The vast majority of organisations I have worked with use Microsoft. They have Microsoft 365 as their software, running on Windows 10 or 11, on a PC or a laptop. They chat on Teams and send emails in Outlook. All very good.
But is it?
This is the Microsoft question. Not whether it's good software. But whether charities are choosing it, or just never questioning it.
The status quo bias
I once explained to the CEO of a charity I worked with a few years back that they were entitled to have Google Workspace for free. I say that again: for free. Admittedly, this was only the basic tier, but that in itself covered the essentials:
- Email (via Gmail, but with the organisation’s domain, e.g. @charity.org.uk and no ads)
- Google Meet: video conferencing with >150 people
- Chat
- Calendar
- Docs, Sheets & Slides
- Forms
- Sites
- Drive - 100TB of storage
- AppSheet
For every member of staff. For free.
To me, this decision was a no-brainer (I did mention it was free, didn’t I?), but the CEO said no. He said that the staff would not be comfortable with it, that they knew Office and it would be too much to change.
So, instead, the charity took on the burden of spending over £3k a year to keep the status quo1. On top of this, there was the cost of outsourcing a tech support team to manage the insanely complicated security and updates. Plus a spam filter that blocked emails from trust funds, but allowed various Princes from Nigeria to sail on by.
That is a textbook example of a cognitive bias called status quo bias — the tendency to prefer the current state of affairs and overweight the costs of changing it relative to the costs of staying put. It's not entirely irrational by the way. Switching costs are real, change management is hard, and trustees don't love risk at the best of times.
But the tech industry has quietly convinced the charity sector that the expensive option is the safe option. It isn't always. Sometimes it's just the familiar one.
A quick reality check
Before I go any further, I know that this is a very biased outlook.
As a lifelong Mac user I freely admit that I have a natural antipathy towards Windows. There has always been the sibling rivalry of Mac users and Windows users – or, as we so cleverly referred to them, Windoze users (see what we did there?).
But that also gives me an outside-looking-in perspective that I think helps me see some glaring flaws in the Microsoft ecosystem.
“Aha!” You will say, “but those flaws are the same for you! In your hermetically sealed Apple ecosystem! QED!” But that is only partially true.
Most Apple users know that the built-in solutions for email, writing, communicating and general business-ey stuff is flawed at best. So we tend to look at other solutions for those problems – something that I would argue a lot of Microsoft business users do not.
Microsoft, like all giant monoliths, has come on leaps and bounds over the years. For massive enterprise-level organisations that need very stringent control because of the sheer complexity of the IT infrastructure, Microsoft is a very wise choice. It has been stress-tested and is the perfect choice for most companies of that size for a reason… though I still add in the status quo bias.
But in reality, most charities and non-profits are not at that level of complexity. Some are, but most are not. Even if you have offices all around the globe, the chances are that the IT side of it is still pretty straightforward, just in order of magnitude.
The idea that Microsoft is the only player in town if you are serious about business-level systems is just plain wrong.
I have used Microsoft products on and off over the years. I have bought Dell laptops and installed Office 365, I even switched everything at Big Pixel over the Microsoft because someone promised me that they were so much better now, and I was aware how much my bias clouded my judgement. But for me, the Microsoft streamline remains the same – “X: like Y… but just a bit shit”. For example:
Teams: like Zoom… but just a bit shit.
Azure: like AWS… but just a bit shit.
…etc.
And that is my main issue. The veil that gets pulled over the eyes of Microsoft devotees means they miss out on some genuinely cracking options. Ones with a lot less flaws and (normally) a lot less security issues. They settle for meh. And with charities, they settle for meh that costs money.
Okay then, what now?
Rather than leave on this slightly bitter note, I want to offer what I consider to be some strong alternatives to the Microsoft cosmos. A lot of these will offer their product for free to registered charities, or at least with a heavy discount for those that qualify (usually just proof of charity status).
Office = Google Workspace for Nonprofits
As already mentioned, it's worth looking seriously at what Google offers. The free tier covers the essentials for every member of staff, and if some of your team only deal in email, documents, and spreadsheets, you can potentially save on hardware costs too by moving to Chromebooks.
Teams = Zoom
Zoom does one thing exceptionally well: it just seems to work. There is none of the confusion about whether someone's been invited correctly, no mystery about why the screen share has frozen, no passive-aggressive notifications about switching to the new Teams. Plus, Zoom offers 50% off paid plans for nonprofits.
For internal chat, Google's built-in Chat app comes with Workspace, Slack offers a free Pro plan to nonprofits, or Twist provides a calmer, less interruptive alternative with a decent free tier.
SharePoint = Notion
SharePoint is where documents go to die. Notion is free for small teams, genuinely usable by non-technical staff, and offers a 50% discount on its Pro plan for nonprofits who need more oomph. Though fair warning: for procrastinators (like me), it is manna from heaven as it is so customisable.
Microsoft Projects = Asana
Most charity project management doesn't need Gantt charts and resource allocation matrices. It needs a clear list of who's doing what by when, visible to everyone involved. Asana handles that well, with kanban boards, calendar views, and enough integrations to connect with whatever else you're using. The free tier is limited to two users, but nonprofits get 50% off the Starter and Advanced plans — which opens it up properly.
Email = Outlook
I know! But Outlook, in its modern incarnation, is actually pretty good. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The point of this article isn't that everything Microsoft makes is terrible, it's just that you don't have to put all your eggs in one basket. Using Outlook doesn't mean you have to use Teams, SharePoint, Azure, and Microsoft Projects as well. Pick the tools that actually fit the job.
Summary
None of this has to be all or nothing. Switching costs are real, and I'm not suggesting that any charity should rip everything out overnight. But for me, the assumption that Microsoft is automatically the right answer, or the only serious answer for every business problem is costing the charity sector money that could be spent on their mission instead. I think itt's worth at least asking the question.
Footnotes
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This also falls into the cognitive bias of loss aversion, as coined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. ↩