Microsoft free software for nonprofits, also known as Microsoft grants, is a tool for nonprofit organizations from Microsoft. The overall goal of the program is to empower nonprofits with technology.
Microsoft Free Software for Nonprofits is a suite of tools for nonprofits, charities and associations that helps make organizing your events easier. You can choose from a range of useful Microsoft software including Office 365, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Azure. The Free Software for Nonprofits program is a great opportunity to bring technology to organizations to help you excel in your mission.
Microsoft Free Office 365 Software
Microsoft is known for providing free or low-cost software programs to NGOs around the world. It recently announced that it is offering Office 365 freely to nonprofit agencies in over 40 countries. Office 365 includes anywhere access to web-based versions of the Office tools you know, plus professional email, web conferencing, file sharing, and more. To get started now, you need to sign up for a trial. Meanwhile, Microsoft will verify your eligibility and once qualified, you can start using the service as a donation or upgrade for additional features.
Also, Microsoft offers many resources to nonprofits including software donations, discounted software, cash grants, and training. We also hold events such as conferences and webinars, to help nonprofits better use technology and discuss how technology can help improve their organizations.
Benefits of Microsoft Office 365
With Office 365, nonprofits can cut costs and improve collaboration:
- – Save money, decommission expensive onsite servers and get free to extremely discounted Office 365 nonprofit licensing.
- – Work anywhere, anytime, on any device with the latest version of Microsoft Office.
- – Get the latest technology, including real-time tracking and multiple authoring for your board reports.
- – Collaborate with your volunteers with video conferencing and instant messaging. Work seamlessly across devices, like iPads and PCs.
- – Office 365 works for any nonprofit, from small organizations with tight budgets and simple needs to large organizations that work with sensitive information and have more complex needs.
Microsoft Office 365 allows nonprofits to streamline processes. Office 365 can help you if:
- – You are trying to pull your nonprofit into the 21st century and modernize technology without breaking the bank.
- – You work with sensitive information and need to be compliant.
- – Your staff needs to be more mobile and flexible in how they work.
- – You need to increase collaboration and communication among staff or external stakeholders.
Microsoft OneNote
OneNote is a note-taking application. It provides a hub for all of your notes, which can be organised into separate notebooks, and individual sections within notebooks. It is compatible with a range of digital formats, meaning it’s possible to pin multimedia documents as well as simple text.
Microsoft’s OneNote is a hidden gem of the Office suite of applications that can save your organization time, paper, and stress!
Rather than jotting down notes on scraps of paper, or penciling your team brainstorms on whiteboards and sheets of butcher paper, capture them digitally in OneNote, so they can be easily shared, added to, edited, and distributed.
Benefits of OneNote Software
1. OneNote enables collaboration in real-time:
As Office 365 is cloud-based, you can share a OneNote file with other people to enable a real-time, collaborative workbook. Notebooks can be shared for viewing or editing, and as OneNote automatically saves as you work, multiple users can collaborate at the same time.
It’s not unusual for accidents to happen when there are multiple users editing the same file. OneNote has this covered. Through its ‘history’ tab, you can view past revisions to track changes and restore file versions.
2. OneNote secures sensitive information:
Like any program that stores information, notebook software needs to have security measures in place to ensure that only those who should have access do so. OneNote has the functionality to password-protect individual sections, securing information through the 3DES encryption standard.
In addition to this, if OneNote remains inactive for a specified period of time, it automatically locks your password-protected sections to ensure they’re kept private.
3. You can use OneNote to record ideas and information on the go:
OneNote is designed for use on any device, and it’s available on all major operating systems including iOS and Android. So by synchronizing OneDrive notebooks across multiple devices, users can access all their notes, as well as create new notes, regardless of whether they are in the office or out and about.
Like a word processor, text, tables, images, and links can be added to the application. Also, if you’re using a device with touch capability, you can write or draw directly into the system. OneNote can even scan your handwritten text, and convert it into typed text.
4. You can support your notes with multimedia:
As well as the ability to enter text (processed or handwritten), images, and other media types that are possible through Microsoft Word, OneNote lets you record audio and video straight into your notebook. This is perfect for documenting meetings and sharing them with co-workers. OneNote can also recognize spoken words, so you can search through recordings to find exactly what you’re looking for.
5. OneNote can be integrated with other software:
The great thing about Office 365 is that its applications integrate simply and perfectly. For instance, OneNote can be synced with Outlook, enabling you to can send information from emails straight to OneNote, and likewise, notes can be directly emailed from OneNote.
Its integration capabilities don’t just end with Microsoft applications. You can install a number of plugins to add functionalities to OneNote, like Zapier, which connects OneNote with applications such as Salesforce, Trello and Slack. This enables applications to work in harmony, improving productivity.
Microsoft Excel Software
Excel can be a powerful tool for nonprofits looking to do more with their data. While Excel has been used for decades as a great tool for data collection, sorting, and exporting, many nonprofits don’t realize the array of capabilities that Excel offers when it comes to gleaning data insights, analyzing trends, and extracting key information to use for grant reports, funding requests, program evaluations, and more.
Benefits of Microsoft Excel
1. Best way to store data:
Even if you don’t use any of the options or any tool which Excel offers you, it is the best way to store data. Why I’m saying this because Excel is a kind of application that is used by millions of people. So, when you store data in Excel and then share it with others, they can access that it easily.
