Standing a New Charity Up on Donated Software Licensing

The challenge

The organisation was separating from a parent body and beginning to operate independently, with a fixed start date and no infrastructure of its own. It needed the same collaboration tooling any professional organisation runs on, without the recurring cost that would consume a new charity's operating budget.

Where we came in

Non-profits routinely pay commercial rates for software they are entitled to receive at little or no cost, because the philanthropic programmes require a validation process nobody walks them through. Establishing from scratch was also the chance to get the information architecture and security settings right at the outset, which is far cheaper than reorganising a tenant later.

What we did

• Initialised the tenant and submitted it through Microsoft's non-profit validation process
• Configured and verified the organisation's own domain and DNS
• Designed the information architecture deliberately at the start rather than letting it accrete
• Applied security configuration as part of the initial build
• Confirmed administrative access to the external platforms the organisation depends on

Where it landed

• The organisation began operating independently on its own validated tenant
• Recurring licensing cost is carried by the philanthropic programme rather than the operating budget
• Information architecture and security were set at the outset rather than remediated later