For years, Microsoft’s nonprofit program gave a wonderful benefit – free Microsoft Office licenses for up to 10 users. For the nonprofits I help, it’s been a huge benefit to give volunteers and employees access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the other Microsoft Office applications. (Although Google Workplace is superior, it’s hard to break people’s old habits of using Microsoft.) Sadly, Microsoft discontinued the license grant for nonprofits to get free licenses for Microsoft Office. Nonprofits can still receive the “Microsoft 365 Business Basic” for free, but that only gives access to the web versions of the Office applications. So disappointing. Many of the people I help know how to use the desktop versions of Microsoft Office – but moving them to browser-based applications are FAR more difficult for them. Often, they don’t even understand why they have to sign in to use desktop applications.
To be fair, Microsoft has not abandoned nonprofits – they just made it more difficult for groups that have been doing their same processes for a years. Now, they have to convert to Microsoft’s web-based apps (which again, are no where near at good as Google Docs and Google Sheets.) And why? Because like all big software companies, they don’t want people using local / desktop versions of software anymore. They want to force everyone to the cloud. WHY? Because you can’t charge someone ‘forever’ if they don’t need software updates. (I still use QuickBooks Desktop 2019, and it works fine. I don’t need the latest and greatest to just keep track of expenses.) Older versions of applications like Word and Excel work just fine for 99% of the non-‘big’ business, home, or small nonprofit users – because they are just doing the basics. They don’t need the latest and greatest ‘Ai’ functionality to sum a column of numbers, or to write a thank you letter.
Microsoft deserves credit for the years they offered the benefit – but they also deserve criticism for pushing software that isn’t needed. That said, I get it – businesses exist to make money. But there are PLENTY of businesses over-paying every month for software (often unused software… go look at how much of our tax dollars were spent by our Government to pay Microsoft for licenses that went unused for years!) Continuing to offer the same applications they’ve given for years would not have hurt them – it just wouldn’t help them continue to get people addicted to their new web-based applications.
What makes this worse is – the desktop applications are still available. And again, credit to Microsoft, as they are only charging $3.36 per month for a desktop license of MS Office… but why? Just because they can. And for some tiny nonprofits, that $40 per year, per person shouldn’t be too big of a burden – but it’s still extra work and frustration for those users. At least, for now, it’s still FAR less than Microsoft’s regular pricing. I guess I’m just disappointed that Microsoft’s cost is effectively zero, but they now charge for it. It was a generous program – Microsoft just chose to become less generous.
Yes, Google’s Nonprofit offering is better – although they ONLY have web-based applications – which doesn’t help the ‘older’ users who are brain-stuck using the desktop applications. And yes, Google charges monthly fees for software, whether you use it or not. But for small nonprofits, Google’s offering is still better – for now – until they get too greedy, or less generous like Microsoft has done.
