Every day, communities around the world are indebted to critical care and first response nonprofits playing an incredibly important role in supporting and delivering vital services. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on these community heroes as their employees and volunteers have gone beyond the call of duty to sacrifice their own well-being for all of us. At Microsoft, we’ve heard countless stories of nonprofits transitioning to a remote working environment while continuing their services, such as helping at-risk children and families during the crisis.
Two and half years ago, we launched Tech for Social Impact within Microsoft Philanthropies to make world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable for nonprofits to drive even greater impact. Today, we’re building on our long-standing support to the nonprofit sector by committing $35 million to double our Microsoft Azure credits, increase our Windows benefits and add new pro bono services to help critical care and first response nonprofits in their efforts to combat COVID-19. This will help free up scarce resources, support remote work and training, and enable organizations to securely utilize data analysis in their COVID-19 response. While we have temporarily placed limits in some regions on free Azure offers to prioritize existing customers, Microsoft is committed to serve and enable first responders with the technology and resources they need in this critical time.
The commitment specifics:
Eligibility:
- This offer is prioritized for critical care and first response nonprofits, limited to: health support, human services, public safety, food and nutrition, housing support and COVID-19 research organizations. It is active between now and June 30, 2020, for eligible nonprofits.
Benefits:
- Double the Azure credit for specified nonprofits from $3,500 to $7,000 to be used within 12 months
- To support Window Virtual Desktop scenarios we are making 100 licenses of Windows Upgrade available through our TechSoup donation offer and coupling that with a Windows Enterprise E3 trial for up to 100 seats for six months. This will provide the base operating system licenses to take advantage of all the Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities for mid-size organizations
- To help organizations rapidly deploy we are setting up three new remote services free of charge:
o Azure Onboarding Concierge: To help organizations set up their Azure credit subscription, understand administrator roles, cost management and governance best practices
o Windows Virtual Desktop Help Desk: To support organizations with technical questions during their deployment of Windows Virtual Desktop, and will engage organizations with a partner or FastTrack for long–term extended support to ensure an efficient and effective deployment
o Microsoft Community Training (MCT) Concierge: Microsoft Community Training supports personalized learning for a large-scale mobile-based community. This service provides an overview of available content and assists with configuration and deployment
Getting Started:
- Existing eligible organizations: See these benefits in the Microsoft Nonprofit Portal by clicking the COVID-19 response offer and begin provisioning
- New eligible organizations: Start by registering through the Microsoft Nonprofit Portal by clicking “get started” to begin the nonprofit validation process and, once approved as an eligible nonprofit that meets the first response and critical care requirements, the Microsoft nonprofit portal will be provisioned with the COVID-19 response offer
- Additional details: See our FAQ guide
We’ve heard from many organizations responding to COVID-19 of the need to organize and drive actionable insights from their data. To support this, we are announcing the Nonprofit Data Warehouse Quickstart available for all nonprofits, which helps organizations integrate disparate data sources into a single data warehouse and visualize the data via PowerBI. With this tool, organizations can leverage the power of data to determine the most efficient use of resources and more effectively support communities on the ground in this challenging climate.
This Microsoft Philanthropies announcement, alongside our AI for Health focus, is part of Microsoft’s larger commitment toward combating COVID-19, as we are working to support remote education and empower students around the world, enabling businesses to work from home, securing needed medical supplies and supporting local communities. Today’s news builds on our current offers for all nonprofits and we recommend reviewing our COVID-19 Resource Guide for Nonprofits for additional background information.
We deeply appreciate the heroic work of nonprofits across the globe and remain steadfast in our efforts to provide them with the resources to help us overcome COVID-19.