Stories over coffee

After not flying for over two years, our first flight with extra perks like lounge passes, 4 free check-ins, and free Wi-Fi on board is a nice credit card perk to help us manage the added tolerance of masking throughout a very full flight and the irony that everyone takes off their masks at the same time to eat and drink during their snack and drink service.

Anyway, let’s take advantage of the free Wi-Fi to start this post about the perks of being a non-profit or a recognized charitable organization. Did you know that many software companies give discounts to non-profits? Here are a few of the free ones I’ve found out about so far, many of which require verification via a registered business number or via Tech Soup.

• Tech Soup
• Google for Non-Profits
  • includes 32GB storage for each shared drive, unlimited email addresses/user accounts that come with individual drive and shared drive storage (TB)
  • Google Ad Grant: up to $10K ad spend per month, with a Google Nonprofit Marketing Immersion program you can sign up for
  • Not necessarily restricted to non-profits, but if you get more than 100 followers, you can claim your own custom name on your YouTube channel
• Microsoft for Non-Profits
  • Office 365 Business
  • Azure
• Box Starter Edition (100 GB storage up to 2GB files)
• Slack Pro plan if you are a non-religious organization and meet their requirements
• Canva Pro
• Grammarly with premium features
• Atlassian products like JIRA and Confluence are free or 75% off (e.g. Trello) for certain non-profits (excludes those with religious affiliation)

Other tools that are free to use for individuals and small teams:

• If you have a team of under 15, Asana Basic is also free to use
• Notion Personal, free for individuals; Personal Pro Plan, for students and educators
• Basecamp for students and educators, Miro Education plan for students & educators 
• (to explore more in-depth: Akaunting)
• Float credit card for corporate spending
• Unsplash for a variety of stock photos & unDraw for illustrations

While I wish there is some sort of group of similarly minded people locally to exchange tips and best practices, there is a smattering of Facebook groups that try to achieve the same purpose.

Are there others that I’ve missed?