 And I'd like to introduce our speaker today. You've probably seen her before, but it's always good to know where those of you are coming back or those of you are new today. Our speaker is Shruti Ramaswamy. She is TechSoup's vice president of strategy and strategic relationships. She is responsible for our Microsoft program offers here at TechSoup. She works closely with nonprofits, both with nonprofits and Microsoft to ensure that the sector around the world is able to derive the most impact for our program offerings. Prior to her work at TechSoup, Shruti was the technology consultant with IBM. So always great to see you and happy news. Shruti, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Arita, and thank you everybody today for being here. I know that many of you, hopefully it's your first day back after a little break after New Year's and I wish you a happy New Year. What we wanted to cover today, as Arita said, was really just going through a little bit more about what Microsoft offers are available to nonprofits and libraries. There are several changes that have happened over the last couple of months and several changes that are going to come. So really the goal here is to answer your questions to provide an overview of what offers are available today, how those offers might be changing in the future and how we are here to help. As most of you know, TechSoup is a nonprofit ourselves. Our mission is to empower the rest of the sector across the world to get access to the technology and the solutions they need to further their missions. And we do that in partnership with over 400 companies, organizations, foundations who really help by providing their solutions and services to the nonprofit sector. And what we're trying to do is make sure that we're here to support. Everybody through whatever stage of digital development that you are in today. So that means that for traditional desktop software, install software, we have solutions for that. If you need hardware solutions, we have refurbished hardware programs, we have server solutions, we have laptops, things that we can use to make sure that your office and your coworkers are set up for success. As you make the migration towards cloud software, we offer cloud solutions and software. And throughout all of this, we offer support services to help organizations make the right decisions, figure out what solution might work for them and to actually manage the IT software as well. So what we're gonna focus a little bit on today is those Microsoft offers. And before I get started, I just wanted to state, I'll try to speak for only like 10 to 15 minutes just to provide an overview of everything that's here. As Aretha mentioned, everything will be recorded. So if you miss anything, if you wanna write something down, all of these slides will be provided to you so don't feel like you need to grab everything. We'll have plenty of time for questions and answers. And the goal today is for me to be able to answer your questions. And whatever that question is, whatever the range of questions are, we'll go through. And some people already talked about some of their questions in chat. So we'll try to make sure that we go through those as well. All right, so as we get started, the first thing I wanted to do was just talk a little bit about some of the key terms that we're gonna be using today and talking a little bit more about the different types of offers that Microsoft provides. There's two primary ways that we're talking about this. One are on-premises solutions and the other are cloud subscriptions or cloud solutions. So on-premises solutions are those downloadable software that you're installing onto a device. The key distinguishing factors here are that you're paying one time, that you download and install that license onto a physical device or desktop. And so the licenses themselves are considered device-based licenses. Each of these licenses do come with some level of support. So there will be free patches, there will be updates that might be provided for security releases, but those are things that are available and that you have to actually download and make sure you're keeping up to date. Typically on the on-premises solutions, Microsoft has slowed down how many different versions they're producing of these licenses as they consider and move more to a cloud-first organization. But we do typically see new versions come out every about 18 to 24 months. And so this October, there was a new version of Office Released, Office 2021. There was also a new version of Windows Released, Windows 11 that are now available to the nonprofit sector as well. In the on-premises solutions, there are two ways that organizations can engage with these offers. One, there are a few products, about 25 or so products that are available as a donation from Microsoft. So these are fully donated by Microsoft, but they will have a small administrative fee that's associated with it. Those fees go to help TechSoup, administer the program, manage the program and help create content, support and events like these to ensure that we can continue to sustain and be able to provide this content to you. In the donation selection, these are limited in quantities, so organizations can usually only request up to 50 licenses per product that's available. These products are usually standard level products. So Microsoft usually offers like an office standard or an office professional with different suite of offers. Most of the things that are donated are going to be that standard level product. And starting actually this month, all of those products do not include software assurance. So these are license-only products. So you will download and you will own that license and you can use that license for however long you want to, but they won't include any additional benefits. There are also discounted licenses that are available. So if you need more than 50 licenses, if you need professional level licenses, if you do need or want software assurance benefits, those are all available, but at a discounted rate. And Microsoft has a pretty significant charitable discount rate. So usually those products are about 60 to 75% off of the commercial rates. And there are no restrictions in how many licenses you can get. So if you need significantly over 50 licenses, you would be able to get those. There is a minimum license. So in order to access any of the discounted software, you do need to purchase at least five licenses. We have some available kind of materials to help. If you only need one license, what are some of the other licenses that you can use to make sure you can get access to it for a pretty reasonable fee? And then as I mentioned before, you can choose to get either a discounted license that is only licensed only, or that could include a software assurance benefit as well. So those are all the offers that are available as downloadable, installable on-premises products. There are also cloud solutions or cloud subscriptions. The cloud subscriptions