Electronic Fax Alternatives for Your Nonprofit

According to some recent statistics compiled by TechSoup’s GreenTech Project, 210 billion sheets of paper are consumed by faxing in US companies every year. That adds up to 16 million trees. With numbers like that, it’s time for nonprofits to start rethinking how we fax. In this article, we’ll take a look at several paperless fax options and offer some tips for making the transition to electronic fax as painless as possible. By combining electronic fax technologies with paper-saving common sense, you can make a sizable dent in the amount of paper used at your nonprofit.

Paperless faxing is easier and less expensive than you might think. New electronic fax solutions have made sending and receiving faxes as easy and as frugal as sending an email. Although some of these solutions entail an initial monetary investment, they represent significant long-term savings over the steady stream of paper and repairs required by a traditional fax machine.

The economic and environmental benefits of electronic fax are obvious, but there are practical benefits too. Instead of keeping old faxes in folders in an unwieldy file cabinet, you can store them on your computer or network along with your other important documents, ready to find whenever you need them. Electronic fax also saves you time, freeing staff and volunteers from the arduous task of manually sending and sorting fax documents. Moreover, electronic fax is more convenient than traditional fax: when you’re away at a conference and need to receive a fax, there's no need to rely on copy shops, hotels, or other third-party fax machines.

Electronic fax solutions fall into two broad categories, online services and software. Online fax services charge small fees for the ability to send and receive fax messages over the Internet using only a Web browser or email. Fax software sends and receives faxes electronically from a computer in your office, through either a traditional phone line or the Internet.

Online Fax Services

Online fax services are a simple way to start sending and receiving faxes electronically without a large investment upfront. These services require only an Internet connection; no additional hardware or phone lines are necessary. When you submit a fax message via email or an online form to a fax service, the service adds your message to a queue to be transmitted through phone lines. If the service encounters a busy signal or disconnection, it will automatically keep attempting to send the message. When someone sends a fax to your online fax number, the service transmits the message to you as a graphic file.

Most services charge less than $20 a month, a fee that includes a dedicated fax number and a certain number of incoming and outgoing domestic faxes (international faxes are usually charged separately). Popular choices include MyFax, GreenFax, and eFax. Open Directory provides a thorough listing of online fax services. MyFax offers donations via TechSoup Stock and has a discounted program for nonprofits. Other services may offer discounts or special packages for nonprofits as well.

Most online fax services allow users to send messages through a Web interface or as an email attachment. When you send an email attachment to be faxed, the service automatically creates a cover sheet using the subject line and body of the email message. MyFax additionally integrates with Microsoft Office products, allowing users to fax documents instantly from programs like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Most services store faxes online for about a year so that you can view them from any computer with an Internet connection.

Most existing landline fax numbers can be moved to an online fax service for a small fee; contact the fax service to find out if your number is portable. If your landline company doesn’t let you port your fax number, you can still have the number forwarded to the new fax service number. When people send a fax to your old number, the call will automatically redirect to your fax service.

The common format for electronic faxes is Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), but third-party software can convert them to Adobe PDF or any other format that suits your organization.

Fax Software

You may prefer to send and receive electronic faxes using the computer hardware already present in your office. A desktop fax client is a piece of software that lets your computer serve as a stand-in for a traditional fax machine, sending and receiving faxes via modem. A fax server provides all of the computers in a network with the ability to send, receive, and manage faxes.

Desktop Fax Clients

If you don’t send faxes very often and you don’t need a dedicated phone number for receiving faxes, then a desktop fax client may be the simplest and least expensive electronic fax solution for you. You probably already have access to a desktop fax client through your operating system.

Mac OS X 10.3 or later and every version of Windows XP include fax clients, although Windows XP’s client is not installed by default. To use your Windows XP or Mac OS X computer as an electronic fax machine, all you need is a dial-up fax modem (most modern modems are fax modems). If you connect to the Internet through a dial-up connection, you’ll need a second modem and phone line to use the Internet and fax at the same time. This tutorial from Microsoft explains how to activate the fax capabilities in Windows XP. For information on faxing from your Mac, check out Apple’s Print and Fax Support area.

The Business and Ultimate Editions of Windows Vista include fax capabilities through Windows Fax and Scan. This article from WindowsNetworking.com outlines the features and benefits of Windows Fax and Scan.

Note that if you use voice over IP (VoIP) phone lines at your office, T.38 (fax over IP) functionality needs to be enabled in order for you to send and receive faxes. Check with your VoIP provider to find out if fax over IP functionality is available.

