Forum Discussion
Copilot nonprofit grant proposal/request/suggestion
Thanks for the thoughts but with respect I'm not sure I agree with the points the product team discussed with you.
All of the benefits and productivity gains that Copilot can bring that I gleaned from the various sessions I attended at the conference come from Copilot for Microsoft 365 and the great integration and enhancements that Microsoft have bought to the LLM.
The use of Copilot within the various apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc), the ability to post-analyse Teams meetings/content and especially the adding of company data (OneDrive, Sharepoint document libraries, lists, etc) is all based on having that $30/user/month license which is NOT (currently :)) provided for free with existing 365 offers for nonprofits.
And I'm not sure where the "lot of value" can be realised with the free offering of Copilot which is merely the chat access to ChatGPT with no integration with apps, meeting, internal data etc., and if there is value then surely that applies to SMB's and Enterprises too so why would they want to purchase Copilot for 365?
I hope folks can look at this again as nonprofits (and many smaller SMBs I believe) are definitely going to be somewhat "left behind" as this becomes widely adopted so fingers crossed! 🙂
Best regards,
Derek
MicrosoftThank you for reaching out and sharing your feedback on Copilot for Microsoft 365, Derek. Thanks also for the work that you do to support and advocate for nonprofits. We're glad you had a good experience at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando and saw some of the potential of what Copilot could do to help nonprofits move their missions forward.
We certainly don't want to leave nonprofits behind during this exciting wave of AI and, while we're unable to provide a grant or discount on the licensing cost of Copilot for Microsoft 365, we do believe that the free version of Microsoft Copilot is very powerful. For example, you can see how a Florida nonprofit, Agape Source used it to improve their web chat and help more people (Microsoft Customer Story-Florida nonprofit Agape Source scales to support more newcomers through AI-powered web chat, Microsoft Copilot).
We also know that the licensing cost of AI is only part of the cost associated with any nonprofit's AI transformation journey. With that in mind, we have many deployment, adoption, and training programs designed to support customers and partners be successful in using AI - with more on the way.
I know this isn't the answer you were hoping for - but I do hope you reconsider how the free version of Microsoft Copilot can be useful to the nonprofits you work with who don't have the budget today for Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Apurva Chandra
Microsoft
Modern Work Lead | Tech for Social Impact