are available on an ongoing basis. So you actually sign up for a subscription and whether or not they have a payment associated with or not is based off of the license you choose. But you can choose a subscription to be monthly or annual. There's some flexibility there in terms of what you need. But I think some of the best features of it is it's really dependent on when you need it. So you can add licenses, you can remove licenses, you can kind of turn on and off the licenses based off of the needs you have. I think this is really helpful with organizations that might have big influxes of volunteers or big influxes of staff, particularly some organizations who have more activity going on in the summer once or in specific areas or time periods where they might need licenses and a burst for a certain amount of time and then they can take those off when they don't need them. Because they're cloud licenses, you will automatically get regular feature updates. So as anything is developed as a new feature, as any new releases come out or if there are any security updates, those are automatically happening and updating onto your solutions. And because these are subscriptions, you don't need to upgrade or anything like that. Those are automatically happening throughout the period of your subscription. One thing to note here is that for you to get some of those benefits of those feature updates for the ability to collaborate and work, you will need to be connected to the cloud and you need to be connected to an internet connection. But you will still be able to use many of the functionality even if you don't have internet access. So there are many offline features available and some of the licenses also include downloadable desktop versions. So you can still use them. You don't have to be online to use them. But if you wanna use the collaboration features, if you wanna be able to get the automatic updates and syncs, you will need to be connected. Cloud solutions are similar to the on-premises solutions. They are available both as a donation and a discount license. So there are some that are available completely as a donation from Microsoft and I'll go through some of those licensing options. And then there are some that are available as a discounted license. Again, it's typically about 60 to 75% off of the commercial pricing. And what you'll get with these licenses is that you'll also have a pricing protection for the 12 month period. So prices may vary, but you will have that protected for the length and duration of your subscription. And you can mix and match. You don't have to have everybody use the same license. If some people in your organization need higher levels of security or access, they can get one type of license. If you have some members of your team who only need email or only need access to certain kind of functions, you can get a different version of a license to you as well. So you can mix and match. And I think some of that is really part of the flexibility and some of the inherent things that are really helpful in cloud solutions in general. I've put out here a couple of things to just call out in terms of benefits between the on-premises solutions and the cloud solutions. Obviously this is really specific to your organization and your needs. But some of the things that we have found as advantages, particularly for nonprofits for on-premises solutions is that it is a one-time expense. You don't have to fundraise or think about ongoing costs that you have to fundraise for every year. This is a one-time cost that if you have budget for you might be able to allocate and use towards technology. If you get a software assurance license or a bundle out as a discount, you will also get free upgrades for about two years. But that is something that is available within the discounted version. Some of the disadvantages like we talked about is that you do have to patch and you have to make sure that you're keeping a breast of any security issues that might come up. I don't know if any of you were recently impacted but there was a security issue that happened on New Year's Eve with people who were running exchange server on-premises exchange server where many emails stopped working because of a security patch that went out. So there are things you have to be on top of and manually patching and working and managing against. And the feature versions change. So if you want the updated version you're going to have to request a new product in a few years' time. On the cloud side, some of the advantages are obviously that it is flexible, that you can pay as you go, you can pay for what you need or you can request the licenses you need, you can mix and match and that you will get all of the updates at all times. And a lot of the collaboration features within the cloud solutions are really meant for teamwork and are particularly useful in time periods where you might have more remote work than you ever planned for or where you have large influxes of volunteers who are coming to support at certain times. Some of the disadvantages obviously are that the cost might need to be spread out over time and there is obviously we know a cost of just moving to a different solution. So if your organization, team members are not used to something, there is some sort of learning curve that might be involved in doing that but I'll talk a little bit about some of the course offerings that we have to supplement and help with that. And then it is understood that there might be a dependency on internet connectivity and that is not always apparent or relevant or easy for many organizations to get based off of the communities that you're working in or serving. So we know that that is a consideration as well. So as we move forward, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the program changes and then I'll talk a little bit more about the specific cloud licenses that we do have available to nonprofits. So right now if you go and request any type of product from on the TechSoup catalog for a Microsoft offer, there are gonna be a few things that are different based off of how you may have done this in the past. The first thing is that all of the products that you are going to request are going to require that you actually have a Microsoft account that is set up and validated for charitable offers first at the Microsoft nonprofit portal. And once you add a product to your cart, you'll actually see will prompt you, will help you through that process and let you know what you need to actually do next. But part of that will be that you have to go and create an account with Microsoft and make sure it is eligible for charitable purposes. And we know that most of you will be, especially if you've already been working with us, there should be no problems, there are issues, but we'll talk a little bit about why some of those changes are in place. But once you create that account, that's gonna be that Microsoft 365 account that you're gonna use to actually get licenses in the future now as