Forum Discussion
Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant is being discontinued
UPDATED: Microsoft sent affected nonprofit organisations an email similar to the below on Wednesday/Thursday 14/15th May announcing that Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant is being discontinued. A ...
For us, small enviromental and multicultural NGO, it will be a disaster. After years of implementing M365 desktop tools — in team with very low digital skills — this change puts us in a position where we either pay for tools we were told were donated to support our mission, or lose access to digital ecosystem that have become essential to our operations.
In our case, it means risking four years of work integrating SharePoint, Teams, Planner, Bookings, Loop, and training people in Office apps. It means potentially migrating somewhere terabytes of data: uploaded into cloud 34 years of project archives, legal interventions, photo and video documentation, community records, financial data. Or it means finding funds we don’t have — or abandoning systems we finally got to work after a massive learning effort.
It looks like the old, disgusting trick: offer something for free, get people invested, then switch to paid — knowing full well they’re too deep in to back out. When this is done by one of the richest companies in the world, to groups who fight air and water pollution, deforestation, climate disaster, changing laws, social exclusion — it hits even harder.
The worst part is that this doesn’t just hurt users — it hurts the causes. This move will weaken civil society. It will set back digitalization in activism by years. Deep disappointment and frustration across the nonprofit community is real. We need Microsoft to hear it loud and clear — and we need allies here in this tech community to speak up with us.
ArkadiuszWierzba, As a small non-profit who works with many other non-profits I sympathize. And agree, it's such a pittance for Msft it baffles me why they bother with the change. But here's how I put it into context:
The incremental cost impact of the M365 Premium grant elimination (setting aside the other licensing changes) is $600/year. Significant for small nonprofits, yes. The incremental cost ($, time, learning curve etc) of the platform migration you outline is surely greater.
Meanwhile, the other costs of operating a non-profit keep going up. Healthcare for our employees, rent on our offices and insurance on our vehicles, event costs, etc...no one is giving that stuff away either.
And in the US, millions of $ in grants to nonprofits were yanked without notice and with total disregard for the positive outcomes these orgs deliver. That's the real disgrace.
As a board member and funder, I'd urge every nonprofit to do defensive budgeting: get pessimistic about revenue sources, and realistic about cost increases.
