Scouting Technology Alliances

Google for Scouting Units

This was not an easy article to write. There is a lot of missing information on Google for doing this with Scouting units that are under a charter organization. Support from Google nonprofit team isn’t easy either. The support link is hidden, but here it is just in case you need: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/contact/contact_us. This article was written after several failed attampts, and even more time spent with support.

Let’s getting started. This article is broken down into a few steps

  1. Prerequsits
  2. Setting up a trial of Google Workspace (5 minutes)
  3. Applying for Non-profit status (10 minutes)
  4. After you apply emails
  5. What to do when you are approved

Prerequisites

Before you do anything, you must get your ducks in a row and ensure that the process is seamless, otherwise it is going to take much longer.

If your charter organization is NOT a non-profit, you can reach our to your district key three to work with the council to check if they are willing to help you. In most cases they will. In either case, there is no financial impact or requirments for a unit to use Google for non-profit.

Domain Information: You will need to know who manages your domain name (for example myscoutingunit.com). They will need to know how to update DNS records as well.

Account naming standard: You need to come up with a method for your account names, also your email addresses. This is entirly up to you. You can do First.Last or First or FirstLetterLastName (this is pretty typical). However, I will say this, what do you know better, their first name or last name.? I prefer to use just first names. Now if you get a duplicate, maybe that becomes FirstNameFirstLetterofLastName. But you have to have this figured out and documented.

Clearing House: A clearing house is an organization that ensure that a non-profit request is actually for a non-profit organization. Google uses a company called Goodstack. This means that your charter organization must already hace an account with Goodstack. Go to https://goodstack.org and click on Sign Up. More likely that the organization already has an account in Goodstack. If that is the case, they will need to know who is the owner. You will want to email all the owners ahead of time (now is a good idea), that you are about to signup for Google for non-proifit and they will need to approve it (just one person). There is more on this in a later step.

  1. Sign into Goodstack
  2. In the upper right hand corner in the drop down, Click on My Team
  3. Note all the Owners

EIN Information: You need to know the legal name and the EIN of the organization. The charter organization should be able to give you a copy of their 501(c)(3) or their annual tax filings to figure this out. Or they may just tell you the EIN. You can look up an EIN or a company from the Tax Exempt Organization Search here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/

Charter Organization Certificate: This is the piece of information that you will need to use to upload into Google to prove that you are part of a charter organization. If you are using the council and they are not your charter org, they will need to write on letter head that your unit is part of the council. This letter must be on Scout letter head, contain the name and email of the owner listed in Goodstack, The name and email of the person requesting it, the EIN and Name of the council as it appears in the Tax exempt search. Sometimes they may give you a letter called an Affirmation Letter, this will work too.

To get your charter certificate do the following steps, this can only be done by the key 3 of your unit or district.

  1. Login to https://my.scouting.org
  2. Go to your unit dashboard
  3. Click on the View, that will download a PDF

On that certificate you will need to pieces of information, The Name of the unit and the name of the Charter. This information is used later when registereing for non-profit status.

You now have all the information required to continue

  • Your domain information
  • Account naming standards
  • The person who is repsonsible for approving in Goodstack
  • The EIN and Orginziation legal name that you will be using, either your charter organization or Council information
  • Your charter Org Certificate or letter

Signing up for a Google Trial

You will need to signup for a Google trial account, and there is some work you need to do as well. To accomplish this step the following needs to happen

  1. Creating a generic account to register for Google for Non-Profit (from here on out refered to as GNP).
  2. Signing up for Google Workspace
  3. Configuring DNS to send/recive email

Generic Account: This account will be forever tied to your Google Workspace. If you use your personal account, it means you will be tied to the Google Workspace, even after you leave scouts. Yes, this does go against the EULA of Google, but this is also the best practice for setting up Google. I reccomend using a gmail account for this. And it’s important to remember that you must login to that account at least once a month.

