IT Modernization for a Volunteer-Powered History Museum: Shared Computers, Simple Logins, Secure Files

We want to design a simple, secure, manageable IT setup for the ten shared computers our volunteers use every day. Right now those machines run on offline local logins with no shared file structure. Files get saved to individual desktops where they are hard to find and impossible to back up consistently, and we have no centralized way to push updates, run antivirus, or see which machines need attention.

With a skilled volunteer, we want to produce three things. First, an assessment of our current environment and a recommended platform, likely Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for nonprofits, that gives us a login process easy enough for our senior volunteers, centralized update and antivirus management, and automatic cloud backup of designated folders on specific machines. Second, a configuration and migration plan detailed enough that our team or a local IT contractor can execute it, including nonprofit pricing and any available technology grants. Third, a simple monitoring approach so the Executive Director knows when computers need updates, repairs, or replacement. If the volunteer has time and interest in helping implement the setup, we would welcome it, but a clear, actionable roadmap is a complete and successful project on its own.

The Beltrami County Historical Society preserves and shares the history of Beltrami County, Minnesota, from our home in Bemidji's historic 1913 Great Northern Railroad Depot. Nearly everything we do runs on volunteers, many of them seniors, who digitize photographs, catalog artifacts, transcribe oral histories, and help researchers trace their family stories. The files on these ten computers are not office paperwork. They are scans of hundred-year-old photographs, collection records, and community history that exists nowhere else.

Today, that irreplaceable work is one hard drive failure away from loss, and our volunteers spend time hunting for files that they should be spending on history. This project protects the collections our community has trusted us with, makes our technology work for the seniors who give us their time rather than against them, and frees staff hours for exhibits, research help, and public programs. The volunteer who takes this on will be able to point to something concrete: a small museum whose history is safe, backed up, and easier to share with the community it belongs to.

This project is initiated and championed by the Executive Director, who manages the volunteers and computers involved, so decision-making is fast and buy-in is already in place. Before the project starts we will develop an inventory of our machines (age, operating system, installed software), a list of the file groups that need automated backup and where they live today, a description of our current Google-based accounts, and a summary of how each computer is used and by whom. The Executive Director will be the volunteer's single point of contact and can commit to weekly working sessions.

We are also realistic implementers. We recently completed a careful evaluation of our membership and point-of-sale systems and successfully migrated our commerce operations, so we have recent practice turning a technology recommendation into a finished rollout. The plan this volunteer produces will not sit on a shelf. It will be budgeted and executed, either by our team or by a local contractor working from the volunteer's roadmap.