I’ve been getting emails from Microsoft for the past several weeks about a new (?) initiative for non-profits. While it is always a little suspicious about getting help from the Microsoft behemouth (“We’re from Microsoft, and we’re here to help”) its also worth a look. To cut the chase, it looks as if Microsoft is de-emphasizing traditional programs that run on your own computer that you obtain with a perpetual license in favor of pushing people towards their subscription model.

Its not as if we’re not using Microsoft already. Windows, Microsoft Office, and various cloud services from Microsoft already make a lot of sense even before their new push into the non-profit sector.

How much?

So, a cursory glance a the the web site, suggests that you can receive all of the services and applications in Microsoft 365 Business Premium for free for up to ten users. The rack rate appears to be $20.00 per user per month….so this is a pretty good deal.

The Premium service also includes the familiar desktop versions of the Microsoft applications, including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. That said, I have been trying the web versions of these applications through my web browser on my aging Mac, and those seem to work reasonably well. The web versions are free to anyone with a “home” Microsoft account, like a hotmail.com account.

Traditionally, our advice has always been to look to TechSoup for heavily discounted software products. It looks like they are on top of the changes that Microsoft is expecting to have in place by April 2022, and they have a detailed discussion of what the program will look like.