Fax Servers

Fax servers provide fax functionality to users throughout a network, using either a traditional phone line or fax over IP. Fax servers can be highly customized to integrate with your existing communications infrastructure. Servers can filter faxes to be sent to the appropriate users, deliver faxes as emails and vice versa, and incorporate fax functionality into other applications. Like any enterprise server, installing a fax server and training your staff to use it represent a substantial investment of time and money; however, the customizability, flexibility, and scalability of a fax server could make it the right choice for a medium or large organization with an IT staff and substantial fax needs.

Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 both include a fax server role. When activated, the fax server role can provide fax capabilities to an entire network. Administrators can monitor incoming and outgoing faxes and establish rules for routing incoming faxes to the correct users. The fax server role is compatible with the existing fax services mentioned above in both Windows XP and Vista.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 interfaces with the fax server role in Windows Server or Small Business Server, integrating fax functionality directly into Outlook or Entourage. Fax messages are delivered to the appropriate users’ inboxes along with email. As in MyFax, users can access fax functions directly from the Microsoft Office interface. For more information, see this document from Microsoft on Unified Messaging in Exchange 2007.

Cisco Fax Server, formerly known as Captaris RightFax, is another popular fax server designed to run on Windows Server. Like Exchange, Cisco Fax Server can integrate with other messaging servers for a unified communications environment. Cisco Fax Server integrates with VoIP systems.

Cisco’s fax over IP solutions utilize T.37 functionality. T.37 builds upon T.38, adding the ability to store messages for future delivery. Therefore, T.37 allows for an always-on, never-busy fax line. More information on the distinction between T.37 and T.38 is available from Cisco.

Best Practices for Electronic Fax

Now that you’re ready to adopt electronic fax at your organization, let’s talk about some simple measures you can take to smooth the transition. If you plan ahead, electronic fax can quickly become a routine part of the workflow at your nonprofit.

Printing

When possible, try to avoid printing your electronic fax messages. Not only is the extra paper bad for the environment and your budget, but it also makes it more difficult to manage and organize your old faxes. Keeping your faxes on a computer makes them easier to find when you need them, no matter where you are.

When it is necessary to print a fax, be sure to print only the necessary pages in a transmission. Using print management software and the duplexing feature on many printers, you can save paper while avoiding unnecessary clutter.

Storage

Where do you keep electronic fax messages as they come in? If you’ll be the only person managing faxes, you can create a designated folder for them on your computer. If multiple people will be handling them, then it might be a good idea to create a shared folder on your network. Although you can always email the TIFF file directly to the person responsible for a message, it’s a good idea to have a central repository for them as well. If most of the faxes you receive fit into certain categories, try creating subfolders. Like sorting emails, give the subfolders meaningful names that won’t be easily confused with one another.

Remember to back up your faxes just like other data. Exchange Server and other fax servers allow you to archive your faxes concurrently with routine email backups. If you’re using desktop fax software or an online service, be sure that your routine backups include the folders where you’re storing faxes. Just like emails, you should keep a permanent archive of fax messages in accordance with your nonprofit’s policies.

When planning your fax solutions, be sure to consider what sort of security or encryption will be necessary. Using the security settings available on your file server, you can ensure that only authorized users can view your fax messages. If your fax messages include credit card numbers and other sensitive data, be sure to protect your constituents’ privacy with appropriate file encryption.

Naming Conventions and Searching

How do you keep track of all of your faxes? Start by working out a good naming convention for the filenames. In the example below, we’ve used the simple convention date_name_subject. This will make it easy to find the right fax among hundreds.

Most online fax services let you control the naming convention for files, so you can choose whether to include details like the date and time of the transmission and the sender’s name and fax number.

Although the actual text of your faxes isn’t searchable, you can include pertinent information about each fax in the file properties, as we’ve done below. This will allow you to find files quickly using the search features built into your operating system.

A keyword like “unresolved” can be a good way to keep track of faxes that still require a response or other action. If you search for “unresolved,” you can use the results as a to-do list. If multiple people will be checking the folder on a regular basis, then try using each recipient’s initials as a keyword.

As the appropriate users receive and respond to faxes, they can treat them like other important documents. Archive faxes along with the other documents relating to a project, just as you would with other communications. This way, you can always refer to faxes relating to a project when viewing other associated documents.

Even in the much-lauded paperless office, fax is still a necessary technology for many nonprofits. By choosing the electronic fax solution that best fits your organization’s size, budget, and needs, you can cut down on paper use, save money, and keep your faxes organized and manageable. Once you’ve permanently shut off your fax machine, don’t forget to recycle it.