Signing up for Google Workspace: This needs to be done before you register for non-profit so that Google can assign the correct licenses to the right workspace. If you don’t do this, Google will assign it to the charter organization and have them assign you as an administrator, which they will deny.

  1. Go to https://workspace.google.com/
  2. Clcik on Get Started
  3. Enter your Business Name. This is the name that will be used pubiclally for example. For example Troop 233. However, I like to be more specific, for example council name and then unit. For example SVMBC Troop 233. But this is up to you, and both are correct to use
  4. Select the number of employees. This is more like the number of accounts you expect to have. For a Pack, this would be just adults, for a troop, you may want to have all scouts and their parents. I just pick 300, the number doesn’t mean much.
  5. Select your region
  6. Click Next
  7. Enter your Contact information. You can use your first and last name, but use the generic email account you created earlier.
  8. Since you most likely have a domain, choose Set up using your existing domain. Doing a new domain is a little more work. Plus I would not use Google for a domain registration. I like using https://hostgo.com. They have fair prices and good support. I don’t make any money from this endorsement.
  9. Click on Continue with this method
  10. Enter your domain name, click Next
  11. You will get a warning about emails not being delivered. Which is fine, since you may be using email to that domain another way.
  12. Click Next
  13. You will need to create your first user, this is an admin account, THE admin account. So for a username, don’t use your name.
  14. Enter a complex password. Password security is important. I like to use a passphrase for example popcorn-turkey-doorbell-truck (no this is not a real password). But by most tests, this will take centries to hack.
  15. Click Agree and Continue
  16. You will now get prompted for the free 14 day trial. Don’t worry, the process does not take that long, as long as you have all the prerequsits done.
  17. For the Contact information, use the generic email account and choose a payment method. This is your billing information. There will be a temporary authorization
  18. Add a Payment method
  19. Click and Agree and start 14 day trial
  20. Do not add any new users, so click the Skip for now button

Domain Verification

Once you completed the signup, the next step is to verify your domain, this ensures that you indeed own the domain, and walks you through setting up email routing. You should be at a screen that says Let’s setup your domain

  1. Click on Get started
  2. You will be presented with a list of domain hosting companies that can automate this. If you don’t see your provider in the list, click on My domain uses a different host. For this documeantion, I will use that option
  3. First is to setup a verification. This is typical with many companies, and they all use the same information.
  4. You will need to add that record type to your DNS provider. Since all DNS providers are different, I cannot go into details on that.
  5. Once it has been entered, check the back Come back… and click Confirm
  6. If everything is right, you should get verified page. If not, you will need to go back and make changes
  7. Click on the Active Gmail button and click Continue
  8. You will get prompted to add more addresses and alias, don’t add a user and click Proceed with activation
  9. The same rules for slecting your domain as before.
  10. You will be presented with a MX record type that needs to be added
  11. Check the box and click Confirm.
  12. You will want to setup DKIM, this ensures that email is authenticated with the reciving party so it doesn’t end up in Spam, click on the set up DKIM
  13. Again, same ruies about selct your domain host
  14. From the Key lenght, hoose 2048, that is the industry standard
  15. Click on generate key
  16. Add the name and value to your DNS. the name for example in DNS should be something like this: google._domainkey.mydomain.com.
  17. Click on the Explore Google Workspace.
  18. Select the option to Send emails
  19. You can check any box you are interested in to give you some walk throughts, for example Collaborate with my team, or choose I’m Not sure
  20. You can choose anything form the list, or click I’m not sure.
  21. If you click I’m not sure, you will get dumped into your inbox for the admin.

Congradulations you have done the basic work to setup Google Workspace. This is only the basics, there is more to do later on securing and setting up policies and access.

