Microsoft Teams for nonprofits: set up teams, guests, meetings and files the practical way

Microsoft describes a team as a collection of people, content and tools around a project or outcome. A team can be private, open only to invited people, or public, so anyone in the organization can join. Microsoft lists up to 10,000 members for a public team. Conversations, files and notes across a team's channels are visible only to members of the team.

Channels are dedicated sections inside a team, organized by topic, project or discipline. Microsoft names three types: standard channels, open to all team members; private channels, open to selected team members; and shared channels, open to selected people both inside and outside the team.

Every team comes with a standard channel called General. Microsoft says it always shows first and cannot be deleted, because every team must have at least one channel.

• Make a short list of the groups of people who really work together, such as staff, the board, a program, an event or a volunteer group. Start with a few teams, not one per idea.
• Choose private or public for each team. Microsoft says a private team can only be joined when a team owner invites the person.
• Name at least two owners for every team. Microsoft says having several owners lets you share the work of managing settings and membership.
• Use standard channels for topics everyone on the team should see. Use a private channel only for a smaller group, such as finance or HR, inside a team.
• Write down one naming pattern, for example team purpose first, and use it every time.
• Pick one person who decides when a new team is needed, and one who closes teams that are finished.

• Standard: everyone on the team can see it. Microsoft's comparison table lists moderation, scheduled meetings, Planner, and bots, connectors and messaging extensions for standard channels.
• Private: membership can be limited to a subset of the team. Microsoft's table shows each private channel has its own SharePoint site, and lists scheduled meetings as not available in private channels.
• Shared: people can be added without being added to the team, and the channel can be shared with other teams. Microsoft says external participants from other Microsoft Entra organizations can take part through B2B Direct Connect, and that guests cannot participate in a shared channel.

Microsoft says anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook or Gmail, can take part in Teams as a guest. A guest must be added to at least one team before guest features work.

When you invite a guest, Microsoft creates a guest account for them in Microsoft Entra ID. Microsoft says guests are covered by the same compliance and auditing protection as other Microsoft 365 users, that conditional access and multifactor authentication policies can be enforced for them, and that a guest's name shows the label (Guest) in Teams.

• A team owner adds the guest. The guest gets a welcome email, accepts the invitation, and can then take part in teams and channels.
• People without a work or school account are sent a one-time passcode to prove who they are.
• Microsoft says it can take up to 12 hours after a guest is added before they have access.
• Guests can leave a team themselves, but Microsoft says that does not remove the guest account from your directory. A Microsoft Entra admin has to do that.
• Guest access is an organization-wide setting. Microsoft says you can control it for individual teams with sensitivity labels, and you can ask Microsoft Entra to run recurring access reviews of the people who have access.
• Microsoft says shared channels are an alternative that invites people from outside without needing a guest account in Microsoft Entra ID.

Microsoft's Teams settings reference lists what a new organization gets by default. These defaults are Microsoft's, they can change, and your administrator may have changed them, so check your own Teams admin center.

• Lobby: by default, people in your organization and guests join directly, and people who join from outside wait in the lobby. Microsoft says organizers and co-organizers can change this in Meeting options when they set up a meeting.
• Dial-in callers: Microsoft lists people dialing in by phone as waiting in the lobby by default.
• Anonymous join: Microsoft lists anonymous users as able to join meetings by default, and says anonymous users and dial-in callers cannot start a meeting by default. They must wait in the lobby until someone from your organization, a guest, or a trusted organization starts it.
• Recording: Microsoft lists meeting recording as on, and says recordings expire automatically after 120 days by default. Requiring participants to agree to being recorded is off by default.
• Scheduled channel meetings: Microsoft lists channel meeting scheduling as on, and says scheduled meetings work in standard and shared channels but not in private channels.
• Microsoft says you can change meeting options while a meeting is running, and that changes in Teams admin settings can take up to 24 hours to apply.

Microsoft says files you upload to a channel are stored in your team's SharePoint site, and files you send in a one-on-one or group chat are stored in the sender's OneDrive for Business and shared only with the people in that conversation.

In Microsoft's description, all standard channels in a team share one SharePoint site, and each channel appears as a folder in that site's default document library. Each private channel and each shared channel has its own SharePoint site. Microsoft says a Teams-connected site is created automatically whenever you create a team.

• Microsoft says that for a team's SharePoint site, managing permissions through Teams is recommended for the easiest user management.
• On the Files tab, Open in SharePoint takes you to the team site or channel site.
• Because files live in SharePoint, the guide on moving files to SharePoint and OneDrive applies to Teams files too.

• Microsoft says network communications in Teams are encrypted by default, and that Teams data is encrypted in transit and at rest in Microsoft services.
• Microsoft says modern authentication is what lets Teams support multifactor authentication and Conditional Access. The MFA guide on this site covers turning it on.
• Microsoft says federation, which lets your organization chat with other organizations, is on by default in Teams, and administrators can control it.
• Microsoft's guide says phishing in Teams works through fake links and attachments, and points to Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and suspicious message reporting for Teams users. Tell staff to report anything unexpected.
• Microsoft is clear that no system can guarantee complete security. Keep the people side in mind too: who has owner rights, which guests are still needed and who can start meetings.

Microsoft says all users have permission to create a team by default, and that this can be changed. Microsoft's governance planning page says you can control how teams are named and classified, whether guests can be added, and who can create teams, using Microsoft Entra ID and sensitivity labels.

• Naming policy: Microsoft says a naming policy can require a prefix or suffix and block words, and it applies to groups created from every group workload, including Teams.
• Expiration: because every team is backed by a Microsoft 365 group, Microsoft says a group expiration policy applies to teams. Team owners are told to renew 30 days, 15 days and 1 day before expiry, and a team that is not renewed is soft-deleted and can be restored for 30 days. Microsoft says an active team is renewed automatically. Check the licensing note on Microsoft's governance page before you plan on this one.
• Archive: Microsoft says you can archive a team that is no longer active so it becomes read-only, and that an archived team still has the expiration policy applied unless it is excluded or renewed.
• Put a yearly reminder on the calendar to review the list of teams, owners and guests.

• Multi-factor sign-in is on for everyone, starting with admins.
• Each team has a purpose, at least two owners and a name that follows your pattern.
• Private teams and private channels are used only where the people really need separation.
• You know who may invite guests and who removes guests when the work ends.
• Meeting lobby and recording settings are checked in the Teams admin center and in Meeting options.
• Staff know that channel files are in SharePoint and chat files are in the sender's OneDrive.
• You decided who can create teams, and wrote down how a new team gets approved.
• A yearly review is on the calendar for teams, owners and guests.

TRUE.org Cloud is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We can look at how your teams, channels and guests are set up today, suggest a simple structure and naming pattern, and check your meeting and sharing settings with you. That help is free for registered nonprofits, charities and faith-based organizations in the United States and Canada, and this page has no prices on it.

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 or from another partner instead.