Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant is being discontinued

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This is a real pity. I'm at a very small charity and we had just this year started using 3 users for writing our administration documents and sharing on Sharepoint and for meetings on Teams. We had been about to switch over our domain to Office 365 to use email but I'm glad we didn't as it does not look like a good idea to rely on these grants from Microsoft. We're not a big enough charity to justify spending on these while there are free alternatives available (though less convenient for sure!) so in our case this decision isn't going to earn Microsoft anything, so I'm kind of surprised they thought it worthwhile doing.

Did all notifications go out in mid-May? My church did not receive one, and our next renewal is October 2025. Wondering if I should start planning for transition.

So I went ahead and bought M365 Business Standard so we will have the apps to download.  I added the licenses to my team.  So this morning I get the email:

Your subscription to Microsoft 365 Business Premium was successfully renewed on July 2, 2025.

What does this mean? 😕

Thank you all for the info, this has so helpful for understanding what is going on. The email MS sent alerting us to the cancellation was incredibly unhelpful and we almost assumed it was spam because they're still advertising the grant on their webpage! We JUST switched over to MS this spring, 100% because of the "free" 10 licenses. We're a very small team with no tech budget, we simply needed an email service after the small local company we've used for years stopped offering email service because new regulations made it impossible for them to keep up. 

We've been "paying" monthly since we switched, so our licenses are set to expire in July 2025. I'm wondering if we switch over to annual billing now before the grant is canceled, would we keep our "free" licenses until June 2026? 

For us, small enviromental and multicultural NGO, it will be a disaster. After years of implementing M365 desktop tools — in team with very low digital skills — this change puts us in a position where we either pay for tools we were told were donated to support our mission, or lose access to digital ecosystem that have become essential to our operations.

In our case, it means risking four years of work integrating SharePoint, Teams, Planner, Bookings, Loop, and training people in Office apps. It means potentially migrating somewhere terabytes of data: uploaded into cloud 34 years of project archives, legal interventions, photo and video documentation, community records, financial data. Or it means finding funds we don’t have — or abandoning systems we finally got to work after a massive learning effort.

It looks like the old, disgusting trick: offer something for free, get people invested, then switch to paid — knowing full well they’re too deep in to back out. When this is done by one of the richest companies in the world, to groups who fight air and water pollution, deforestation, climate disaster, changing laws, social exclusion — it hits even harder.

The worst part is that this doesn’t just hurt users — it hurts the causes. This move will weaken civil society. It will set back digitalization in activism by years. Deep disappointment and frustration across the nonprofit community is real. We need Microsoft to hear it loud and clear — and we need allies here in this tech community to speak up with us.

As a CSP partner supporting multiple nonprofit organizations, I want to express my strong concern and disappointment regarding the discontinuation of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant.

This change disproportionately impacts small nonprofits—many of whom rely on the full Office desktop apps, Intune, and security features included in Business Premium to operate effectively. These organizations often have little to no IT budget, and this grant has been a critical enabler of their digital transformation.

While Microsoft frames this as a move toward alignment and sustainability, the reality is that it introduces significant new costs for nonprofits that are already stretched thin. For many of my clients, this is not just a licensing change—it’s a potential disruption to their mission-critical operations.

I urge Microsoft to reconsider this decision or at least provide:

• A longer transition period
• A reduced-cost SKU with Office desktop apps for small nonprofits
• More transparent communication and support for partners managing these transitions

I’m also interested in collaborating with other partners to submit collective feedback or an open letter. If you're in the same position, please reply or connect.

Let’s advocate together for the nonprofits we serve.

Very disappointed at Microsoft regarding this decision as it impacts specifically small not for profits and charities that are running on "shoestring budgets" this would not impact Microsoft bottom line much but the impact on the NFP organisation is huge. 

So my organization uses business premuim mainly for Intune, AAD and Defender, we work with children so this is how we lockdown and monitor our fleet of computers. As well as adminis have office licenses. E3 and Standard do not offer Intune or Defender. What are my options?? Are they just getting rid of the 10 free license part and keeping the 5.50/month sku? We dont have a large tech budget and really dont want to have to practically dissolve our organization as a result of not having device management

Help appreciated!!!

Yet Microsoft has NOT updated their nonprofit offerings deck!  Still shows 10 free BP licenses.  🤬

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/nonprofits/offers-for-nonprofits