Set up recovery for admin account

While you are waiting for approval, you should setup recovery information for your admin account in workspace

  1. in gmail click on your account information in the upper right corner
  2. Click on the Add recovery phone
  1. It will show your recovery email as the generic email.
  2. Click on the edit to have it send you a code to verify the email address
  3. Add your recovery phone. This process needs to be updated as roles change.
  4. Click on the back arrow to add a couple of other recovery options and security features
  5. Click on the 2-Step Verification. This is an important step, sepcifically for any person that is an admin.
  6. Here you can choose a bunch of different ways to add additional steps. The most common is an authenticator app.
  7. Check the option to turn on 2-Step Verification
  8. Scan the QR code in your verfication app.
  9. You can also setup a Passkey. This takes a little more work, and is more tricky to transfer between
  10. Click to Turn on 2-Step Verification
  11. There will now be a Backup codes, you will need to keep these somewhere safe. Just in case all your two factor mechanisms fail, these backup codes can get you in.

Registereing for non-profit status

Now that you have a domain, can send and recive emails from it, the next step is to get non-profit status.

  1. Go to https://www.google.com/nonprofits/
  2. Click on the Get Started
  3. It should show you your logged on account for your trial Google Workspace account. This is important, you MUST be logged in as your google workspace account., click Continue
  4. It will ask you to ensure you are not the following.
  5. Click on your organization country
  6. Click on Begin (you already have the EIN)
  7. You will get a prompt about the clearing house
  8. Enter your orgnizations EIN. THis is charter Org, or the EIN for the council.
  9. At this point, you may see a list of oganizations found, at the bottom there is a small link that says I can’t find my organization, click on that.
  10. Enter your Organization Name and EIN, this is the information from your charter org certifcate. If you are using your Council information instead of your charter org, replace the information here with your concil, and use the letter they sent you above.
  1. Enter your website. This could be your website, or from scouting.org, or anything that has your current domain pointing to.
  2. Enter your physical address. This is not where you meet, but the address of the organization used above
  3. Enter your mission statement. This can be from our council, or your website, or the scouting mission statement: The mission of Scouting America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.
  4. From Primary category choose Yout Services, and under the Subcategory choose Boy Scouts
  5. Enter in your name as the one the organization would identify. This is used to identify you. It means that the owner from the organization will be notified. You have already identified in the prerequesits who this is. Use the email address, from the Google workspace, not the generic one. Opt in for the email, if you want.
  6. Check the bos to agree
  7. You will now get a confirmation letter

Post application emails

Now that you have asked for permissions, there is an approval process.

You will get the following email to start in your workspace email

In your generic email box you will get two emails

  • BIlling Information
  • Welcome to Google Workspace

The Organziation admin will get an email that looks like this in a couple of days:

You will get the following email that looks like the following in a few minutes to a couple of days. Click on the link Verify your email

WAIT

Check your email account (the one you used to create the google for non-profite workspace above, not the @gmail.com account) for both the approval email.

If you get denied, you will get this email. Don’t give up, it will take some perseverance, but it will work.

You just need to challenge this.

  1. Go to https://support.google.com/nonprofits/contact/contact_us
  2. Fill out the required fields.
  3. Under the issue or question enter the following information, or similar information ” The problem is that a Boy Scout Unit does not have their own Tax Exempt, 501C3 document.  They use the charter orgs ID.  A unit will use the charter organziations tax exempt ID on all their paperwork.  The Charter Organization is their sponsor.  You will not see the unit name on the tax exempt paperwork”

Most likely, you will need to go through the registering for non-profit status again.

The approval process:

Your Verification Email that is similar to the following: Notice that the name of the organization is what is in the Charter Org.

Click on the Get Started Button

The next steps have changed over time, but the process is basically the same

You will be asked to enter your organization name. It must be exactly what is in the Welcome to Google for Nonprofits email, and is case sensitive, so just copy and paste from the email.

You will then be asked to activate which products. Choose Google Workspace.

That should then get you the required licensending enabled.

You can then go to https://admin.google.com and start setting up accounts.

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