Buying Microsoft 365 as a nonprofit: through a partner or direct from Microsoft

Direct means your organization signs in to the Microsoft Nonprofit Hub with its approved tenant, claims the grant, buys any discounted plans from Microsoft, and manages users in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Microsoft is the seller and your own admin does the work.

Through a partner means a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider orders the nonprofit offers for your tenant in Microsoft Partner Center. The partner bills you and is your first stop for help with orders and licenses. The eligibility rules do not change: Microsoft still decides who qualifies, and the tenant, domain and data stay in your organization's name on either route.

Microsoft says the person who completes the nonprofit registration must be an employee or strategic volunteer of the nonprofit. A third-party IT provider, including a partner, may not register on your behalf. A partner can sit with you while you do it.

• Open the Nonprofit Hub. Choose Apply to create a new tenant, or sign in with your existing Microsoft 365 admin account to register the tenant you already use.
• Enter your name, role, email and country. That email becomes the primary contact for status messages. Agree to the program terms and privacy policy.
• Type in the six-digit code Microsoft sends to that email. Check the junk folder if it does not arrive.
• Enter the legal name, website, mailing address, phone number and legal identifier, such as the EIN in the United States. The phone cannot be a VoIP or call-forwarding number, and the details should match your legal records.
• Use a real website on your own domain, not a social media page. Microsoft says this helps validation go faster.
• For a new tenant, create the admin sign-in on onmicrosoft.com with a strong password, and store it where a second leader can reach it.
• Accept Microsoft's nonprofit compliance statement. A validation partner then reviews the request and you get two status emails: Eligibility Process Started and Eligibility Request in Review. Microsoft says this usually takes up to three days and longer if more documents are needed.

• Sign in to the Nonprofit Hub with the approved tenant, open the Microsoft 365 page, choose the grant that fits, and select Buy Now. Microsoft uses that button to claim the grant too.
• Activate the offer in the Microsoft 365 admin center, then create users and assign licenses. If you already pay for commercial Microsoft 365 licenses, Microsoft describes moving users onto the nonprofit offer the same way.
• A trial subscription with Nonprofit Portal in its name is only an administrative placeholder. It is not a working license for mail or Office apps.
• On this route your own admin assigns licenses, removes unused grant licenses, renews subscriptions and opens support requests with Microsoft.

• Microsoft Partner Center asks no special qualification of the partner for nonprofit offers. The customer must be signed up through Microsoft's nonprofit program, and the partner records that qualification on your account before nonprofit offers appear.
• A nonprofit customer can be sold both nonprofit and commercial offers. Some Microsoft products have no nonprofit version.
• A partner may manage your licenses as a delegated administrator, but it may not claim your benefits for itself, provide nonprofit licenses to organizations that are not eligible, or reuse them across unrelated tenants.
• Partner access to your tenant should use granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP): least-privileged, time-limited roles that your own admin approves and can remove.
• Microsoft reviews nonprofit qualifications from time to time. If an organization stops qualifying, Microsoft gives notice before the qualification is removed, and auto-renewal of its nonprofit seat subscriptions is turned off.

• Direct tends to suit a team with a confident admin who has time for license clean-up, renewals and Microsoft support requests.
• A partner tends to suit a team with no in-house IT, a mix of paid staff, unpaid executives and volunteers, a tenant a volunteer set up years ago, or a move from another email system.
• Ask any partner in writing what it bills for, what it does at no charge, who holds admin roles, and how you would move to another partner or back to Microsoft later.
• Large organizations that need volume licensing can ask Microsoft about an Enterprise Agreement. Microsoft says those nonprofits still go through the same validation.

• Before you register: checking Microsoft's eligibility list, the legal name and identifier, the website, and which tenant is the right one to use.
• Staying with your staff member while they complete the registration, and reading any questions Microsoft sends back.
• Matching each person to a granted or discounted license, because Microsoft's rules treat paid staff, unpaid executives and volunteers differently.
• Setting up mail, Teams and files, a short security baseline for admins and guests, and GDAP access you can review.
• A yearly check that removes unused grant licenses and keeps Microsoft's attestation current.
• Help from TRUE.org Cloud, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is free. If you choose to buy licenses through TRUE.org, they are provided by TRUE.org's for-profit Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, not by the nonprofit. You can always buy direct from Microsoft instead.