Dave Williams named 2018 Volunteer of the Year

RICHMOND, Virginia—We recently announced our 2018 Volunteers of the Year for the Retiree category (Bob Parker) and the Job Seeker category (David Crighton), and now we’d like to announce one final Volunteer of the Year, Dave Williams, in the Corporate category. Dave currently works as a cloud architect where he helps clients migrate files to public clouds such as Azure and AWS. With his skills and knowledge, Dave provided expert help to a number of IT4Causes’s clients. Currently working for New Light Technologies, we are fortunate for the time that Dave has contributed to #ITForABetterWorld.

When we asked Dave what inspired him to join IT4Causes, he answered in a “love-at-first-sight” response: “Once I met Tom, his staff, and understood his mission, I knew it would be a good fit.” Dave’s technical skills and availability through the pro bono program at Impact Makers allowed him to contribute over 75 hours as he worked continuously “with Tom to make significant IT changes for the non-profit clients, at very low costs.”

Dave’s role allowed him to provide non-profits with information about quality products. “We were able to advise them on services that they may not have known were available (e.g., $5K Azure credits from MS),” he said. Helping to develop the roadmap for moving traditional on-premise services (e.g., Outlook) to the cloud (Office 365), Dave was an asset to the IT4Causes team and the clients he served.

“At a high level we were able to decommission old infrastructure that resided in on-premise, in their closets and small data centers,” Dave said when asked about his impact, “this equipment was often past the end of life and the organization did not know how to manage it.  By moving the core IT services to the cloud, we removed the local IT management burden from the organization, while providing them superior capabilities, often at no cost due to MS’s non-profit credits.”

Dave’s commitment to service is one of many reasons why he is a recipient of our volunteer of the year award. According to Dave, there are three steps to becoming a volunteer of the year: “volunteer often, don’t be afraid of not knowing, and treat IT4Causes’ clients as you would your normal paying clients.” Dave’s volunteerism principles serve at the foundation of everything that IT4Causes seeks to promote.

We want our volunteers and interns to be as engaged as possible, keeping in mind personal and professional schedules. We actively seek to educate new volunteers in a collaborative and innovative way that allows connection to industry level professionals, and we treat our non-profits clients with the highest level of respect. These principles are what made Dave appreciate his time at IT4Causes.

Finding pleasure in his experience, Dave closed his interview with: “the best part of working with IT4Causes has been getting to know Tom and IT4Causes’ clients,” and we are so happy that Dave could be part of our mission!

If you would like to join our mission of #BetterITForABetterWorld, please do not hesitate to reach out to our volunteer manager.