well. So it is a goal to hopefully consolidate how licenses are being distributed to organizations as well. But it is a step that organizations are now gonna have to take. If you already have a Microsoft 365 account, if you have already gone through this process, you do not need to go through that process again, you just need to share that information with us so we can move forward in the process. But if you have never gone to the Microsoft nonprofit portal, if you have never had an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 account, that will prompt you to actually have to do that before we can actually provide any licenses, on-premises or cloud licenses to you moving forward. One thing to note as well is that the person who creates that account is as a default set up as the administrator. So if you have somebody who you know is going to play the role of administrator, it might be useful for them to take that action. As an administrator, you can always add additional administrators to the account, but it is important for you to know, especially if you think you might have one and you still need something, but that person may have moved on or things like that, it's just helpful to know who is set up as the administrator on your account so that you have part of your, part of your management of that account is making sure that if somebody leaves that somebody else is set up as that administrator, because we know that's been an issue from time to time. The second part that's kind of new in this process is that where you download your licenses from, particularly if you're getting those on-premises or installed software is also changing a bit. You may have gotten licenses from us in the past where you go to the volume licensing center or the VLSC from Microsoft to actually download and get access to your on-premises licenses. Now that you have an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 account that is actually set up, what will happen is you can go directly to there to get your licenses. So you will be able to go and get your licenses there. And so in the future, if you get cloud licenses as well, you'll have that all in one place in one portal. If you have licenses in the past that you have requested that are still on the VLSC that you might not have downloaded or used, you can still access and use the VLSC. It's just that any new license-only product or any new subscription that you're getting will probably be available through the Microsoft 365 administrative portal. A few other notes here is that part of that download process, once you actually download the license, it looks pretty similar to what we currently do or how you currently download licenses now, but you will be able to select what version of the product you want. Some of those are a little bit more limited than we've seen in the past. In the past in the VLSC, you were always able to go down a few versions if you needed to. Some of that is a little bit more limited in the Microsoft 365 administrative center. And once you start that download, you'll only have kind of a five-day period to actually download that product. If you need a new link, you can always ask us. You can request that from TechSoup and we can regenerate a link for you to download as well. But just wanna flag that because those are a little bit different than what we've done in the past. And then as I mentioned before, software assurance is no longer included in the donation licenses that are provided. These are just license-only offers. If you do need software assurance or want software assurance benefits, those are available as a discounted offer where you can get kind of a bundled solution that includes the software assurance. So I know that's a lot of change and some of that might make sense and some of that might go completely over your head. And I think a lot of it probably won't really come into play until you request your first license or you're thinking about the next product that you're requesting. But we have created a step-by-step video that allows you to kind of work with us and place the order with us. And we go through the entire process from the starting to the downloading of the product itself so you can walk through along with us. There are chapters in that video. So if there are some places you wanna skip over, you can do that as well. And we've created a few how-to guides and materials on how to register on the Microsoft Nonprofit Portal as well. So hopefully there'll be enough resources to support you, but as always, we are here to help. And as Aretha mentioned before, we will be sharing an email address with you so you can request or reach out to us for any help that you might need throughout this process as well. There are also gonna be a few changes coming up after April that we wanted to make sure that you were aware of. And some of you may have already heard about this. We have provided some emails and we've also held webinars that talk specifically about this. But in April, after April 4th, actually, the amount of products that'll be available as a donation for installed on-premises solutions will be coming down and be reduced. As Microsoft makes more and more of its offers available through the cloud subscriptions, most of their donations will also be really provided through the cloud subscriptions as well. So what will remain in April will be Windows professionals so to make sure that you have an opportunity to get the latest version of the Windows operating system. There will also be a small set of donations, on-premises donations, available for those organizations that are specifically working in a computer lab setting or have shared public access devices. And then in some organizations who might be operating internationally, if there are no Azure availabilities for server needs, there might be some server products that are available as well. So I'll talk a little bit more about this in a second, but I think what's important to know here is that if you really need an installed software, if you need an office standard, if you need certain products that you know are gonna be installed or device-based products, there will be a limited timeframe for you to be able to request them because after April, that will be really reduced in terms of availability as a donation. All of these products will still be available as a discount, but those products will not be available as a donation. I will say that many of these products also have the same functionality available through a cloud subscription that could be donated and that will be donated. But if you really know that you have a specific need for installed device-based software, it's important to understand that that program is really changing in April. So as you're thinking about making your budgets for the year or thinking about your technology allotment for this year, I just wanna make sure that that's clear and understood so that you can make the best decisions for your organizations that you need to. As I mentioned, those cloud