Approved for Microsoft 365 nonprofit grants. How should I feel about it?

technology

For once I'll not complain about Goodstack, who immediately denied our application for MS365 nonprofit status. Although when I appealed, it was someone from Microsoft who got back to me and pushed an approval through within 24 hours, and not anyone from Goodstack. Google should take a note.

Anyway, I'm enthusiastic about migrating our church over to our private domain and using Exchange hosting, etc. My question here is about the future of this program. I've been reading/hearing that Microsoft is "discontinuing" their nonprofit software grants, though as I've looked deeper into this it appears to be the more advanced/premium packages that are no longer free. The "business basic" package seems to still be free (300 seats; doubt I'd need more than 1, haha).

Hopefully they will continue this for a very long time. What do you think? We are a small church and I'd hate to migrate and get everyone enthused about using Cloud-based documents, only to have Microsoft pull the plug in 3 or 5 years. Or even 10 years. Honestly, private domain email hosting is the thing I need most. I could do this with Zoho for $1 a month (yes, I know they have a free plan, but it doesn't come with IMAP and our secretary is addicted to Outlook).

Of course, Zoho could also raise prices I suppose. Just wondering how confident I should feel moving ahead with Microsoft. Curious if anyone here has an opinion or experiences, especially if it's with churches.

Thanks

Posted Feb 19, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

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