Forum Discussion
500 GBs of data inaccessible on 365 for Nonprofits
I manage a U.S. nonprofit that was using Microsoft 365 Business Premium through Microsoft’s nonprofit grant program.
About a week ago, we suddenly lost access to our Microsoft 365 services. After investigating, I learned that Microsoft had announced the discontinuation of the Business Premium grant program. However, we never received any notification that our grant was ending or that our services would be terminated.
What makes this especially confusing is that we continued receiving Microsoft’s regular invoices showing Business Premium licenses with a $0 balance as recently as May 21, 2026.
The most serious issue is that approximately 500 GB of organizational data stored in OneDrive is now inaccessible.
We have:
- Searched our email records and cannot find any termination notice.
- Opened support cases with Microsoft: no success in resolving the issue through regular recovery options.
- Asked for recovery options thru escalation paths: no response yet.
Questions:
- Has anyone gone through a similar nonprofit grant termination?
- Does Microsoft retain OneDrive data for a period after nonprofit license termination?
- Are there escalation paths beyond frontline support for data recovery?
- Has anyone successfully regained access to a tenant after a grant-related shutdown?
Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated.
22 Replies
So sorry about all this. I really hope something can be done about this.
I’d keep pushing Microsoft Support and specifically ask about tenant recovery, deleted OneDrive data, retention periods, and escalation. Hopefully someone here has found a quicker route through this particular maze.
We had the same thing. I opened a support ticket, went back and forth, then received an email that the issues had been resolved, so the case is closed!
Something really needs to be done about this. The amount of nonprofits complaining about this is quite alarming.
The same happened to us. Microsoft deleted all of our files even though the expiration date on my license said September of 2026.
After a month going back and forth with the 360 team, they passed me off to a non-profit group who basically said your licenses expired in 2025. You did nothing about it and the system acted as intended.
They denied my requests to even look for the files and finally said, your files are gone and we're not going do anything about it. This is your mistake. It makes me sick to my stomach. We lost decades' worth of fire company history and irreplaceable data.
If anyone from Microsoft would like to dispute this, I have complete records of all my interactions.
If anyone would like to look into a class action option, I would be on board.
It's really concerning to see so many nonprofits reporting the exact same issue thats something Microsoft should seriously investigate.
Really hope you all get your data back. Losing years of nonprofit work like this is devestating.
We are also experiencing this. They would have at least notified us to avoid these inconveniences. We don't even know where to start.
We also lost all our data. It is unbelievable that Microsoft deleted it without consent. I have done everything to get in contact with someone at Microsoft who takes responsibility here. But we keep running into a brick-wall. My faith in Microsoft has gone... Does anybody know where I can drop a complaint about this?
we have also lost all our data that we had on onedrive we are a charity with very limited funds
OMG!!! So it wasn't just us. I just noticed that I wasn't get emails. All our files OneDrive have disappeared I thought it was a fluke. I registered for the Business Premium yesterday but I can't get in touch with support. This can't be happening. I've tried their Chat bot, the number for the UK doesn't work. This can't really be happening
Hi, I'd treat this as urgent and open a Microsoft nonprofit/billing support case immediately. Ask specifically whether the tenant data is retained and what license or grace-period option can restore access. Avoid deleting users or changing the tenant until support confirms the safest recovery path.
The problem is all those options don't work. I've literally tried everything. A case was opened two days ago with a reference - no response, sent an email. It's just nothing
Yes, same issue here. No notice and over 10 years of data missing.
