Webinar Recap: Microsoft Social Impact Offers for Nonprofits
by Maria Sadusky | | Strategy | 0 comments
5.5 min to read ✭ 2023 UPDATE
In case you missed our webinar last Thursday, we have recapped the most important highlights that the Give with Bing and Microsoft for Nonprofits teams talked about.
Microsoft Tech for Social Impact is a technology service offering nonprofits discounted and donated solutions that can help them scale and fundraise while Give with Bing is a new way that nonprofits can receive donations while their supporters search with Bing. All in all, Microsoft’s mission is to empower every nonprofit and humanitarian organization to accelerate social good. We all know Microsoft, but what is Tech for Social Impact?
What is Tech for Social Impact
Angelica Guardia started by speaking about the business challenges that arose from Covid-19. Office closures, remote work, and economic impacts lead to development delays and limited agility, which then lead to businesses having to adapt and develop new digital business models. She noted that 74% of nonprofits reported canceled fundraisers, 52% reported significant losses in income, and 40% reported a loss of donations. Angelica says that this is where Microsoft comes in as more and more nonprofits seek technology to help address these changes.
Microsoft’s new business model helps serve nonprofits by integrating philanthropy and affordable commercial sales. Not only does Tech for Social Impact or TSI offer affordable tech solutions for nonprofits, but they invest back into the community. 80% of the 4 million nonprofits in the world are smaller organizations that can also benefit from these affordable solutions.
Special Nonprofit Offers
I’m sure we’ve all heard about “the cloud”. In this case, the cloud empowers nonprofits to collaborate and use tools to streamline operations, measure and improve programming, and drive deeper engagement with beneficiaries and donors. Yes, this is all possible with the cloud and Microsoft’s discounted tools.
Microsoft 365 for the Modern Workplace
With Microsoft 365 you can chat, meet, host events, and collaborate anytime anywhere. This allows you to streamline processes and not let remote work get in the way of your goals. Microsoft Teams is the ultimate hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365.
Azure Migration onto the Cloud
This feature allows you to integrate easily and seamlessly into the cloud with fast application development and security. Microsoft’s priority is to make sure all of these tools are top security. This discount allows you to leverage $3,500 of Azure service credits per year with access to the complete portfolio of Azure products that you will only pay for if you use it. With Azure, you get access to expert guidance and cost optimization tools as well.
Business Applications: Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform, & Fundraising
Whether you are managing fundraising, program delivery, or using Microsoft for your finance, the business applications maximize program impacts and outcomes. On Dynamics 365 Sales and part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit, you can attract, retain, and grow donors through personalized engagement, drive fundraising efficiency and reduce costs with automated processes, and align all nonprofit systems and applications on a purpose-built platform. It allows you to modernize your business processes.
With the Microsoft Power Platform, which Angelica Guardia deems as one especially helpful for smaller nonprofits, you can build no-code and low-code customer applications. Power Apps like Nonprofit Operations Toolkit can leverage all cloud solutions, automate workflows using Power Automate, and build intelligent bots using Power Virtual Agents.
Fundraising and Engagement are technologies that were just released this year that can help you nurture personalized engagement as well as support your fundraising efforts.
Now, you’re probably wondering what all of this costs and how it fits into your budget. Below, we have a chart of what you’re trying to accomplish and which solutions can best fit those efforts.
If you are still having questions about these offers and maybe just would like to find out if any of these will actually work for your nonprofit, you can contact the Tech for Social Impact support team today or read our other blog highlighting specifically the nonprofit offers.
Ad’s for Impact
If you’re not already excited about the offers that Angelica just walked you through, Microsoft has one more discount to offer you! Ads for Social Impact, launched earlier this year, is offering a 50% discount on its owned and operated search advertising, including Bing, AOL, and Yahoo, which contains 1 in every 3 PC searches. This can help extend your reach further from where you are already advertising.
Search ads are specific, which means your organization will only pay when someone clicks on your ad. We know that the Google Ad Grant is another avenue nonprofits may use, but Microsoft states that this is an added avenue to grow awareness, attract new donors/volunteers, and drive more qualified traffic. Plus, Ads for Impact does not have any restrictions on the keywords that you can build on or the amount you can bid on those keywords. With iOS14 changing Google search ads, this new feature may also be a great way to adjust. Although there is an upfront cost of $2,500 (50% discount on $5,000), Microsoft says they are confident that there will be a positive ROI from using these advertising avenues.
Apply here today.
What is Give with Bing?
Microsoft is beginning to engrain its philanthropic footprint into a new business model mentioned before. Give with Bing is a feature of Microsoft Rewards or the loyalty program that allows users to give back to causes, just by searching on Microsoft Bing – at no cost to them. This means that people can opt into using their online searches as a way to give to one of their favorite nonprofits or one that they support. So far, over 9M has been raised for over 45,000 nonprofits.
If you are not aware of Bing, it is a beautiful search engine that is well-known across multiple markets. What sets this search engine apart from Google or others is that this search engine gives the option to give back. A user will join Microsoft rewards and Give with Bing for free, earn points towards their chosen cause, then Microsoft will donate the equivalent cash amount to their chosen nonprofit at the end of the month.
Celebrity Endorsements and Nonprofit Testimonials
Janelle Monae was featured on this webinar in her video explaining how Give with Bing has helped her donate and has helped her with her own cause, Social Justice Learning Institute. She states that she believes “it is important that everyone has access to the resources that they need…that underserved communities deserve access to necessities.” With the help of amazing partners including the Social Justice Learning Institute and Give with Bing, her charity, 1-to-Lunch has distributed 30,000 meals to families in Georgia and Los Angeles.
She has partnered with Microsoft Bing to give back to charities she cares about and mentioned that by joining forces with Give with Bing, “we can encourage donations and help create new dreams, new visions, and opportunities.” She also stated that Microsoft Bing pledged to match all donations received to help make a difference to the people that need it most. To learn more, go to bing.com/janellemonae.
How Nonprofits Can Raise Funds with Bing
Raising money with Bing is fairly simple! The first step is getting a custom URL to share with your supporters, just like Janelle’s link. To do this, you go to your dashboard after creating an account, or the toolkit, and the option to create a custom URL should be right there. The next step is to share this link with supporters through Facebook, Email, Twitter, etc. Then, create your custom landing experience that supporters can be directed to from this link.
Give with Bing offers a co-marketing toolkit for assets and messaging to spread the word. Here is an example of The Trevor Project promoting their new Give with Bing page with their supporters.
To become available in the Give with Bing catalog, your cause needs to be registered with Benevity and be in one of their 8 supported markets. You can confirm if you are already in the catalog here: http://www.bing.com/give/search
There is no limit to how much a nonprofit can raise and the more users, the more donations. Right now, one user can raise up to $10 dollars a month. So the best way to generate more donations is by having more and more users pledging to your nonprofit. Give with Bing will also launch promotional campaigns and partnerships with select nonprofits to increase donations.
