Joined-up IT for a joined-up charity

Guildford Action is a local charity based in Guildford, Surrey. It runs a day service for people who are homeless or at risk, alongside Guildford Action for Families (GAF). Staff, volunteers and trustees all rely on IT to keep in touch with the people they support.

When Guildford Action became an MFC client in spring 2025, its IT had grown piece by piece. Email sat with one provider, shared files with another, the website with a third, and the phone lines and Internet with another. Shared files were close to the hosting limit and continually crashing, and raising it meant paying more. The charity still used two analogue phone lines, which Openreach is switching off. Wi-Fi came from a mesh system that struggled to cover the offices, hall and meeting room.

Nobody had the full picture, and when something went wrong it was not always clear who to call.

"We had four or five suppliers and none of them talked to each other. Now there is one number to ring, and MFC sorts it." Joanne Tester, Chief Executive Officer, Guildford Action

MFC started with the basics. It registered Guildford Action for Microsoft's nonprofit programme and moved email and shared files into Microsoft 365, so staff now work from one secure system. Donated laptops were checked, upgraded and given clean installs of Windows 11 Pro using charity licenses, at a fraction of the high street price. Email signatures were standardised across the team and MFC took on the website hosting.

Next came phones and internet. MFC replaced the analogue lines with a hosted cloud phone system, kept the charity's existing numbers and supplied cordless handsets for the offices. A new business broadband connection replaced the old line.

"The phones just work. Staff can move around the building and still take calls, which matters when you are supporting people face to face." Joanne Tester, Chief Executive Officer, Guildford Action

The final step, in June 2026, was the network itself. MFC’s partner cabling specialist, DR Data and Communications Ltd, spent three days on site running structured CAT6 cabling to every new access point and planned camera position. Cables were contained in trunking, terminated on a patch panel in a new data cabinet, tested and labelled.

MFC installed an Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine Pro as the router and firewall, a Ubiquiti UniFi PoE switch, and four Ubiquiti UniFi Ultra access points in place of the mesh system. Staff and guests now have separate Wi-Fi networks. The cabling for CCTV is in place, so cameras can be added to the same Ubiquiti UniFi platform without further disruption.

The work was planned around the day service, so the people who rely on Guildford Action could still drop in while it was carried out.

"It was done with very little fuss, and the Wi-Fi now reaches every room." Joanne Tester, Chief Executive Officer, Guildford Action

Today, Guildford Action has one IT partner for Microsoft 365, phones, internet, Wi-Fi, network and website, all supported under a single managed service.