Google Brings Churches Back into Nonprofit Program
But Chokshi says it's a listing on Guidestar, not an IRS letter of recognition, that qualifies churches and other nonprofits. In fact, Google says it won't accept copies of IRS letters as proof of nonprofit status from any organization.
Guidestar, which collects tax forms and other data on nonprofits, says it already has entries for 286,000 churches. If accurate, that would be about 90 percent of the country's congregations. (For most houses of worship, the information is limited to the church's name, location, and a note that it is a church.)
While Google has opened up its nonprofit program to churches, several other kinds of nonprofit groups are excluded, including schools, childcare centers, health care organizations, and government entities. However, the company has similar programs for many of those kinds of organizations.
Churches have options beyond Google, said Nick Nicholaou, founder of MBS Inc., a provider of IT and accounting services to churches. For example, Microsoft has its own charity licensing program. Organizations like MBS can also provide services for churches, with the added protection of keeping their information on private servers instead of on public ones, he said.
"Corporations should never trust sensitive information to the public cloud," he said. "Email and a lot of documents that a corporation would have shouldn't be in this realm. They should be in the private side."
Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
See our earlier coverage of churches and Google for Nonprofits.
In 2006 Christianity Today reported on Jews for Jesus' lawsuit against Google, which later settled out of court.
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Comments
Alex Rodriquez
Data security is an issue with Google. Also, Google's support is not quite worth what you pay for it and it is free. Anyone signing up for the Google service should read carefully the agreement before signing. Google requires you to obey the law but they think the law says that a church is not permitted to discriminate based on religion, gender preference, gender bias, etc. Of course that is not true. I don't consider MBS to be a competitior of Google. MBS offers hosted Exchange in the private and more secure "cloud". Google does not offer hosted Exchange. As a user of Google Apps for Business and a former user of Exchange I am sorry I ever switched and am planning on switching back at some point. Even some Android devices have issues with Google Apps. If I could offer one word of advice to a medium sized church (or larger) that might be considering a migration to Google Apps for Business or for Non-Profits that word would be "Don't".
Morgan Feddes
Adam, that's a very good critique. Data security wasn't the focus of the article, so I didn't follow up on that area specifically, but you make an excellent point. I'll keep that in mind for the future. Thanks for the response!
Adam Shields
I would say it is questionable to quote MBS in this article. They are a direct competitor. There are reasons not to put sensitive data in the cloud, but a quote from a security expert or an expert on cloud computing would have been much better. Very few churches really need high level security on their email. I would wonder about a consultant that would say a church needs higher levels of security. The vast majority of churches have less than 3 staff and virtually no tech support. Options like this can be useful.