donations and offers, those will exist, those are not changing and a lot of them include all of the functionality that already exist in the on-premises solutions itself. So you'll see here, these are the licenses that are currently available as a donation and there are options in terms of, okay, if you want to move to the cloud solution, where can you get this as a cloud offer? The functionality as a cloud offer and if you're not ready for the cloud and if you really need an on-premises license, how you can get that as a discounted offer. Some of these that we're talking about, one of them that I don't see on here that I'll put on here as well, is the Office 2019, for example, or Office 2021. If you need Office 2021, you can absolutely get those solutions donated for free towards some of the Microsoft 365 solutions that are available as a cloud subscription. And if you do need it as an installed device-based license for any reason, you would be able to get that as a discounted offer moving forward in April as well. Again, these slides are gonna be sent to everybody, so don't feel the need to have to memorize everything that's on here, we will send these all to you and if you're a registered and if you're in attendance today, you will automatically get those slides to you. So I talked a little bit about what those cloud offers are. I just wanted to spend a little bit of time and talk a little bit more about the options that are available. There are a few options under the Microsoft 365 suite of offers. Again, there are no changes that are happening here. That includes the Microsoft 365 business basic license, which is completely free, $0 for up to 300 users. These include your basic Office suite that you might need, but it is only cloud services only, so you have to be connected to the internet to be able to use these solutions. There's also a business standard version, so it's the same as the business basic, except it includes the cloud version, the online version, as well as the desktop install version, so you can download them and use them offline. Those are available for $3 per license per month for up to 300 users. And then I think one of the best offers that Microsoft has available to nonprofits is the Microsoft 365 business premium license. This license is free for up to 10 users. After that, it's about $5 per user per license per month, but it includes everything that you need from an Office perspective, downloadable cloud version. It also includes a ton of security features, an ability to potentially upgrade your Windows license if you need to. It just has a huge suite of offerings in it and is a really robust solution. And so for anybody who's thinking about what they should get, I would definitely think about starting with this license because it has everything that you would want in it. There are also Office 365 licenses, so these are licenses that are available really typically for larger enterprises, so that includes E1, E3, or E5 licenses, and these are all available as a discount to organizations. You can see some of the features and benefits as you get into higher levels of licenses. They just have additional features that you can use. So it's similar to the Microsoft 365 way that each one of these has a little bit of an additional offers that are available to you as well. Some of you might see this and think about you might have an existing E1 or E2 license that you got as a donation. Those are no longer offered as a donation, but if you already have it as a donation, you can continue to use that as a donation. It will continue to be available to you as a donation. There will be a cap like you can't go above 2,000 of those licenses, but if you have that subscription, you can still continue to use that subscription. It's just anybody who does not have any of those existing donations. If you are looking to get something new, these are now available as discounted licenses. The other thing I just wanted to point out here is we do have a full display of all of the different licenses that are available. I just talked about a few of them in there. We tried to provide a little bit of a table of the features and benefits so you can compare and contrast them. And we also have a blog that we've put together about some of the recommendations we have based off of considerations that we've seen many nonprofits think through as they're making a decision for which license is best for them. One thing to note on anything that you get as a donated cloud license from Microsoft, there is a utilization requirement that is part of that grant as Microsoft calls it. So any organization who's getting a donation product or donation cloud subscription. So that includes those that we might already have like the Office 365 E1 or E2 license or the newer business basic or business premium licenses in order to make sure that you're able to continue to get that as a donation offer. Microsoft does require that at least 85% of the users that are assigned a license are actually using a cloud service at least once every 90 days. So they just wanna make sure that those licenses that they're distributing as a grant are actually being used and are needed so that they can make available more granted software and granted solutions across the ecosystem and make more offers available to nonprofits. If you have questions about this we've put together videos to figure out what your utilization might be. We've also created a blog here to kind of help understand what this requirement might mean for you for the most part. If you're using some of the solutions like Teams or SharePoint or OneDrive or saving things to the cloud you're probably completely fine in meeting the requirement. The one thing I would also state is this is only for people that you're assigning a user and a license to. So if you have let's say 10 licenses that you are not necessarily needing right now we would just recommend don't assign it to a user unless that user is ready to use that license themselves. You can keep those unassigned and that's fine and that's not counted against the utilization requirement at all. But once you assign a user like Shruti Ramaswamy at TechSoup.org to that E3 license or E1 license then I need to be actually using it to keep up that utilization requirement that's there. So I know I went through a lot of information. I wanted to also note there's a ton of other offers that I didn't talk about that are available to nonprofits. I'm happy to go through those more in the Q&A. We know that you have questions and that's what we really wanna focus on. I know I saw this question earlier before we started. I also wanted to note that TechSoup has a series of courses of services that are here to support you throughout this process on each of these slides. You'll also see you can reach us at TechSoup.org. You can ask us more of your questions if we don't get to them today. And there's an opportunity obviously for you to register for these courses and learn more about how you can get value out of the