Having recently attended Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Florida I came away with a far better understanding of how Copilot could be so useful in the nonprofit sector but that the cost is real block for nonprofits I deal with so wanted to share (partial) email I sent to try to spread the word a bit ..

“Whilst I’m pretty up on things in the 365 area, I did find the various (!) sessions on Copilot very useful to me in moving my somewhat sceptical pre-conference thoughts on AI/Copilot in general :face_with_rolling_eyes: to a realisation of just how useful this could be, especially with the Copilot for Microsoft 365 integration with tenant data, to all of course but especially to SMB’s and nonprofits that I deal with. It’s a fantastic new tool across the spectrum of 365 apps and with SMB’s and nonprofits having little if any internal IT resources to help, I believe it can prove to be of major benefit to them, providing the knowledge, data and reporting that traditionally they’d turn to IT folks for and that’s not counting the productivity and AI benefits outlined throughout the conference on top.

My wave of enthusiasm for Copilot is tempered however with the realisation of the significant cost of Copilot ($30 / month / user) as that even at the corporate level must be a tough call to justify but for SMB’s it’s vastly worse with their limited financial resources to try and come up with decent ROI details and for nonprofits, who I mainly now work with these days, it’s effectively impossible to consider, even to the extent that I doubt many will even get the chance to look at or use it at all!

Given that Microsoft do a great job with providing the various offers and grants for nonprofits currently (the two main nonprofits I work with currently benefit tremendously from the Business Basic licences across the board, the 10 user Business Premium grant and the Azure $2000 / annum amongst everything) so it would be so useful if say a 10 or even 5 user licence for Copilot could be provided on a grant basis (as with the Business Premium) so that nonprofits could at least get a chance to try Copilot with then perhaps a reduced price for them on a licence basis over and beyond the initial 5/10 grant ones.”

I don’t know what others think, especially Microsoft :), but does this strike a chord with anyone?

Thanks – Derek Papworth

​Having recently attended Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Florida I came away with a far better understanding of how Copilot could be so useful in the nonprofit sector but that the cost is real block for nonprofits I deal with so wanted to share (partial) email I sent to try to spread the word a bit .. “Whilst I’m pretty up on things in the 365 area, I did find the various (!) sessions on Copilot very useful to me in moving my somewhat sceptical pre-conference thoughts on AI/Copilot in general :face_with_rolling_eyes: to a realisation of just how useful this could be, especially with the Copilot for Microsoft 365 integration with tenant data, to all of course but especially to SMB’s and nonprofits that I deal with. It’s a fantastic new tool across the spectrum of 365 apps and with SMB’s and nonprofits having little if any internal IT resources to help, I believe it can prove to be of major benefit to them, providing the knowledge, data and reporting that traditionally they’d turn to IT folks for and that’s not counting the productivity and AI benefits outlined throughout the conference on top. My wave of enthusiasm for Copilot is tempered however with the realisation of the significant cost of Copilot ($30 / month / user) as that even at the corporate level must be a tough call to justify but for SMB’s it’s vastly worse with their limited financial resources to try and come up with decent ROI details and for nonprofits, who I mainly now work with these days, it’s effectively impossible to consider, even to the extent that I doubt many will even get the chance to look at or use it at all! Given that Microsoft do a great job with providing the various offers and grants for nonprofits currently (the two main nonprofits I work with currently benefit tremendously from the Business Basic licences across the board, the 10 user Business Premium grant and the Azure $2000 / annum amongst everything) so it would be so useful if say a 10 or even 5 user licence for Copilot could be provided on a grant basis (as with the Business Premium) so that nonprofits could at least get a chance to try Copilot with then perhaps a reduced price for them on a licence basis over and beyond the initial 5/10 grant ones.” I don’t know what others think, especially Microsoft :), but does this strike a chord with anyone? Thanks – Derek Papworth  Read More

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