Academy of Civic Organizations Foundation builds a secure digital workspace with Nextcloud

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For the Academy of Civic Organizations Foundation (FAOO – Fundacja Akademia Organizacji Obywatelskich), helping non-profit organizations become more professional starts at home. As an organization dedicated to strengthening Poland’s third sector (non-governmental), FAOO wanted to own its own digital infrastructure to reflect the same values it promotes every day: transparency, efficiency, and responsible data management.
By implementing Nextcloud, the foundation is creating a secure, centralized workspace that protects sensitive user data, improves collaboration, and lays the foundation for better knowledge sharing within the organization.

Supporting thousands of non-profit professionals

Founded in 2013 by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, FAOO helps non-profit organizations improve their management and organizational capabilities through education and professional development.

Its impact reaches thousands of people across Poland. More than 11,000 users have joined its online learning platform, nearly 4,700 certificates have been issued, and over 600 NGO leaders have completed intensive leadership programs such as PROMENGO. The foundation operates with a small core team supported by external experts who collaborate remotely on educational programs throughout the year.

From fragmented files to one trusted workspace

As the organization grew, so did the complexity of managing information. Documents were spread across private Google Drive accounts, Dropbox folders, local computer storage, and email inboxes. Team members frequently exchanged files as email attachments, making version control difficult to maintain and creating security risks.

More importantly, critical organizational knowledge often existed only in individual employee accounts. If someone became unavailable, so did the valuable documentation, templates or educational materials. At the same time, FAOO needed to manage personal data for more than 10,000 participants while ensuring full GDPR compliance. The organization also wanted to encourage a cultural shift from email attachments to modern collaborative work.

Active choice of digital sovereignty

For FAOO, maintaining complete control over its data was a non-negotiable requirement. The foundation selected Nextcloud because it could be deployed on its own infrastructure, making sure that user data remains under its direct control and meeting GDPR requirements.
The decision also aligns with the organization’s broader mission. As an institution that helps other NGOs modernize their operations, FAOO leads by example and demonstrates that secure, open source, and independent digital infrastructure is both practical and achievable.

Building a modern collaboration platform

FAOO is deploying Nextcloud as an on-premises solution hosted on its own servers.

The initial rollout includes:

• Nextcloud Files as a centralized repository for documents and collaborative work.
• Nextcloud Forms to securely collect participant registrations and other sensitive information.
• Nextcloud Assistant to explore sovereign AI for summarizing documents and everyday workflows.

Once the core platform is fully established, the organization plans to integrate Nextcloud with MailerLite to automate participant communication and further streamline its educational programs.

Creating more time for the mission

The biggest expected outcome is transforming how the organization works. By moving from fragmented storage to a single digital workspace, FAOO expects to eliminate version conflicts, improve access to organizational knowledge, and simplify collaboration between employees and external experts
The organization estimates that the new platform will reduce time spent on internal communication and administrative work by around 20%, allowing the team to focus more energy on developing educational programs and supporting Poland’s non-profit community.

Looking ahead

Following the initial deployment, FAOO plans to expand its use of Nextcloud by connecting additional services and safely onboarding external trainers and experts into dedicated project spaces.
By choosing Nextcloud and investing in a secure, open, and sovereign digital workspace, the organization stays committed to helping others build stronger institutions,, thus strengthening civil society in Poland.