solutions that are available. So really what we wanted to focus on today is your questions. We have gotten a few questions that we can kick off with and then we'll go to hopefully get through many questions as we can of viewers. So the first question that we've received a lot are there any changes to your existing license? So on that, what we wanna say is if you already have a license, if you're already using a license, there are no changes. You can still continue to use that. That goes for on-premises licenses that you own and that you have perpetually. And it also goes towards any cloud license. The only thing with that cloud license, like I said, is if it's a donation, you do have to make sure that you're meeting that utilization threshold to continue that eligibility for the granted software. The other question that we've heard a lot, particularly related to some of the changes that are coming in April, is what if I don't have dependable internet connectivity and we rely on some of those on-premises solutions? And so this is a great question. And I think that it's important to note that on-premises solutions and installed downloadable solutions are still gonna be available after April 4th. They'll just be available at a discounted rate. And that many of the cloud subscriptions and particularly that Microsoft 365 business premium license that it is available as a donation for up to 10 users also comes with installed software. So you can download that software and use it offline as well. The other question, and I know we have a few libraries here are how are libraries impacted? And so one of the things that are, the biggest changes that happen in January is that libraries are unfortunately no longer eligible for public access devices to get donations from nonprofits under TechSoup. But Microsoft is making available all their academic licenses and libraries are eligible for all of those academic licenses. So the academic licenses include on-premises solutions, so things that you might use for public access computers. They also include a suite of cloud solutions that are academic licenses that are particularly focused for academic institutions and can be very useful for libraries or public museums as well. We are still in the process of launching those offers and we're hoping to launch those by the end of this month but we're working on getting all of those education licenses into our catalog to make sure that we can provide those to you. And when we start and when we get kicked off it might be a little bit more of a manual process but we're gonna have more information about that soon. And as we launch that we'll provide more emails and update our FAQs. I've pinned a couple of things in the chat within this webinar as well if you are looking for more resources there. And then some of the other questions that we've got are about that five day download window period for downloading your on-premises licenses through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. As I mentioned before, you can always just call us and we can regenerate a link for you so that you can download your software. It's not meant to really hopefully prohibit you but it is something to note because I think in the VLSC we really didn't have any type of time limit that was associated with those things. And the last item and question that we've gotten is about the E1 and E2 offers that were previously provided as a donation. Again, those will continue to exist as a donation if you have a subscription as long as you're utilizing it you can still use that up to 2,000 licenses but if you have something new if you have never gotten these licenses before those will only be available as a discounted license. Okay, so I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and get to everybody else's questions here. The first question that we have is from Edward. Edward says, so as a nonprofit can we use both software and cloud licenses? We have approximately 120 staff and using the cloud version. Thought it might be worth it for us to get the 50 licenses for software and have it installed on laptops of staff who have internet connectivity issues. Edward, that's a great question and absolutely you can get both software and cloud licenses you can mix and match however it meets your organization's needs and I think the way that you've kind of identified that right now are there certain users that might have internet connectivity issues or there might be certain devices that you wanna make available and have those available already preloaded with software. Absolutely, you can use the software on-premises solutions for that and have cloud licenses as well. And here at TechSoup, I have both I have a cloud license and install software so it really depends on what you need but absolutely you can mix and match. The next question is from Kirk. Kirk says, can we have multiple providers associated with the account? Also a really great question and just a little bit of background if that doesn't necessarily make sense. So on a cloud license or as you're getting licenses from other organizations or vendors you can get your donations and you can get all of the licenses that you need through TechSoup but if you're already working with an IT provider or they're already managing some parts of your licenses you do have an ability to use multiple providers. Depends on the subscription and you can't have multiple providers using the same subscription but if you still wanna get donations and on-premises donations through TechSoup but you're using another provider for Azure or for some of the cloud services that you have that's completely fine. You should be able to do that without any issue. Again, if you choose TechSoup does offer all of the products and services as well. So you can also leverage TechSoup for that but we understand that some organizations are already working with providers or you already have people who are helping you there. So if you wanna keep that it is possible to have multiple providers in place. The next question is from Javid. We have public access computer lab but no plans to get office 2021 standard until our local university does. Would we have to request office 2021 standard on-premises before April 4th? We cannot get grants for something that's recurring like a cloud subscription. Really good question Javid. So right now for computer labs a public access computer labs you will still have the donation available offer to you. The donation offer available to you, sorry after April 4th but there are gonna be specific rules on whether or not you qualify as a computer lab. So I would definitely make sure that you reach out to us. Again, that's reach us at TechSoup.org so we can go through your specific organization and make a better recommendation based off of your organization's particular needs as well. Kirk asks donations for Windows licenses are out of stock. Will they be replenished? Yes, those actually should be replenished today. So all of these have been out of stock for the past