A nonprofit's technology cost splits in two before any provider is chosen. Microsoft, Google and a long list of other vendors grant or discount licences to qualifying organisations, and that half of the bill can fall a long way. The labour that runs the estate is bought at commercial rates. Of the 29 providers read for this record on 10 September 2026, seven publish a per seat figure and not one of them publishes a nonprofit rate.
Ask for the licence line and the service line as two numbers
A provider can buy platform licences on your behalf as a reseller, or you can hold the grant yourself and pay the provider only for labour. Both are defensible, and they produce very different invoices. The question that separates them is simple: what does the licence line cost, what does the service line cost, and if the grant applies, who receives the benefit. A single blended per seat figure hides the answer. Ask also who is named as the tenancy owner on the grant application, because that is the party that can move the licences later.
Volunteers, not ticket volume, are what make these estates expensive
A nonprofit of thirty paid staff can carry a hundred accounts across volunteers, seasonal programme workers, trustees and partner staff. People arrive for a season, share a login because nobody set them up properly, and use their own laptops. The cost is not the help desk, it is the joiners and leavers process nobody owns, and the accounts that were never closed. Settle in writing whether a volunteer account counts as a seat, what a seat costs when it is dormant, and who performs offboarding when a programme ends. Six of the seven providers that publish a price in this record charge per user, so the definition of a user is the whole negotiation.
Donor and programme data carries obligations a business of the same size does not
Donor records, beneficiary case notes and grant reporting bring confidentiality duties that arrive from funders and boards rather than from a regulator, and they land in the support contract whether or not anybody writes them down. Ask where data will be stored, whether support staff outside the country can open a ticket that exposes a case record, whether access is logged and for how long the log is kept, and what the provider must do and tell you within what period if it loses data. If a grant agreement names a control, it belongs in the schedule, not in a policy document filed separately.
The board and the annual audit want evidence, not assurances
Once a year somebody has to show a finance committee or an external auditor who had access to what, that leavers were removed, that backups exist and were restored at least once as a test, and that administrative accounts are limited and protected. Produce that evidence and the meeting is short. Ask a prospective provider for a sample of the pack it produces for an existing client of your size, and ask whether producing it is inside the monthly fee or billed as work. Firms that have never been asked will say yes to the first question and discover the second one in month eleven.
How to price it against what this record actually holds
Twenty nine providers were read for this record and seven publish anything. The middle of those seven sits at $99.50 per user per month, the lowest published figure is Electric at $10/user/mo, and the top of the highest published band is Be Structured Technology Group at $125-$300 per user, per month, which appears in that page's schema markup rather than its visible copy. Powerful IT is the one provider quoting a different unit, $75 per workstation per month, plus $125 per server and $150 per location, which suits an organisation with more shared machines than named staff. None of these is a nonprofit rate. A rate is a rate: the discount in this sector comes off the licence side, not the labour side, so a proposal that leads with the grant saving has shown you the part it did not price.
Questions people ask about IT support for nonprofit organizations
Do nonprofit organizations get cheaper IT support?
Not from the labour side. Not one of the 29 providers in this record publishes a nonprofit rate, and the seven that publish anything quote the same commercial figures to everybody. The saving comes from granted and discounted platform licences, which is a separate line on the invoice.
Do volunteer accounts count as seats?
That is a contract question with no standard answer, and it decides the bill. Six of the seven providers publishing a price in this record charge per user, so a hundred accounts against thirty paid staff is a large difference. Get the definition of a chargeable seat, and the treatment of dormant accounts, in the schedule before signing.
Should the provider buy our licences for us?
Either arrangement works, provided the licence line and the service line are quoted separately and you know who holds the grant. If the provider buys on your behalf, ask whether the nonprofit price is passed through in full and who is named as tenancy owner, because that party controls where the licences can move.
What should we be able to show the board once a year?
A list of who has access to what, evidence that leavers were removed on their leaving date, a restore test rather than a backup report, and a short list of administrative accounts with how each is protected. Ask whether producing that evidence is inside the monthly fee or billed separately.