Office 365 for Nonprofits

I just saw that Microsoft offers Office 365 for free to nonprofits. Has anyone looked into this either on a local unit level or churchwide?

The Church is aware of this and has been in conversations with Microsoft for quite a while now about what it means and whether or not they will use it for ecclesiastical leaders. Nothing has been decided yet, but when a decision is made, word will go out.

This sting is dated for 2010, is there an update to the question? i.e. is Office 365 available for use on clerk office computers?

I think you might have looked at the wrong date, because the answer above was only given a couple of months ago.

Putting my support in for this, especially after having to spend $600-700 for Office Licenses for Unit computers at the request of the Stake President. If units are spending the money anyway, we may as well either leverage buying power or try to get the 365. Most leaders I've worked with use Office at work/home and do not want to deal with Openoffice/libreoffice, personally I like the free ones and use them, but I'm not going to push them on people that won't use them.

Just as a note for those following the thread: in the current policy, the church discourages buying office specifically because of the cost.

"To be eligible for nonprofit pricing, we must verify that you own a domain that is registered to a charitable institution. If you click Yes, you will be directed to the trial version. You can verify domain ownership later on." This could make it difficult for a stake to obtain a free subscription.

russellhltn wrote:Just as a note for those following the thread: in the current policy, the church discourages buying office specifically because of the cost.

I understand this is the guideline provided by the Church. However, I'm a stake executive secretary and whenever we receive electronic documents from Church HQ or any of the Brethren, they're MS Office documents, and in several instances we've had trouble working with the documents in OpenOffice/LibreOffice, either because the formatting gets all messed up, or in some instances MS Office features have been used that aren't compatible with the free office suites. So our Stake President (who is VERY disciplined in following direction from the Church) decided we simply need MS Office and authorized me to purchase it.

bcchristensen wrote:

russellhltn wrote:Just as a note for those following the thread: in the current policy, the church discourages buying office specifically because of the cost.

I understand this is the guideline provided by the Church.
...
So our Stake President (who is VERY disciplined in following direction from the Church) decided we simply need MS Office and authorized me to purchase it.

The exact wording is "Microsoft Office: Due to high costs, the Church does not recommend purchasing this software with budget funds." By no means is it prohibited, and the wording is not even as strong as "discourages"; it simply is not recommended.

As for the cost, you can follow the instructions in this post and get MS Office for well under $100, so if the stake president does choose to purchase this software, it doesn't have to impact the budget significantly.

I'm very interested in leveraging Office365 for Stake use... not only does it allow such capabilities as OneDrive for Business (which will be fantastic for collaboration between units and the presidency (not financial data tho, that is against policy)) it also allows for the capability of Lync which is significantly superior to PVC and Skype (unless you buy a skype subscription to allow multiple users). My stake, geographically, is the second largest stake in the world, and we rely heavily on connectivity to include our remote locations.

The problem I ran into is that a Stake isn't a registered charity/non-profit, while individual local units typically are. If we were able to leverage a subdomain to lds.org for example (canada.lds.org) for this, there is significant benefit in turning the different stake and ward/branch leadership callings into an Office365 account and moving away from external third party private email addresses and less secure cloud storage options. Plus, it comes with Office online, so you don't need to purchase Office. the biggest benefit by using Office365 is when someone in one of those leadership positions change. By using the Office 365 subscription based on position, when someone is released, they hand over the account information and they won't need to spend months/years responding to emails sent to their personal/work email addresses they used while in the calling, plus the newly called individual will have the email history at their fingertips. I've been putting a lot of thought into this and have a organizational plan for our stake which I think makes a lot of sense and would love to discuss it further and in more detail with someone in Salt Lake as it could be easily extended to other stakes.

I am a Microsoft employee, not sure what weight I can bring to the discussions, but would love to become involved if possible.

xenserve wrote:...significantly superior to ... Skype (unless you buy a skype subscription to allow multiple users).

Actually, Skype recently changed their free license to include group video calls (up to 9 simultaneous participants). I know that's not the point of your post, but thought I'd mention that one clarification.

xenserve wrote:such capabilities as OneDrive for Business (which will be fantastic for collaboration between units and the presidency (not financial data tho, that is against policy))

Nit-pick: I'm pretty sure I can find policy against membership data as well.

russellhltn wrote:

xenserve wrote:such capabilities as OneDrive for Business (which will be fantastic for collaboration between units and the presidency (not financial data tho, that is against policy))

Nit-pick: I'm pretty sure I can find policy against membership data as well.

I'd say it's much more than a "nit-pick." Given the policy against storing any membership related data in the cloud, it's difficult to imagine what else the units and presidency would have to talk about in this "fantastic collaboration."

Meetinghouse Technology Policy, Section 4.8:

• "4.8.1 Information about members, donations, and financial transactions is confidential and must be protected from unauthorized disclosure."
• "4.8.4 The use of cloud-based services for storing and/or backing up MLS or any membership related data is prohibited."

Yes correct, MLS data is not allowed on any cloud storage (membership or financial), however that is not the primary benefit from the collaboration I was referring to. Stake forms, meeting notes, non-MLS related reports and such are just a couple of examples I can think of.