week or so as we were preparing for some of these new changes that we needed to have in place but those are all replenished and back in stock now. There is a question here about what is the difference between Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Education? Kirk, I actually don't know the answer to that offhand but I am happy to look into that a little bit more and provide you a little bit more information after the webinar once we do, once we get a little bit more. I know a little bit about the Windows 11 but I'm not entirely well versed in the education version so I can look into that and get back to you. Okay, there are a few questions that people have on software assurance so we'll go through that. Michelle asks what is software assurance and what does it include? So software assurance is a suite of benefits that Microsoft adds on a license and typically that costs a little bit more for the license itself because you're getting an additional benefit. But what is available, the primary benefit I would say in the software assurance is that organizations can get a two-year period for a free upgrade. So if you get a product that has a new release that comes out in 18 months, you don't have to purchase that again. You can just use your software assurance benefit to upgrade because you already have a two-year kind of warranty on that license that you can actually get the upgraded version. That's by and large the biggest benefit that we've seen organizations use software assurance for. But there are some other benefits that are specific to the license and type as well, including some security patches. There are also some training and some things that are available to organizations. Particularly focused, I think on like IT administrators that software assurance can be useful for as well. Kishan, I hope I pronounced that properly, asked will software assurance on the free upgrade be affected by the changes at Microsoft? So I think just to make sure I'm interpreting your question correctly, I think what you're asking for is if you already have software assurance, will you still be able to use the existing software assurance contract that you have for free upgrades? The answer is yes. So any of the changes that I'm talking about are changes for new licenses, new subscriptions, new requests. If you already have a license that includes software assurance, you can use that software assurance benefit for that two year period to request additional licenses moving forward. So that can still happen and you can do that through the VLSC as well. Kurt asked, I got server 2019 in November but it did not come with SA even though I was told it did. Kurt, if you could send us a specific request on that, that would be really helpful and then we can figure out how we can make sure you get the access that you need or if there was any issue with the license itself. All right. Javid asked, can you expand on what is included with software assurance? Can we no longer contact Microsoft through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center for help with our donated cloud programs we use? Javid, great question. So the software assurance is actually a benefit only for the on-premises products. Your cloud subscriptions, you can get the Admin Center help as normal. You can continue to get that. You don't need software assurance for it. That actually comes directly with all of your cloud subscriptions. You get a level of support and you can continue to get that and request and ask for help on the Admin Center as you normally have. So the software assurance is really a benefit that was only provided for those installed software. Kevin says, I don't see MS project. Is that different purchase or item? We can look into that. There should be an MS project available. It is available as a discounted offer. I'm not sure if somebody in the chat can just put that link in there really quickly and then you can take a look and get access to that but we should have that. The next question that we have is from John. John says, I purchased about 40 Microsoft Office 2019 with software assurance from TechSoup in fall of 2021. We installed the 2019 version but now that Office 2021 is available, I tried to get the product from the Volume Licensing Center but they stated that we were not eligible. Is there a way to get support on this from TechSoup? Yeah, I would definitely reach out to us, John, reach us at TechSoup.org. Email alias, it's important. You should have the access if you have software assurance to be able to use that but there is some materials that we can provide on showing how to actually leverage and use that benefit to get your Office 2021 upgrade. So we're happy to send that over and make sure that we can support there. All right, now we have a few cloud questions so we'll get through to that next. Michelle asks, my organization is a small nonprofit. How can I set up an appointment with somebody to discuss my needs? Great question. And one of the things I wanted to show and in this PowerPoint that we're gonna be sending over to you, we'll have here a slide that talks about all of the ways that you can get support. So the first one is our cloud consultation service. So you'll see a link right up here. There's a free consultation available to you so that we can help you figure out the right licenses for you and work with you to ensure that we can make sure you're getting the licenses you need particularly because there's so many different options available, it's kind of confusing. So happy to send these materials out. And so once we send this out, you can click here and schedule a free consultation and hopefully somebody can put that link right into chat as well. Next question is from Christina. Does email created for Microsoft need to match the TechSoup account? So Christina, that depends. I think in the past what we've seen is that if you are requesting something that needs to be downloaded from the VLSC, it does have to match. So that Microsoft account needs to match the TechSoup account so that we can make sure that you get access to the VLSC and get access to the licenses. In the new flow that I talked a little bit about, that will automatically kind of happen. So we're gonna be asking you for your specific Microsoft domain, your specific account that you've actually created, and then all of the licenses will be sent directly to that. On your TechSoup account, you might have many different people who are associated with it. What's gonna be critical is that we have the right Microsoft domain for you so that we can send that request to you. If you are getting a license that's gonna be through the VLSC, what we've always stated is the license that you're using and getting that for the TechSoup account is gonna be the account that you need to log in with when you go to the Volume Licensing Center as well. Ben asks, my organization has different projects working on about 50 different domains. Can I provide licenses to these projects from a single Microsoft 365 admin