A bit of good news for non-profit organizations: you can now get Office 365 for free. In a move that’s sure to win, Microsoft has announced that ALL non-profits, from the large to the small, are now eligible to use their online division of Office at no charge.
Office 365 looks and acts a lot like Office 2013, except that it’s web-based and offered on a subscription basis. You need to be online to install & activate, and to take advantage of the online collaboration tools, but you can use Office 365 without an Internet connection too. This applies to computers running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Mac OSX 10.6, and also to iPhone, Android and Windows Phones. If you sign into a Microsoft account when you run Office 365, you can take your preferred settings with you to any other computer, and also take advantage of their cloud-based storage offering, SkyDrive.
As a non-profit user, you’d need to sign up for a trial and as soon as they verify your non-profit status, you’ll be granted a license.
Pretty great deal, if you’re already an Office user working at a non-profit with budgetary constraints.