Good to hear you’ve got a board with some knowledge - I’m sure you know that puts you in a lucky minority. All the groups that have been my biggest pleasure to deal with have also had reasonably clueful boards & usually a good Chief Exec ;)

Sounds like you’re pretty successful with a mixed environment. As cross-platform desktop apps have become more popular, and more apps have moved online, the desktop seems to be less relevant outside of a few users dependent upon niche apps…

…& finance is certainly the one usually tied to Windows. It’s a shame that the BVSC VCS accounts solution, that was dangled so enticingly in front of the FOSS world, seems to have been withdrawn again.

I’ve worked in the charity sector in London for 11 years now and you’re right, there is often a real resistance to using free software from many different quarters.

From my experience in smaller, locally governed organisations it’s usually down to ignorance and/or one or two people’s ‘expertise’ with various incarnations of Windows and Windows-only (usually paid-for) software.

In the one national charity I worked for, they had their own IT department at HQ and, of course, their was a vested interest in maintaining (in all senses) the established Windows system.

Now I’m the grandly-titled Chief Exec. of a local charity with just two part-time staff in addition to me, plus a couple of volunteers, a handful of IT savvy members and a semi-computer-literate Board. I installed Ubuntu on all our machines so people have a choice between Windows, Ubuntu and even Mac OSX on a couple.

The only people who seem to get on with Ubuntu (apart from me) are new users who have not used Windows or Mac before. Sadly, I doubt they would even be able to tell anyone who asked that they use Ubuntu - to them it is just a computer for doing work or having fun. Although that’s kind of what it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? People who are used to Windows prefer to stick with what they know, viruses and all, and our Mac users are every bit as fanatical about using our Macs as you might expect.

I had started using GnuCash to keep our accounts, but then we were fortunate enough to have a very experienced accountant join our Board and he uses a Windows-only paid-for programme. But I do think there is a real opportunity to take Linux to all the smaller, local organisations who don’t have IT departments as long as it’s done in the right way, focussing on what people already know and do and building on that familiarity wherever possible.

Hope your MFS meeting went well - The Lass O’Gowrie! Wow! That brings back a few very hazy memories from a long time ago ;-)