Glad to hear about the change with Skype. Maybe that's something we can leverage for our stake now.

So early on in this thread, it was stated that "Someone is looking into this, and we will let you know". That didn't happen. It's been over two years. Clearly, no one is looking into this, or perhaps they just failed report the findings back to the thread.

Can someone please provide an update regarding the official research of using Office365 for non-profits?

If the answer is "yes, we can do this, but do not know how to manage, secure, oversee the roll-out, etc." we can support that and perhaps also help. Just don't leave us in the dark because you are not ready to proceed. An update would be appreciated.

like Steven I would like to know if there been any progress in getting Office for Church units? I am specifically interested in getting licenses for a aregional Family History library. We have a number of systems used by presenters and the Open/Libre Office products invarialbly have problems when prsenters bring their PowerPoint presentations in. I will give the procedure dtailed in the pist reference here but would really like to knwow what the current status on MS Office is.

Thanks

athey wrote:We have a number of systems used by presenters and the Open/Libre Office products invarialbly have problems when prsenters bring their PowerPoint presentations in.

For that specific situation, you may want to download and install the free PowerPoint viewer. They won't be able to do any last minute editing, but they will be able to show it.

For that specific situation, you may want to download and install the free PowerPoint viewer. They won't be able to do any last minute editing, but they will be able to show it.

Thanks, having the PP viewer would help but at least half the time people want to make small changes. The Library Director wants a fully functional version.

Hi All

Has there been any progress on the above topic. I am a Microsoft reseller and believe we can use non-profit licenses. We specifically want to use Teams. Please let me know if this is possible.

I am open for discussions on this over an email or telephone call.

Kind Regards
Byran
byranbarkley@hotmail.com
+27 79 888 5596

I too am wondering if there has been any update on OFFICE 365 for Nonprofits. I would like my Bishopric to use OneNote...

Bishopric members come and go. Are you suggesting they all share a common software license on their personal devices?

drepouille wrote:Bishopric members come and go. Are you suggesting they all share a common software license on their personal devices?

Office 365 is cloud-based and uses logins for each individual to manage the license. As long as each individual is their own "named user", then I don't see a problem with that. That's using it as how it is intended to be used.

As callings change, old users are dropped and new users are added. The monthly bill is based on the number of named users. Think of it as individual licenses with centralized billing.

The real question is where do you draw the line? Can you get by with just the bishopric and no assistant clerks? Or will this experience "scope creep" until you have the entire ward council on there? $5 per user per month gets expensive fast.

I noticed Office 365 was an option in the provisioning tool, and that's what's being installed in the computer setup instructions example. But it doesn't install a licensed copy; are they supporting this in some way or is that just a convenience they provide if you decide to get your own license?

craiggsmith wrote:I noticed Office 365 was an option in the provisioning tool, and that's what's being installed in the computer setup instructions example. But it doesn't install a licensed copy; are they supporting this in some way or is that just a convenience they provide if you decide to get your own license?

I haven't looked at the tool in a long time. It may not be just for unit computers. That option might be there to provision employee computers.

russellhltn wrote:I haven't looked at the tool in a long time. It may not be just for unit computers. That option might be there to provision employee computers.

Good point, it is a universal installer.

Any update today? Looking to see if a bishopric can use office specifically for office, cloud, and teams.

Have you looked into the free on-line Office? Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more for free with Office on the web.

I think all you need is a free Microsoft account.

Any updates to this? The fee online Microsoft 365 accounts don't include Microsoft Teams. There are however nonprofit accounts available with an application:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microso ... nd-pricing
Any suggestions on this?
Being able to use Microsoft Teams would replace our current use of Slack, Calendly, and Google Drive, Google Sheets, and Google Docs. Using Teams would make our digital collaborations more efficient.

I would like to add something to this discussion - our Stake has organized a "Self Reliance Centre" for our area. As part of this , I was asked to investigate the best ways to organize the software to make this work more easily for the people called. Stake Service Missionaries director etc.

As part of this I was able to acquire a None profit licence for our group. We have a domain set up and a website for the Self Relainace Centre

www.encentre.ca

It took a little while to figure out how to do this, but once I applied I had this approved in a week !

We now have 300 Licences for MS365 online version which does include Teams and Planner forms etc. I needed to set up all the accounts and Teams etc. Figuring out a starting point has taken some time but seems to be working well.
We also have set up each person phone to have them able to email chat and view the Teams and Planner groups we have set up.

Only issue is getting familiar with how to do all os this ? I am self taught IT support for the Stake and the Group. Lucky I am retired lol

If this is of interest - I could suggest a way

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microso ... nd-pricing

recently our ward got a new system, but they did not install ms office, i requested the support team but no reply, i searched in the web and got "freeoffice2024" and installed its working fine, please try this its good.

suresh. wrote: Fri May 30, 2025 6:28 am i searched in the web and got "freeoffice2024" and installed its working fine, please try this its good.

The wiki is down right now, so I can't see the list, but I think only LibreOffice and OpenOffice was approved.