What TechSoup Is

TechSoup is itself a nonprofit. It verifies that organizations are legitimate charities, then brokers donated and discounted technology from vendors who want to give to nonprofits without running their own eligibility checks. For a small organization, it is usually the single cheapest source of legitimate software licenses, and registering costs nothing.

TechSoup funds the service through an admin fee on each product you request. On donated products the fee is small next to retail price; on discounted products the savings are real but thinner. Read the fee before you order, and compare the discounted offers against street price; donations are almost always worth it, discounts sometimes aren't.

How Validation Works

You register your organization once, with your EIN and proof of tax-exempt status. TechSoup verifies it and issues a validation that participating vendors rely on. Do this before you need anything: validation is the slow step, and having it done means a Microsoft or Adobe request later takes minutes instead of weeks.

The Microsoft Offers in 2026

Microsoft's nonprofit program is the reason most organizations find TechSoup, and it changed substantially in 2025. Per Microsoft's nonprofit offers:

  • Microsoft 365 Business Basic remains donated: up to 300 licenses free, covering web Office apps, Teams, Exchange email, and OneDrive.
  • The free Business Premium grant (10 licenses) and the Office 365 E1 grant ended July 1, 2025.
  • Discounted paid tiers continue: Business Standard at about $3 per user per month and Business Premium at about $5.50, versus $12.50 and $22 retail.

For most nonprofits the right answer now is donated Business Basic for light users and discounted Business Premium for staff who need desktop apps and its security stack. What that transition looks like in practice, including the security duties that stay yours, is covered in our guide to cloud computing for nonprofits after the grant changes.

Beyond Microsoft

The catalog is wide: donated and discounted offers span security tools, design software, accounting packages, and refurbished hardware. The discipline that matters is matching requests to a plan. Licenses you claim because they were cheap, then never deploy, still cost admin fees and still complicate your environment. Order against a roadmap, not against the catalog.

Where TechSoup Fits in Your IT Plan

TechSoup gets you licenses; it does not configure, secure, or support anything. Somebody still has to set up the tenant, enforce MFA, run backups, and answer staff questions. ETTE builds nonprofit licensing capture into managed IT: we handle TechSoup and Microsoft nonprofit registration as part of onboarding, keep license counts reconciled as staff change, and fold it into published nonprofit pricing. If you'd rather hand the whole licensing question to someone who does it weekly, talk with an advisor, or see how it fits a broader engagement in nonprofit IT consulting.