account or will I need different admin accounts? So it's a really good question, Ben, and it kind of depends on how you set up the account. So you can create a single domain but then have multiple subdomains underneath it and route those domains to it, but that depends on how you actually wanna use your individual domain. If you already have 50 separate domains and you wanna create their own tenant for those, then you would have to have a different admin. You can have one person be the admin, but that aggregated view might be a little bit harder. We can talk a little bit more if you wanna reach out to us and talk a little bit more about some of the structures that might work. There are some benefits if you're on, for example, an enterprise agreement with Microsoft where they can create a little bit more of a different structure for you to be able to have a wider view and ability to kind of manage multiple accounts. Delcy asks, what is the difference between Office 365 and Microsoft 365? Great question, Delcy. It is a bit confusing and not completely transparent what the differences are, but I think really the biggest distinguishing factor is Microsoft 365 solutions include those solutions that are really meant for small and medium businesses. So you'll see some of the business cues, things that are labeled as business under the Microsoft 365 umbrella. And the Microsoft 365 business standard, business basic, business premium licenses that are available to nonprofits, all have about a user cap of about 300 users. When you go above 300 users, Microsoft recommends using enterprise versions of products. The enterprise versions of products are available on the Office 365 suite. But other than that, it's really just a nomenclature thing. There's not a ton of huge differences. Jeff asks, will we discuss D365, which is Dynamics 365 business central product? Jeff, we're not planning on going through dynamics, particularly today. We at TechSoup, we don't necessarily distribute the Dynamics 365 licenses, but we have been working closely with Microsoft on those licenses, Microsoft offers them as well. So if you have a specific question on those, please feel free to reach out to us and we'll do our best to connect you to somebody or try to answer that question for you ourselves. Giovanni asks, what is the difference between enterprise and business licenses? I think we just talked a little bit about those. So it's really kind of the differentiation between the size of the organization. And some of the enterprise features has a little bit more in terms of managing across multiple users. There's a little bit more inherent security features, just assuming that you have a larger organizational needs. Kirk asks, if you assign a license, then that person leaves. Can we unassign the license until we hire a replacement? And can we transfer licenses from one user to another? Yes, that is absolutely what you can do. So if you assign a license to a user and that user goes away or is on leave or they don't need that license anymore, you can unassign that license from that user and then you can reassign it to another user. That person will have their own account credentials, things like that, but that license itself can be assigned and reassigned as well. So that's kind of one of those really flexible and beneficial parts of the cloud solutions is that you can really kind of use as you need these licenses. Nancy asks, we need to move to the cloud and wanna know how to get support from TechSoup for data migration and email migration. That's fantastic Nancy. If you saw on that last slide that I had presented and I'll pop that up again, we do have email migration and the data migration services available. So if you, when you get the slides, you can click on that services link and it will prompt you to be able to fill out a form and we'll reach out to you to help you understand how we can start working on a project for figuring out what you need for your email and data migration needs. Okay, Carol said, if I didn't apply for the Microsoft 365 Business Premium, how do I upgrade or change? Carol, that's a great question. So you can always request additional licenses and similar to what we just talked about, you can actually request the 10 free Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses and actually unassign the users from the existing license they have and reassign them to the new license and they can take advantage of that and you can either remove the licenses that you don't need anymore or kind of save those for an additional user if you think you'll need them later, but you are able to do that. It depends on where you've got those licenses from. If you got that directly from Microsoft, you can do that yourself on the Microsoft 365 administrative portal. If you got that directly from us, you can reach out to us and we're happy to help you support through that or if you just need help in figuring that out, we're happy to help you through that as well. Sandy asks, we've been using Office 365 for a couple of years and I've just been charging it to my personal credit card and getting reimbursed when I remember, is there an easy way to switch to the free option? Sandy, similar to what I just said to Nancy, I think that kind of will make sense for you too. If there are specific licenses that are donated or available that you would rather use and I would definitely make sure that you take advantage of that for any small or large nonprofit really, any of these cost savings are really helpful. So you can request the new donation licenses and assign users to those new licenses and then hopefully you can cancel the existing subscription that you have. Martin says, we have E2 licenses but wanna start using data loss prevention and compliance. Do we need to upgrade to E3? Martin, that's a really great question and it kind of depends. So it depends on what exactly you're using. There are add-on subscriptions for data loss prevention and there are certain add-ons for compliance and security solutions as well. So you might be able to keep your existing license and just get an add-on license on top of that that would give you the security settings that you need but there are a lot more features in E3 and it might work out depending on how many user licenses you need that it might be a more cost efficient way to do it. So if you wanna send us an email we can go through and look and help you through that. I can also in some of the resources that we'll send out you'll see kind of all of those different add-on opportunities and licenses comparisons. So you can kind of take a look at what license might be the best for you as well. Javit asks, we already have an Office 365 E1 donated for some of our accounts. Are we stuck with the current number of licenses or can we buy more of the donated licenses in the future for up to 2,000 licenses? Javit, as long as you're using and meeting the utilization requirement and you have an existing E1 subscription you can continue to add licenses up to that 2,000 