Microsoft Office 365 for Charities

Microsoft is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially within the tech industry. Although, whether we like it or not we have to work with their products in our day-to-day lives. Pretty much any smart gadget we use will have software that is connected to Microsoft.  Bill Gates and his company, Microsoft, have been helping charities for many years. One of Microsoft's better offerings to charities is the discounted Office 365, which is widely used office software.

According to reports, over 25% of businesses use Mircosoft Office 365. Here at Raffingers we have been using Office 365 for over two years now, so I wouldn’t recommend something that we don’t use. Not everyone here is a big fan of the product (yet), but you cannot satisfy everyone!

Microsoft are offering charities discounted prices on their Office 365 range. The best offer is their Office 365 Business Premium. Qualifying charities can have this for £2.30 per month/per user. So if you have, for example, 10 employees you can have this for £276 per year.

Who counts as a qualifying charity? You have to have a recognised charitable status which, translated into plain English, means you have to be registered with the Charity Commission. In addition to this you also need to be registered with HM Revenue & Customs as a charity and not liable to pay corporation tax. It’s that simple!

What are the benefits? With the Office 365 Business Premium package, you will have access to email 24/7, you don’t have to worry about your server “outage”. Your inbox capacity is a whopping 50gb. You will have 1Tb of file storage and with sharing facility. You can have a fully installed version of Office on up to five devices (PC, Macs, tablet, phone, laptop) with Microsoft security on top!

If you are a registered charity, click here to see all the offers you're eligible for.

There are also other ways in which you can use technology to make your charity better. For example, by using contactless to accept donations. Trials have proven that contactless donation boxes raise more money than other fundraising methods so it is definitely worth the investment! Read our article here to find out more.

For more advice on how to adopt technology to improve your charity’s operations, contact our partner Suda Ratnam on 020 3146 1608 or suda.ratnam@raffingers.co.uk.

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