Did you know that Microsoft offers free and discounted products for Charities?
We all know that big technology companies are committed to providing low-cost services to charities and Microsoft is no exception to this…but what you probably aren’t aware of is that Microsoft also gives some of its Cloud products and services for free!
Microsoft has donated licences for its range of Cloud for Nonprofit products and services that are available to registered charities around the world. To qualify for these you have to be eligible based on Microsoft’s criteria, more info on this can be found on their Nonprofit Eligibility page.
There are a wide range of products, the most common are the Microsoft 365 Licences which allow access to email using Exchange Online, provide the flexibility to communicate with team members wherever they are with Microsoft Teams and allow multi-authoring in documents and spreadsheets with SharePoint Online.
What many people don’t know about is the rest of the Microsoft products that charities can get for free. So, in this blog, I will highlight some of the products and services that charities are eligible for, to help you drive improvements, security, and efficiencies within your charity.
- Microsoft Surface Devices – Microsoft offers up to 8% discount for selected devices.
- Microsoft Windows – Yes, that’s right you can get donations of up to 50 licences for Microsoft Windows 11 (or 10), with options to purchase additional licences through Cloud Services Providers like m-hance.
- Microsoft Office 365 – You can get up to 10 Microsoft 365 Business Premium Licences for free and additional licences are discounted. This provides some great benefits to your organisation from a security and collaboration perspective. You can also get up to 300 Microsoft 365 Business Basic licences completely free of charge!
- Power Apps – Microsoft Power Apps is a low/no code solution from Microsoft where you can build custom apps and allow others to use them to record, store and access data, such as surveys, or to streamline business activities like recording and approving expenses. Microsoft has donated up to 10 licences per charity, with additional licences available at a heavily discounted rate.
- Power BI – Power BI is Microsoft’s Cloud-based reporting tool. It allows you to connect to multiple data sources, such as Dynamics 365, Excel spreadsheets and a range of other Microsoft and Third-Party data services together, giving you complete visibility of your data.
- Dynamics 365 Licences – Dynamics 365 is Microsoft’s Customer Engagement solution and is a fantastic way to track members, volunteers and supporters. Microsoft has donated 5 licences to allow you to use this powerful tool to enable your charity to do more.
- Microsoft Azure Credit – As a UK registered charity you’re entitled to an annual credit of $3,500 USD to use to run servers in Microsoft’s Data Centre. This can help provide several benefits from availability and scalability to extended Windows Updates for older versions of Windows Server Operating Systems.
Microsoft changes these offers from time to time, so it is always useful checking what is new and what you can get on the Nonprofit Offers website.
Microsoft has recently released a product called Fundraising and Engagement as part of the Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit Industry Cloud. It combines all the key elements you need to run your charity efficiently and without having multiple systems with data everywhere. This tool becomes even more powerful when you combine it with the flexibility of Power Apps and the visibility that Power BI provides.
More information on the Fundraising and Engagement product that Microsoft has released can be found on this dedicated website. m-hance, as a Global Launch Partner for Fundraising and Engagement, has also released a factsheet that provides further details which can be downloaded from our website.
In this blog I’ve talked a lot about products that you can use to streamline processes and improve productivity – but they are only beneficial if you know how to use them. To this end, Microsoft has a few tools available to make sure you get the most out of the technologies that you use within your Charity.
Specifically for the Nonprofit sector, Microsoft has released its Digital Skills Centre which is designed to help you make the most of the tools that Microsoft is offering. There are live Microsoft training courses available on the Nonprofit Training website as well as courses available as part of the Microsoft Viva Learning platform.
To see if you are eligible to take advantage of these free products and services, visit the Microsoft website here.
We also have a dedicated website specifically for Nonprofit organisations and regularly run webinars and meetings to showcase the latest that the Microsoft Cloud Technology can offer your organisation, for more info, check out www.nfp365.com.
If you would like further information on any of these offers and initiatives, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our team.
Authored by:
Callum Foster, Business Development Manager – Cloud Services