NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, October 2, 2017

Cloud computing has quickly become an essential tool for businesses and governments across the world — but for many nonprofits that operate on a tight margin, moving to the cloud is a huge challenge.

Microsoft Philanthropies set out to close the gap for nonprofits in January of 2016, pledging to donate $1 billion in Microsoft Azure cloud services to 70,000 nonprofits around the world. Monday, the group announced it had reached that goal a year ahead of schedule and had donated cloud services to 90,000 nonprofits, well over its initial goal.

In light of the project’s success, it also announced the formation of a Technology for Social Impact group that will work to bring cloud services to a total of 300,000 nonprofits in the next three years. It also launched a new website to help nonprofits find technologies and services that could help them.

Photo courtesy of Remko van Dokkum.