identity Management Challenges

From the donor experience to modern-day security and compliance requirements, nonprofits have a variety of high-tech needs to meet, despite some common challenges in these types of organizations:

• Limited budgets: Probably the most prevalent issue for nonprofits is low operating budgets. You want to put as much of your resources as possible into helping others, so technological costs can’t take an excessive bite out of your budget. These smaller budgets also tend to make large, in-house IT teams cost-prohibitive for many nonprofit organizations. Whether your organization is small or at the enterprise level, working with limited funding is often your biggest hurdle.
• Staffing challenges: Nonprofits often work with temporary staff members and volunteers that rotate from season to season. That means they have to be able to stay on top of employee changes, making sure it’s simple to create new accounts and remove access as needed for security. It also means that the user experience should be intuitive and work well for new employees. Many nonprofits operate with outdated systems for staffing management that lack user-friendly design and have unclear access controls.
• Strict compliance requirements: Nonprofits are held to many of the same security requirements as for-profit companies, especially if their work involves sensitive industries like healthcare and finance. Nonprofit organizations need to keep various types of information safe, like donations, volunteer and worker information, donor details and more. Outdated systems often fail to meet these compliance requirements, putting sensitive data at risk and posing noncompliance penalties for organizations.

Despite these challenges, effective identity management for nonprofits is completely achievable.

What Is IAM?

IAM refers to identity and access management. For nonprofits, this typically involves managing user accounts and permissions and maintaining security for the information collected and processed by the organization. Effective IAM can mean the difference between having a compliant, user-friendly system and a cumbersome, hard-to-use security risk.

Generally, IAM encompasses a few key areas:

• Identifying individuals in a system
• Identifying roles for these users and how they’re assigned
• Adding, removing and updating users and their roles
• Assigning access capabilities to users and groups of users
• Securing the system and all sensitive data within it

IAM can be handled internally by IT teams, but this undertaking isn’t always accessible. For nonprofits, IAM is often outsourced to an organization that specializes in the process. Outsourcing is often more cost-effective because an in-house IT team isn’t required. Additionally, professional IAM companies can provide a high level of expertise and quality that may be challenging to achieve internally.

IAM Services

IAM can include on-premise or cloud solutions. Cloud solutions exist entirely on the web and reduce the need for on-site infrastructure and management. Our IAM services cover a wide range of capabilities, including the following. 

Automatic User Provisioning and Life Cycle Management

With so many employees moving in and out of nonprofits, it’s essential to make user provisioning as simple as possible. If a volunteer leaves the organization, you need to be able to quickly disable their account to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. When new workers join your team, you should be able to swiftly sign them up and give them the resources they need. This process is much easier with automatic user provisioning.

With this kind of life cycle management, you can control user accounts from start to finish, modifying them as their owners progress in the organization. By syncing your source system data with network-based data, this level of control allows for fast and simple user management.

Multifactor Authentication

Multifactor authentication is an important security measure that helps ensure improved security during specific instances, such as first-time logins or logins from devices outside the organization’s network. This tactic can reduce breaches due to leaked or easily guessed passwords, requiring a secondary form of identification to access an account. Multifactor authentication becomes increasingly important in organizations dealing with sensitive data.

Single Sign-On

Your workers might have a wide range of different applications you use every day — and remembering 12 different passwords can get incredibly annoying. It can also lead to significant security issues with reused passwords. Single sign-on (SSO) means that users can enter  one set of credentials to access a multitude of applications.

SSO can be a timesaving resource that increases ease of use and productivity, especially for those new part-time volunteers who don’t have time to memorize or keep track of a high number of passwords. It’s also helpful for security purposes, reducing the need for lists of passwords or repeated credentials. Having fewer password reset requests means the IT help desk will get a break too.

Federated Identity Management Systems

Many nonprofits have locations across a state or country, so they need secure solutions that bring these systems together. We can use a Virtual Identity Server (VIS) that creates a single view of multiple directories, allowing you to authenticate users across locations and departments, including out-of-organization users such as donors or partners.

A VIS allows multiple directories and locations to access the other features of your IAM system, including SSO and multi-factor authentication. This solution also scales easily, allowing your organization to grow and maintain full IAM functionality.

Administrative Overviews

The OptimalCloud™ includes custom entitlement capabilities and self-service administration, along with monitoring and activity logging. Nonprofits can easily control user privileges and update account information as needed. Administrators in the system have the ability to create, update, delete and reset passwords as needed. Admins can also have other abilities based on the groups they manage.

Automated Processes

From self-service password resets to automated user provisioning features, our nonprofit identity solution can save time and money by freeing up associates to focus on more important things and lessening the burden on your IT personnel.

Learn More About The OptimalCloud

Partner With Optimal IdM for IAM Solutions

Innovative solutions and unparalleled customer service come front and center here at Optimal IdM. Nonprofits can vary significantly, and we understand just how important it is for your technology to meet the needs of your unique organization. That’s why we offer a wide range of custom nonprofit IAM solutions that are built to address the challenges and landscape of your nonprofit. We help you stay compliant, save time, improve security and save money — all with flexibility and scalability built in. And all of that comes with flexibility and scalability built in.

Along the way, we’ll deliver top-tier customer support. With the help of our highly skilled technical team and a dedicated account manager, you have a capable partner backing your success. We also know that technical problems don’t stick to normal business hours, so we offer 365/24/7 support and guarantee 99.9% uptime.

Learn more about Optimal IdM and our identity management solutions, or reach out to a team member today to learn more about what our IAM options would look like in your organization! See OptimalCloud in action by requesting a free trial.

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