Question for small nonprofits
If you work for a small (5-20 people) nonprofit or charity organisation, what types of information are you capturing using Excel spreadsheets (or paper)? This might include your volunteers, program participants, donors, assets, clients, etc. What other data are you managing? Have you tried finding off-the-shelf solutions to help you with managing it?Nonprofit Power Platform Community Library
Have you created something using the Microsoft Power Platform that you think would be useful for other nonprofits? Many nonprofits are solving similar problems in isolation. That doesn't make much sense when we're all working toward the same goals. I've started a repo on GitHub where we can share open-source, community-built resources with each other. Whether it's a Power BI report highlighting your donors, Power Apps for volunteers, or just a simple Power Automate flow that makes your life easier - this is where we can share, contribute and build on each other's work. This builds on the work already happening through the Microsoft Elevate team - who have been creating solutions based around the Common Data Model for Nonprofits. The goal is to extend that with community-built solutions. Please submit a feature request, start a discussion, or submit your own solutions! You can find the NFP Power Platform Library here: https://github.com/MB-Motive/NFP-Power-Platform-LibraryInability to login to non profit hub
Hello everyone, I have signed up our non-profit organization for Microsoft Non-Profit and it was approved. In the approval-mail I was instructed to go to the "non-profit hub" to sign in and select the plans we would like to use. (Nov 2024). I did this and created initial access. After some interval, in Aug 2025, I tried to access this but got a message that the user doesn't exist - I use my personal MS365 account, hence, the delay. I wanted to set up access for a couple of other users at the non profit. I've tried different browsers (Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox) as well as different devices, the result remains the same. The username and password are correct - the former was additionally given in the approval-mail, the latter was checked several times. Also contacted Techsoup - got an email but no resolution. How does this grant get re-activated? Will appreciate a meaningful response. Thanks in advance.
Build It Yourself? Part 1: A Proportionate Architecture
How can a smaller nonprofit organisation centralise data for people who haven't been hired yet, working in departments that don't exist yet, doing work that no one has thought of yet? Here’s the architecture for a possible solution that takes advantage of Microsoft's shared responsibility policies. I will go on to test to see if it’s feasible for a small nonprofit organisation with self-taught IT champions. https://headandheart.info/in-practice/20260714-build-it-yourself-part-1-a-proportionate-architecture/
I want to learn more about Nonprofit Pain Points?
My name is Erica Leverson, a data analyst/tech expert at EDL Investments. We have started to want to work with nonprofits because we want to work with organizations who is making humans, animals, the environment a better place. So, in order for me to be of service to nonprofits, I want to know what the pain points are. My goal is to learn of the struggles so I can create solutions. If you don't mind, can you please share them in the comments.
Urgent Help Needed before we loose all cloud files
What the devil do I have to do to get help with a serious problem with the cloud for our non-profit business account for our small charity. I have 'lost' sight of a large number of documents (folders are visible but no documents) from the cloud since we had to start paying for our subscription. After many chats with ai and emails and the problem being escalated I have now been told to go back to where I started at Non-profit support and put a support ticket in. Doesnt matter what machine I use, what browser I use, what network I use, I cannot get past the submit form page and keep getting an error message - this has been going on for weeks now. Ive tried ringing and the call keeps dropping while on hold - no one, no-one will call me about the problem and no one seems interested in dealing with the problem and its not just affecting me on our system either. Can someone help me find a person to speak to and not AI - ai help is not getting me anywhere at all.
