Considerations for Nonprofits Using Microsoft
Microsoft recently announced that they will be retiring their Fundraising and Engagement solution for nonprofits, and technical support will cease to exist as of December 31, 2026. If you are a nonprofit using Fundraising and Engagement — what does this mean for you?
First of all, what is really happening?
Only 4 years after its release in 2020, Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement will no longer receive any additional feature enhancements as of this posting — and beyond December 31, 2026, they will no longer provide technical support. Microsoft has shifted the responsibility of nonprofit development to their ecosystem of partners. The position of Microsoft seems to be that organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Fundraising and Engagement will have choices for nonprofit solutioning through the partner ecosystem — as they have shifted the ownership of new fundraising solutioning to their partner space both in terms of partner-maintained solutions or completely custom builds. While this is true to an extent, are these choices viable options? Microsoft has cultivated a decent presence for nonprofits — but it is notable that their strongest footholds in the industry are all partner-led initiatives: such as STRATUSLive for UnitedWays or Altai as an AMS for associations.
What should impacted organizations do?
All technology solutions carry the “risk of retirement”. No one is immune, not even Salesforce users. But the degree of risk can be vastly different and it is important to do your research and pay attention to signals. “How long has the company been in business?” and “What is their history with product retirements for my industry?” are two important questions for technology evaluations. Any impacted organization should take this announcement as an opportunity to evaluate the impact on their teams and plan for mitigation of risk. To many, this will include a re-evaluation of their CRM — even if they are not Fundraising & Engagement users. Why? Because Microsoft appears to be strongly signaling that they are not committed to the nonprofit sector.
Where to turn after Microsoft?
It is not lost on me that this news is concurrent to recent announcements from Salesforce where they have demonstrated a doubling down on investment in nonprofits. Over the past year or so, Salesforce has released their newest nonprofit solution, Nonprofit Cloud, and continues to release updates in its regular release cycle (3x per year). Nonprofit Cloud is built on Salesforce’s core platform and enables nonprofits utilizing the platform to take advantage of the wider innovation at Salesforce — such as Omnistudio. Alongside this significant investment, Salesforce has committed to continued support for their existing customers utilizing the legacy solution Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). Do you see the difference in the “choice” that Salesforce has offered, as opposed to what Microsoft is calling a “choice” for their customers? Two community-led solutions, backed by the R&D of Salesforce as opposed to a variety of solutions in which Microsoft has no commitment to whether they provide their customers value or not. And to all of the disgruntled Teams users… your benefits are multiplied with Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack (this alone may be reason enough for change as the Slack use cases for nonprofits far extend just another internal collaboration tool).
The takeaway here is not that organizations utilizing Microsoft Dynamics 365 need to panic or make any sudden moves. But it is a call to consider: where do we want to be in 2, 5, and 10 years and who can we reliably say will be there to support us for that journey?
Questions about the impact this news may have on your organization? Reach out to Arkus on LinkedIn or through our Contact Us form.
