Power Automate training and implementation for charities

[James_Field]

Hello folks

Hope you're all well.

As charities embrace M365 more and more, their minds turn to how they can get more out of the platform, and Power Automate is starting to come up in my conversations with them.  They love the idea of automating manual or repetitive tasks (who doesn't!)

Right now it's not something we have a massive amount of skills with in-house, so my question to the community is two-fold:

1. Are there any freelancers out there that would be happy to work with some of our charities on a consultancy basis to help them design and implement some automation workflows?

2. Any pointers on the best ways to skill up internally on PA? I am sure there are thousands of resources but just wondered if anyone has gone through any MS certifications, for example, to give them a good grounding (our starting point being IT professionals)

Thanks all!

James

[James_Field]

Thanks Justin, I'll have a look at the CDM

[justinbarss · Accepted solution]

@James_Field This is such a prime observation to note as more NGOs are beginning to push on the tech stack to define what's possible, what they can create/maintain, and what they need assistance from freelancers / consulting firms to provide.  

I've seen this question before in other technology platforms that Now IT Matters has been working in for the past decade.  As we've noted that many of the questions and requests are centering on Nonprofit Use Cases and Best Practices - we've invested in creating a Partner focused community - the Nonprofit CDM Community. The focus is utilizing the incredible work done by Microsoft Tech for Social Impact in the Nonprofit Common Data Model -and- centering the conversation around this data model and expertise to support NGOs. 

I already know there are a few nonprofit skilled freelancers and MSFT certified experts in that ecosystem, and we're looking to include more partners that will be serving NGOs.  
I'd recommend joining that space and posting in the MSFT channel to get more awareness of freelancers that have this skill set.  I know quite a few of them are already involved in F&E Implementations.

https://www.nonprofitcdm.org/join