Microsoft has had a Technology for Good program for some time now and it falls under their Corporate Citizenship efforts.
According to Microsoft they have donated over $2 million dollars a day in software to nonprofits all over the globe. You can learn more about what is available and also read their Nonprofit FAQ’s to see if your nonprofit might benefit from the program.
Microsoft’s nonprofit support is in the news this week because they expanded the program and added Office 365 to the list of software and resources available to qualified non-profits.
Currently Microsoft offers two plans for nonprofits.
The first one is Office 365 Enterprise E1 for Nonprofits. This is a donation option so that means no charge to qualified nonprofits and it provides the following benefits/services:
Unlimited users
Hosted email with a 50GB mailbox per user and an option to use the nonprofits own domain name for email accounts
Web conferencing, presence, and IM with Skype
File sharing with SkyDrive Pro and 25GB of storage per user
Public website with no additional hosting costs
Spam and malware protection via email filtering
Web based tech support as well as 24/7 phone support for critical issues
99.9% guaranteed uptime
SharePoint Intranet site
Office Web App access for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote via browser
Pretty impressive setup for no cost.
If you want to upgrade the plan you can pay $4.50 per user/per month and in addition to all of the above you also get desktop versions of Office 365 programs including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, publisher, Lync and InfoPath. This is the Office 365 Enterprise E3 for Nonprofits plan.
In order to get all of these benefits and deals you must have recognized charitable status in your country and get all of that verified.
There are also two other programs, both listed as “coming soon”, on the plans and pricing page called Office 365 Small Business for Nonprofits and Office 365 Small Business Premium for Nonprofits.
I work with several nonprofits in the local area where I help out with IT stuff and this offer will be the next thing we talk about for sure.