Hi - I just discovered this community, and am wondering if someone here might be able to help answer a rather obscure question.
We currently use Office 365 for our church, and am on a communications committee for our denomination, and I’m investigating using it for there too. The challenge I’m running into is some “unclarity” on whether volunteers can get discounts on Office 365, and if so, what the pricing is.
The biggest reason we want to explore this is because many of the groups associated with the denomination are mostly volunteers (board, committees, commissions, etc.) They are spread across Canada and have need for things like video conferencing, document collaboration, etc. Office 365 would be the ideal solution for these teams.
However, on their eligibility page, Microsoft is clear that nonprofits staff only are eligible for nonprofit pricing. They include a footnote that volunteers can get discounts, but there’s no link and no further info I can find on these discounts.
I’ve contacted both Microsoft and TechSoup (which handles nonprofit purchases in Canada) multiple times, and they’ve both basically pointed to each other about this. There are Enterprise-level discounts, but those only kick in at 500 users (which we aren’t even close to). Microsoft told me on the phone “we don’t care” about the details of who we might give licences to, and told me to talk to TechSoup. TechSoup told me by email that they don’t have the authority to give permission for an exception to the licensing terms to give it to volunteers, and to talk to Microsoft about that.
So, it seems that volunteers of small non-profits are stuck between staff-only eligibility and enterprise-level discounts, with no provision for them, even though Microsoft’s Eligibility Page (linked above) specifically states they can get discounts. Even though Microsoft’s rep explicitly told me they don’t care, without that in writing (their emails only pointed me to TechSoup), I am unwilling to recommend violating the terms of the eligibility requirements.
After all that, has anyone here received a more clear answer on this? If anyone can shed some light for me, I would be most grateful.