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Top five free and discounted Microsoft benefits for Charities

Posted : 29 July 2021

Posted In : Blogs

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Since 2017, Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact programme has been working to empower Charities in a number of ways. To support more Charities, Softwerx- in partnership with Microsoft- are facilitating five main initiatives to build the technological capacity and resilience of Charities across the UK. By leveraging these offers, Charities can adopt a ‘Microsoft First’ approach for cloud services, productivity, security and compliance.

1. The first 10 licences of Microsoft 365 Business Premium are free
The Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence is the ideal licence for combining security and compliance with productivity and creativity. Access to all the standard and useful Office apps are included, along with Advanced Threat Protection and PC & mobile device management, meaning wherever workers are and whatever they are working on, they can be protected. The first ten licences are free, with any additional licences benefitting from discounted pricing.

2. Get $3,500 of donated Azure Credits per year
Moving your services and data to the cloud has many benefits to both employees and the organisation, but the costs involved can be quite daunting, which is often enough to put people off doing it. As a non-profit organisation, you could receive an Azure grant of $3,500 USD per year to access the entire portfolio of Azure cloud services.

3. The Essential SIEM Service for Charities
The ‘Essential SIEM service for Charities’ is a one-day proof of concept that takes advantage of the $3,500 worth of Azure Service Credits Microsoft donates each year, along with Azure Sentinel, the Cloud based SIEM solution from Microsoft.

Microsoft Azure Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution. Azure Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response.

How does it benefit the organisation?

  • Collect data at cloud scale.
  • Detect previously undetected threats.
  • Investigate threats with artificial intelligence.
  • Respond to incidents rapidly.

Our one-day proof of concept deployment provides the minimum configuration for onboarding which includes:

  • Set up Azure Sentinel, utilising your annual allowance of $3,500 of free Azure Service Credits for the POC.
  • Connect 2/3 native Microsoft services to Sentinel – Office 365, Azure AD & Defender (if relevant).
  • Basic overview.
  • Setup notification for Azure consumption to warn if monthly usage will exceed $300 and demonstrate how to monitor costs.

The discounted price for this one-day proof of concept is £950.

Learn more by downloading the One Day POC Workshop Playbook.

4. Boost your skillset with the Microsoft Digital Skills Centre
The more you can learn about your Microsoft environment, the better off you will be. To support Charities to enhance their own knowledge, Microsoft have partnered with TechSoup to provide a selection of free courses that will help Charity employees boost their confidence and skills.

Have a look at the available TechSoup Courses here.

5. Utilise Microsoft’s Fundraising & Engagement app for Dynamics
Crucial to any Nonprofit is the ability to raise funds for their cause by engaging their donors in the best way possible. At a time where the usual routes of fundraising are restricted, intelligent use of existing data is critical. Microsoft offer grants for their new Dynamics 365 Fundraising and Engagement package that will help to modernise donor engagement and operations.

Microsoft is supporting Charities to do their best work
Overall, Microsoft’s offers for Charities are making best-in-class cloud services, productivity and security tools more accessible and affordable. This list above only scratches the surface of what is possible. I believe these five reasons above reveal why Softwerx champions a ‘Microsoft First’ approach for security and compliance for Charities.

Many Charities such as Kidney Research and YMCA Trinity Group have benefitted already from adopting a Microsoft First approach to leverage their existing Microsoft investment resulting in dramatic savings and security gains. If you would like to learn more, get your copy of the latest Microsoft Security Insight Report for Charities, arrange a free Microsoft Discovery Workshop for your Charity, or you can email me on nick.catling@softwerx.com or call on +44 1223 935329.

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