Accelerating transformation for nonprofits with Technology for Social Impact

Medical Teams International worker checks a little girl's throat
Medical Teams International utilizes technology to empower medical staff to improve care for some of the world’s most vulnerable people. Photo courtesy of Medical Teams International.

Nonprofits play an incredibly important role in addressing the world’s toughest challenges — whether providing education opportunities to young people in underserved communities, offering shelter and food to the displaced or homeless, or delivering healthcare and medicine to remote populations.

Microsoft has a longstanding commitment to global corporate philanthropy. Since 2016, we have donated more than $2.5 billion in cash grants, software, hardware and cloud technology to hundreds of thousands of nonprofits and helped 90,000 move to the cloud. Most recently, in September 2017 we launched Tech for Social Impact (TSI), powered by a sustainable social model where profits are reinvested into expanding support for nonprofits. The TSI team is dedicated to making world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable, so that nonprofits can drive even greater impact.

Over the past six months, we’ve worked closely with nonprofit organizations around the world, including Medical Teams International, Norwegian Refugee Council and Team Rubicon, to help accelerate their organizational transformation with technology. We’ve offered new services to nonprofits, restructured how we engage them and continued to make improvements along the way. Our goal is to triple the number of nonprofits we serve — to 300,000 over the next three years. To accomplish that, we are making the following improvements and changes to our nonprofit offers while continuing our longstanding donation program, including helping our customers move to the cloud with our Azure and Office 365 E1 donation offers.

Predictable pricing with standardized discounts
One clear message from nonprofits worldwide is that predictable pricing is critical to strategic IT planning. We are creating a standard discount model across cloud and on-premises products that provides the transparency required for effective IT planning. A majority of our standard software and SaaS solutions, such as Office 365 E3, will be available at affordable prices — on average, 75 percent off commercial pricing. Likewise, a majority of our software and SaaS cloud solutions, designed for premium enterprise-class scenarios, such as Office 365 Enterprise E5, will be available for an average of 60 percent off commercial pricing.

Focusing program to improve small nonprofit support
A majority of nonprofits have 50 employees or fewer, and our goal is to ensure that these organizations have access to the tools they need to effectively leverage technology and accelerate their missions. That’s why we are optimizing our technology donation program to better serve these nonprofits, by providing access to on-premises and cloud technology tuned to their needs. We are also increasing flexibility in accessing the Microsoft technology they need, when they need it.

More cloud and hardware offers
Starting March 1, we are expanding the availability of Microsoft 365 E3 through web direct, to help nonprofits address their productivity and security needs. We are making Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Cloud PBX and Phone System available as stand-alone offers, and we have Office 365 solutions specifically to empower nonprofit volunteers. Our Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Book 2 offers also will be extended in 10 markets worldwide.

These services are only the beginning because we know nonprofits around the world need quality, affordable deployment and migration services. To this end, we are investing in deployment services like FastTrack and other partner capabilities worldwide. We also are working with our engineering teams and partners to design specific nonprofit solutions to address important capabilities, such as volunteer management, program management, fundraising intelligence, operations and security.

Global footprint for nonprofits of every size
To ensure nonprofits have access to this technology in every corner of the world, we’re expanding the number of ways they can obtain our technology:

  1. Enterprise Agreement (EA). In November 2017, we announced nonprofit pricing through Microsoft’s Enterprise Agreement structure. The EA structure allows for easier administration through integrated purchasing and billing for cloud and software needs.
  2. Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program. Starting April 1, CSP for Office 365, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics nonprofit offers will be available wherever these offers are sold commercially. CSP is a licensing model that provides more flexibility to access Microsoft’s cloud solutions while bringing value added partner services and support to nonprofits.
  3. Expansion of Open Charity pricing program to all markets currently not served. On March 1, the Open Charity pricing program will become available across all European, Middle Eastern and African markets. We will complete this expansion by April 1 to include Latin America and Asia markets not currently served by Open Charity.

Our goal is to better serve nonprofits so they can better support their beneficiaries. We encourage you to explore all of our technology solutions and services for nonprofits at our Microsoft Nonprofits homepage. Sign up here to start the process of obtaining discounted and donated Microsoft services.

 

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