When Satya Nadella joined Microsoft as CEO in 2014, he set a new mission statement:
“To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”
This has been extended to the area of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility in a novel way, Security Brief reports.
Traditionally large technology companies give a bunch of their software licenses away to not-for-profit organisations every year. They then total up the retail value of those gifted licenses and proudly announce how generous they have been.
Microsoft is now taking a very different approach.
They started this reinvented approach by analysing how the not-for-profit, NGO and charity sector are using technology. The results were alarming.
The sector as a whole was chronically underutilising technology and they weren’t benefiting from digital transformation that modern technology promises.
“We uncovered that the sector was 10 years behind in outcomes,” says Tech for Social Impact (Microsoft Philanthropies) general manager Justin Spelhaug.
As part of this underutilisation of technology, the sector often used commercial software designed for other industries.
This changed with Microsoft introducing Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator nine months ago. Which introduced a suite of purpose-built solutions for the management of fundraising, programmes, beneficiaries and volunteers.
These combined with the power of Office 365 and Power BI mean the sector can finally leverage the productivity benefits of digital transformation that other industries are getting.
Since then, 60,000 organisations in the sector have moved to Microsoft’s cloud solutions.
They don’t get the software for free, but instead get discounts up to 70%.
After the heavy discounts, any revenues that are generated from the sector are ring-fenced within Microsoft and ploughed back into other social impact programmes.
FULL STORY
The fascinating way Microsoft is making a social impact (Security Brief)
RELATED STORIES
New Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator supports organizations with end-to-end solutions (Microsoft Blogs)
PHOTO
– Satya Nadella / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0