OneDrive / SharePoint data loss after nonprofit licence issue – recovery deadline in a few days
Hello, I am posting here because I am facing a critical Microsoft 365 / OneDrive / SharePoint data loss situation for my nonprofit organisation, and I urgently need advice or escalation. We had a Microsoft nonprofit/donation licence. It seems that this licence was stopped, removed, or changed, and I was not properly notified. Since then, I have lost access to my OneDrive / SharePoint data. The local OneDrive folder still exists on my devices, but almost all files are only cloud placeholders. On an older Windows PC, when I try to copy files, I get: 0x8007016A: The cloud file provider is not running The files show: Availability status: Available when online So the local devices do not contain the full files. The real data would need to be recovered from Microsoft / SharePoint / OneDrive recovery systems. I was advised to assign a nonprofit Microsoft 365 Business Basic licence. I did this. After that, the SharePoint domain became reachable again, but OneDrive opened as an empty space. It looks like a new empty OneDrive was provisioned instead of restoring the previous content. I also get an error when trying to access the organisation’s SharePoint / Teams-related area: “An error occurred while retrieving the SharePoint URL for this channel.” I opened two nonprofit support tickets: Case 2607080040005145 – opened two days ago, no response / no callback Case 2607090040007719 – opened yesterday, also nonprofit support I have not been called back, and time is running out. From what I understand, if the OneDrive / SharePoint data was deleted or deprovisioned around mid-June, it may be permanently deleted in about 4 or 5 days. This would be catastrophic for my organisation, as the files include administrative documents, contracts, grants, educational projects, accounting files, communication files and archives. I am now also trying to reach Data Protection / Data Recovery support, but I am posting here in case someone has experienced the same situation or knows how to escalate this properly. What I urgently need is not a new empty OneDrive. I need the former OneDrive / SharePoint content to be restored, or at least for someone to confirm whether it is in deleted sites, archive, retention, recycle bins, secondary recycle bin, or another recovery layer. Has anyone managed to recover data after a nonprofit licence stopped or after a OneDrive was reprovisioned empty? Is there a specific team, escalation path, PowerShell recovery process, Microsoft 365 Archive, or SharePoint recovery route that I should request? Any help would be extremely appreciated. I may only have a few days left before permanent deletion. Kind regards, A nonprofit Microsoft 365 adminDon't miss the next Microsoft Elevate Partner Community Call – This Thursday!
⏰ REMINDER ⏰ The August Microsoft Elevate Partner Community Call is happening this Thursday. Join nonprofit and education partners for the latest Microsoft updates, opportunities, and community discussions designed to help you grow your impact. Bring your questions, connect with peers, and stay informed on programs, investments, and upcoming opportunities across the Microsoft Elevate ecosystem. 👉 Sign up here for the monthly series715-123195 Error - can't get help
I'm getting this error. By the looks of the rest of the forum there's some corrupted record for our account. I raised a ticket a week ago but there isn't a way to follow this up. Does anyone have a support number where I can reach Microsoft on this? If I use the online chat it just wants to raise another ticket, which seems a bit pointless. I get that support for this stuff is light but anyone know how long I might need to wait?Launching DIY Data Control for Nonprofits
I want to create a library of open-source resources that helps self-taught IT champions in nonprofit organisations build fully governed, secure shared data systems. I have plenty of ideas about how to do this, but before I press ahead, I want to listen to the people I hope to support to ground those ideas in reality. For my first project, I want to draw on part of the Microsoft ecosystem, which provides some useful tools for safely building your own data systems: Microsoft Learn: Microsoft provides a wealth of free learning resources. I use them a lot and they are as good as other resources that I have happily paid for. The two big barriers to using them are finding time and working out where to start. The Common Data Model for Nonprofits: This is an open-source resource from Microsoft, it describes the tables of data that a nonprofit organisation needs, and the relationships between them. Once you add your own data it becomes a shared functioning model of your organisation. Role based column and row level security: This is the revolutionary part that lets you safely replace scattered spreadsheets with a single, comprehensive, shared model of your organisation. It lets you decide exactly which parts of which records people are allowed to see or change, so everyone who interacts with your shared model can only see and change the things that they need to. Model-driven Power Apps and Power BI: Once you have a detailed model of your organisation with governance baked into it, adding tools to interact with it becomes straightforward. Both Model-driven Power Apps and Power BI can understand the structure of your organisation from your model, and they will respect the governance policies that you built into it. In theory, these should provide all the tools you need to bring together scattered data in siloed spreadsheets into a single, secure, auditable shared source of truth. But there are gaps, and I want to find out what guides, signposts and tools would be needed to bridge them. Later I will want to explore the features that you could add with Copilot Studio if you wanted to. Once you have established a clearly defined, precisely secured data environment, Copilot Studio can provide the tools to develop and deploy AI agents safely. But for now, I will focus on the foundations of well-defined, well-governed, accessible data. If you have any thoughts about this project then I would love to hear them, and I’d especially like to find out what pain-points there are that I can target. So please do get in touch. Patrick Killeen Head and Heart CIC email address removed for privacy reasons https://www.headandheart.info/ This work is released under the MIT Licence and is available at https://github.com/head-and-heart-cic/public/blob/main/in-practice/2600707-launching-diy-data-control-for-nonprofits/README.md
