Overview
With a modern infrastructure, more secure collaboration, stronger governance, improved data readiness, and a practical path to AI adoption, United Way of Berks County create a technology foundation designed to help its team work smarter, protect sensitive information, and make better decisions in service of the Berks County community.
For United Way of Berks County (UWBC), technology is not just a back-office function. It’s part of how the organization serves it community, supports donors and partners, enables staff, protects sensitive information, and makes decisions that advance its mission.
Over the course of several initiatives, UWBC worked with Weidenhammer to modernize core pieces of its technology environment. The work spanned a new office network, cloud hosting, Microsoft 365 modernization, collaboration and Webex, managed services, IT governance consulting, SharePoint and OneDrive optimization, Copilot readiness, and a data estate maturity roadmap. Together, these projects helped UWBC move toward a more reliable, secure, collaborative, and data-driven operating model.
The result is a broader story than any single implementation. UWBC has been steadily building the digital foundation needed to reduce friction for staff, strengthen security and governance, improve access to information, and prepare for the next wave of nonprofit innovation with analytics and AI.
The Challenge
Like many nonprofits, UWBC needed technology to do more without creating unnecessary complexity or burden for staff. The organization had to support a modern workplace, enable effective collaboration, maintain secure access to information, manage critical systems, and make better use of data across departments.
Several needs came together over time: a move to a new office created the opportunity to rethink the organization’s network and collaboration experience. Cloud modernization offered a path to streamline legacy hosting and improve security. Microsoft 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Copilot introduced opportunities for better collaboration and productivity, but they also required discipline around data quality, permissions, governance, and adoption. At the same time, leadership needed a clearer path for using data across fundraising, finance, grants, donor engagement, and reporting.
The challenge was not simply to “install technology.” It was to make technology easier to use, safer to manage, and more valuable to the organization’s mission.
“Weidenhammer is both a technology and a strategic partner, helping us build a stronger digital foundation for how we serve our community. Their expertise and understanding of our mission have helped us strengthen security and governance, improve how our team works together, and prepare for AI in a thoughtful and responsible way. Most importantly, they understand that for United Way, technology is not the end goal. It is a tool that helps our staff work smarter, make better decisions, and focus more of our time and resources on creating impact in our community”
— Tammy White, President
The Solution
UWBC approached modernization in a practical, staged way. Instead of treating each project as an isolated technical effort, the organization used each initiative to strengthen the foundation for the next.
The new office deployment established a more reliable and manageable operating environment, including new network infrastructure, stronger Wi-Fi coverage, and Webex-based collaboration platform for calling, meetings, room systems, desk phones, and soft phones. This reduced IT obstacles, improved production, and created a better day-to-day collaboration experience for staff.
The Azure and Microsoft 365 modernization helped UWBC embrace the Microsoft cloud, enhance its environment, improve security, and streamline the end-user experience. that initiative included moving server resources to Azure, upgrading Microsoft 365, strengthening identity and security controls, migrating from OneLogin to Entra ID, moving from Citrix to Azure Virtual Desktop, deploying Intune, and replacing other security products with Microsoft Defender for Business.
SharePoint and OneDrive optimization later extended that modernization by moving file shares from Azure Files into SharePoint and OneDrive. This improved accessibility within Microsoft 365, addressed performance issues with mapped drives, supported more secure document management and sharing, and prepped the organization’s file data for future use with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
The Copilot preflight engagement then helped UWBC assess its readiness before broadly adopting AI. Weidenhammer reviewed business readiness, technical readiness, data sources, security posture, and practical use cases. The engagement included scenario discovery and two proofs of concept in a safe, non-production environment, giving the organization a structured way to explore AI without rushing into avoidable risk.
IT governance consulting added another layer of maturity. That work focused on reviewing operations, policies, procedures, technology planning, and security alignment so that UWBC could strengthen controls and practices, improving its overall security posture.
Managed services further supported the shift from reactive support to a more proactive operating model. Those services included:
- Microsoft 365 tenant administration
- Collaboration administration
- Endpoint management
- Security and compliance management
- Backup administration
- Infrastructure monitoring, network device management
- Network device management
- Circuit monitoring
- Technology enablement
- Regular strategic reviews
Finally, the data estate maturity roadmap gave UWBC a practical path to become more data-driven. The initial phase focused:
- Creating a corporate data catalog
- Documenting data lineage
- Defining KPIs
- Assessing data quality
- Establishing governance
- Designing row-level security
- Delivering a Power BI dashboard for campaign and donor analytics
The Impact
All of these efforts combined to build UWBC a stronger foundation for its mission of empowering youth, strengthening health, building stability, and providing support in crisis to the Berks County community.
UWBC gained better day-to-day reliability through its new office network and collaboration systems, as staff can now work from a more modern environment with improved wireless coverage and a more cohesive calling and meeting experience.
The organization also advanced its cloud and security maturity. By modernizing Microsoft 365, Azure, identity, endpoint management, virtual desktop, backup, Defender, and core application hosting, UWBC created a more streamlined and secure environment for staff and critical systems.
SharePoint and OneDrive optimization helped turn file storage into a better collaboration foundation, improving data accessibility, security, version control, sharing, Microsoft teams integration, and readiness for Copilot.
The Copilot readiness work helped UWBC avoid the common mistake of treating AI as a license rollout, which can have dramatic security consequences. The organization paused to clean up data, strengthen security, prepare SharePoint and OneDrive, form a pilot group, and identify meaningful use cases before expanding AI adoption into live dashbaords, reports, programs, and event attendance insights. The data roadmap created a path toward better decision-making. Instead of relying only on manual and reactive reporting, UWBC began defining the foundation for a more trusted, timely insight into donors, campaigns, designations, and cross-system performance. Managed services added ongoing structure around reliability, security, collaboration, endpoint management, backup, reporting, governance, and strategic technology planning so the organization could reduce day-to-day IT burden and focus more of its attention on community impact.
Why It Matters
United Way of Berks County’s story is a strong example of how a mid-sized nonprofit can modernize with discipline. The organization did not pursue technology for its own sake; it used technology as a way to:
Support staff
Protect information
Improve collaboration
Strengthen governance
Create better visibility
The broader lesson is simple: durable digital transformation does not come from a single tool, it comes from building the right foundation, one practical step at a time. For UWBC, that foundation now spans infrastructure, collaboration, cloud, security, governance, data, managed services, and AI readiness. That range gives the organization a stronger platform for today’s work and a more confident path toward what comes next.
Why Weidenhammer Was Uniquely Positioned To Help
Weidenhammer was well positioned for this work because IWBC did not need a partner for only one system or one project – it needed a partner that understood infrastructure, cloud, collaboration, security, governance, data, managed services, and AI readiness as connected parts of the same operating model.
That breadth mattered, as it allowed UWBC to make progress without forcing internal teams to stitch together disconnected recommendations from multiple vendors. Weidenhammer had the opportunity to help the organization think through what should happen first, how projects should build on one another, and how each technology decision could support their larger mission.
Just as importantly, Weidenhammer understood that nonprofit technology investments must be practical, defensible, and tied to mission value: impact, stewardship of donor funds, and fundraising effectiveness, staff capacity, decision speed, and risk reduction.
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