2. You can perform calculations:
What makes Excel the best spreadsheet application on the planet is its ability to perform calculations. In Excel, you have a complete list of functions (Top 100) that you can use for the calculations.
Basically, an Excel function is a predefined formula that returns a specific result based on the values you specify. But apart from that, you can also create your own formulas by combining two or more functions or just by performing calculations using operators.
3. All the tools for data analysis:
The core motive of having data is to analyze and to get insights out of it. The good news is Excel has some of the most powerful tools to analyze data.
Imagine you have data with thousands of rows, you can insert a pivot table out of that data and create a summary table.
Some of the things you can do with pivot tables to analyze data:
- Grouping Dates in a Pivot Table
- Conditional Formatting in a Pivot Table
- Rank Column in a Pivot Table
- Add a Date Timeline in a Pivot Table
- Running Total Column in a Pivot Table
4. Easy to data visualizations with charts:
In Excel, you have all those options to create charts and present your data in a visual way.
All those major types of charts that you need to use to present your data are already there and you can insert them with a single click.
If you go to the Insert Tab, in the charts group, you can find all the charts which you can insert. Not just that, there’s also a button called recommended charts that you can use to let Microsoft Excel recommend you the best possible chart to use for the data you have in your worksheet. And if you think that you need something other than the default charts you have the option to create advanced charts using some specific methods. And you can also create in-cell charts to make your data easily understandable for anyone.
5. You can print reports easily:
Even if you are a person who likes to save trees but there could be a point where you need to print reports to share with others or present it to someone.
Well, Excel allows you to print with a lot of customization where you can change the margin, paper size, orientation, etc.
There’s a whole bunch of options that you can use for page setup before printing a report.
6. So many free templates to use:
One of the most popular things about Excel is you can create dashboards and templates.
There’s a whole bunch of free templates that you can download and use.
Free Excel Templates to Start with
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is the public cloud computing platform by Microsoft which offers software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). It comprises more than 600 cloud services and supports varied operating systems, databases, and developer tools. And, even better, we actually integrate with Microsoft Azure to help on-call teams improve incident response for Azure-based environments.
1. Enhance and Implement Backup and Disaster Recovery:
Azure is a backup and disaster recovery dream tool. Why? Because of its flexibility, advanced site recovery, and built-in integration.
As a cloud-based solution, Azure is innately flexible – it can back up your data in almost any language, on any OS, and from any location. Plus, you define the frequency and extent of your backup schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
Tape backup has a time and place, but it has limited abilities as a stand-alone backup and disaster recovery solution. Azure site recovery can enhance your tape backup with offsite replication, minimal onsite maintenance, up to ninety-nine years of data retention, minimal or no capital investment, and minimal operational costs. Azure backup stores three copies of your data in three different locations in the data center, and then another three copies in a remote Azure data center, so you never have to worry about losing data.
If you’re in a Windows virtual environment, Azure’s built-in integration for the additional backup will be a quick and painless solution. Azure site recovery integrates with System Center and HyperV architectures, creating a robust and seamless cohesion between Azure, System Center, and HyperV.
2. Host and Develop Web and Mobile Apps:
Whether you’re looking for a platform for hosting, developing, or managing a web or mobile app, Azure makes those apps autonomous and adaptive with patch management, AutoScale, and integration for on-premise apps. With Automatic patch management for your virtual machines, you can spend less time managing your infrastructure and focus on improving your apps. Azure also comes with continuous deployment support, which allows you to streamline ongoing code updates.
AutoScale is a feature built into Azure Web Apps that adjusts your resources automatically based on customer web traffic so you have the resources you need when traffic is high, and save money when you’re not in peak times.
Through Azure, you can seamlessly link your web app to an on-premise app. Connecting apps in both locations let both employees and partners securely access resources inside your firewall—resources that would otherwise be difficult to access externally.
3. Distribute and Supplement Active Directory:
Azure can integrate with your Active Directory to supplement your identity and access capabilities—this gives your DNS a global reach, centralized management, and robust security.
With Azure, you can globally distribute an Active Directory environment that is direct connected enabled. No other cloud provider has the ability to extend the reach of your domain controller and consolidate AD management like Azure. If you have multiple locations or use on-premise apps or cloud apps like Microsoft 365, Active Directory integration with Azure will be the central tool for managing and maintaining access to all of these tools.
Azure also enables you to utilize multi-factor authentication, adding a new layer of security to your data and applications with zero hassle for your users. You can also easily implement a single sign-on for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS cloud apps.
4. Innovate with IoT Industry Solutions:
The scalability, flexibility, and security of Microsoft Azure make it the perfect resource for companies moving toward IoT solutions. You can connect your devices to the cloud using solutions that integrate with your existing infrastructure and start collecting new data about your company.
Within the Azure IoT Hub, you can monitor and manage billions of devices and gain insights to help you make better business decisions, improve customer experiences, reduce complexity, lower costs, and speed up development.
The enhanced security of Azure is a huge asset for IoT solutions, which traditionally have security gaps that hackers can take advantage of. Other benefits include remote monitoring and predictive maintenance and analytics.
Conclusion: Microsoft free software for nonprofits offers businesses and nonprofits the ability to access the latest technology. Every year, they offer volumes of software to help you with your work so that you can focus on what’s important- helping others. with this software, you can enhance productivity with comprehensive office tools, safe websites for kids, and more.