amount. You just can't request a new subscription if you've never had an E1 donation. So as long as you're meeting the utilization requirement and you have an existing donation and subscription you can continue adding licenses up to that 2,000 amount. Kirk asks, what kind of email address do we need for the Office 365 portal? I know that you'll have a tutorial. We can watch that but I'm just curious. So Kirk, it doesn't actually, in terms of what email address you need when you go to the Microsoft 360 or the Microsoft nonprofit portal to create your account you can choose whatever email that you need and if you don't have a domain specific email so if you don't have like a truthy at TechSoup.org you can create an on Microsoft version of it and Microsoft will prompt you through that so that you can use that address to be able to set up your account. I hope that's helpful. Tony says, yeah, there's a wealth of information here today almost too much to digest which completely agree and understand will there be another training like this? Absolutely, we've actually done several of these over the last couple of months because we know that there's a lot in here and we've tried to create all of these are available on YouTube you can see all of the links to here we'll continue to do these so look forward to one next month in the month after that we will continue to have these webinars so that we can go through this information. Again, the resources are there we put together some blogs, some videos, some guides to help because there is a lot of content to digest. One thing that I'll particularly call out is this blog, which is the important Microsoft changes we've tried to create like one consolidated page where you can get access to everything that you need so that you can go there and kind of like go and navigate to the change and say, okay, what do I need from here? So hopefully that will be a helpful and important resource but I would definitely bookmark that one because that'll be kind of like your link for links. Kirk asks, can we have a hybrid or where some employees are on E2 licenses others on E3? Absolutely. You can mix and match all of these licenses so you can do it based off of what you need based off of the specific user groups or specific user needs that you have so you can absolutely have multiple different licenses associated with your organization or under your one organization umbrella. Just making sure, I know we have a few more minutes so I just wanna make sure we can get through the questions. Desley Kavanaugh asks, which license level includes email encryption? So there are many licenses that have some email encryption and it depends exactly on what level of encryption you're looking for but typically what you'll see is that the E3 licenses provide, business premium E3 typically provide a much higher level of security than some of the other licenses but some of the base licenses also have email encryption associated with it and like I said, there are add-ons available so it kind of depends exactly on what you're thinking about or what level of encryption you're looking for so you can take a look at that kind of comparison chart we've created and you can see some of the details there or if you want you can also reach out to us and give us a little bit more specificity about what kind of level of security you're looking for and we're happy to help answer and kind of point you into the right licensing direction. A few questions here on utilization requirements. So Dan asks, if we don't meet the utilization requirement will we lose all licenses or just have them reduced down to the 85% level? What about seasonal variations? Dan, that's a great question. So our understanding is the way that it works is if you are not meeting that license threshold or that 85% licenses, you will get a notification. It's not like it's automatically shut down so you have an opportunity to be able to kind of be able to say, hey, we need these licenses in this particular way and there's a reason that we do that. If you have seasonal variations, I would just say if you know that people aren't going to be using the licenses for a month period of time or three months period of time, you can unassign those licenses and still have some archiving available for them so that you don't lose it and then reassign those licenses when they come back so that it's not counted against your utilization. But the goal here is to really make sure on an aggregate that people are really just getting the licenses that they need. So if there is a genuine reason why there's not a need at a specific time or a reason that you're not meeting the utilization requirement, it's not a hard and fast where automatically those will be shut off for you. There will be notification and an opportunity for you to be able to engage with Microsoft to be able to state that there is a reason for that. So hopefully that there's not actually a shut off. All right. The next question, probably our last question that we'll have time for today is from Gloria. Gloria says, we're a small organization with volunteers that work on their tasks for a few hours each week. I'm wondering if we're going to even meet this utilization requirement. Gloria, that's a really good question and just want to note that the utilization requirement is just to use any cloud service at least once in a 90 day period. So even if it's just like logging in or saving a document to the cloud, those count against a user. So the amount of time is not really what they're looking for is that they're just trying to make sure that these are donations that are actively being used. And so if you're using it, whether or not it be a few hours a week or a few hours a month, honestly, those will still count. It's really looking at a 90 day window and making sure that those licenses are really truly being used and needed so that they can make sure that they can provide grants to everybody. So I know we have a few other questions that unfortunately we were not able to get to today. Like I said, you can reach out to us on every slide here. You should be able to see, reach us at techsoup.org. Feel free to reach out to us with your questions. We are here to help and I know that that was a lot of information. So feel free to go through these materials, ask us our questions as you go through it. Take a look at some of these resources that we've compiled. And definitely if you wanna rewatch the recording or fast forward or hear a little bit more, the recording will be sent out in a few days as well. So thank you again for joining us today. It's always helpful to hear your feedback and make sure that these sessions are actually informative and helpful to you. So there will be a survey in the chat and a survey that you'll get in your email. Please do click on that. That really helps us to improve how we continue to operate these and make sure that we're serving you the best way we can. So thank you again and I hope you have a great start to your new year. Bye everybody.