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No organization can ever be 100 percent secure, but nonprofits that create a strong security culture—one that actively promotes security awareness and a shared sense of mission around security—are much more likely to avoid many of the most common threats.

At your nonprofit, you can create and support a culture that values security and vigilantly protects the organization’s systems and data.

As we mentioned in the July edition of Nonprofit Knowledge Monthly, cybersecurity will be an ongoing theme as cyber attacks and ransomware continue to create challenges for businesses, governments, and nonprofits alike. Each month, we’ll be featuring a couple of quick things your nonprofit can do and highlighting additional resources. This month, we’re focused on the security of your website. Here are a couple of actions your nonprofit can take now to keep its data safe.

Starting this month and continuing through the end of this year, the IRS will send payments of $250 or $300 each month, per child, to the parents or guardians of 65 million eligible children under 18 years of age in the United States. Those parents and guardians include both people nonprofits serve and nonprofit employees. A major strength of the new advance Child Tax Credit program is that payments will happen automatically without people having to fill out any paperwork. But what happens in situations when it doesn’t happen “automatically” as intended? 

Cybersecurity remains a hot topic for everyone – including nonprofits. One of the many evolving threats to your nonprofit’s data is that an attack might not target your organization directly, but instead may compromise your data indirectly through one of your service providers. This happened recently with the hack of Kaseya, which many IT companies use to provide remote monitoring and troubleshooting for their clients.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provides $350 billion in aid to state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments to be used to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic for “assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, or to aid impacted industries.” These State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds are substantial, but not limitless; reasonable selection criteria are needed to ensure governments spending the money use fair guidelines to secure the greatest impact for the public good.

The coronavirus crisis has led to a surge in Americans preparing wills and making estate plans. If your nonprofit does not yet have a legacy or planned giving program in place, it’s a good time to consider how to thoughtfully introduce this possibility to your donors.