>> Hey friends, with limited budgets,
many non-profit organizations have
difficulty accessing the technology that they need.
But did you know that Microsoft Philanthropies offers up to
3500 US dollars a year in Azure donations to eligible non-profits.
Jane Mareth is here to show us how Azure enables
non-profits and move to the Cloud today on Azure Friday.
[MUSIC]
Hey friends, it's Azure Friday. I'm here with Jane.
I'm learning all about Microsoft Philanthropies.
I didn't know that we did this.
>> Yes, we've been doing it for a while now.
We've recently expanded some of our programs.
I'm part of
Microsoft Philanthropies global engagement and community team.
I work on a program called Tech Spark,
and Tech Spark is a SIPOC economic program that pretty much
aims to help areas such as rural or what we call Middle America,
and were in six different locations,
were in North Dakota, Wyoming,
Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas and Washington.
Then we're also international we just
expanded over to more as Mexico.
>> Interesting. Okay so we're starting to make sure that
Azure is going to be available to everyone that needs it.
That's the general idea.
>> Well, it's more than just that.
So we have a couple pillars that we essentially consider.
So we believe in support for non-profits.
One of the other things that we know
that in rural areas and not urban areas,
I guess I should say that they're facing right
now is the lack of access to rural brought back to broadband.
So we have a pillar call rural broadband,
we also have a pillar called digital transformation
which is really a pillar that I sit in.
Then there's the digital skills pillar as well,
then there's also the Computer Science pillar.
Those two pillars talk
about essentially like teals and use bargain,
all the different things that we have in Microsoft entropies.
Like I said, we are a gigantic machine,
and we're just really trying to drive change in this world,
and especially in the United States
like going into our own backyard.
>> I do a lot of work with different non-profits both
globally and also locally to my neighborhood,
and one of the things that I noticed is that
their websites are janky,
they have as a self-service that go like,
the copyright notice is always 10 years ago.
It's basically someone locally gave them hosting time years ago,
and the website was volunteered,
someone volunteered to code it or whatever.
But in a world of WordPress and online CMS's and the Cloud,
I don't think that a non-profit website has to be old-school.
>> No, I absolutely agree with you.
We know there's been some research
that's been done in the past that most people
now connect through social media and
your website that's what tells your story.
So you just want to make sure that you
have a website that's speaks to your donors,
so that you can get them to donate you.
Today we'll talk a little bit about how you can build that,
and you don't have to know how to code.
I'm not a coder either and I was able to go through it.
So I wanted to show non-profits how we can leverage Azure as well,
even if they didn't code it.
If you happen to be the accidental techie for your non-profit,
I know that happens a lot,
you can definitely leverage some of
our Azure documents to go through it without having to code.
>> So then someone has to register though as
a non-profit in order to leverage Azure, is that correct?
>> Yes, that is correct.
So in order to get to donation you have to go through eligibility.
We're available in about 138 countries,
so this is not just for the United States.
Anyone and most countries can leverage this,
and we're always expanding as we go.
>> So then you register as a non-profit and then you
go up to Microsoft/nonprofits/azure,
and then you can apply for this donation.
>> Yes, that's correct.
I'm going to go ahead and show you how to do that.
>> Are we a non-profit suddenly, that's great.
>> Not really a non-profit,
but we'll show you how to get started at least.
>> All right, sounds like a plan.
>> So this is the website that you go to
and you can choose a bunch of different products as well,
but for this one we're more interested in the Azure one.
It would go down here and where it
says "Annual Donated Credits" you click on "Getting Started."
You would essentially just read through this just make sure that
you fit the profile of a non-profit that we look for.
>> Right, there's tax identification numbers and things like that.
>> You definitely want to be a 501c3,
that's probably the main one.
So then we'll go through here and we'll
make sure and ask you that you don't discriminate,
that's actually really important.
So as long as you can say that
your non-profit doesn't discriminate towards anyone,
and both of these statements are true, just go ahead and continue.
Right here this is where you would choose where you're located.
Right now we're just going to use the United States,
but there's like I said over 130 locations
that you can potentially register from.
For this I'm just going to say "test",
then you can go ahead and say as well like what you focus on,
so what are your areas of impact.
I love kids, so I'm just going to say "youth activity",
and a supplery of that I'm going to say
the FFA or FHH because that's a big thing.
>> That's a really good point, because it makes you
realize that when you think non-profit,
it could be a big global non-profit or it could be your local 4H,
or your local boy scouts,
as long as they are an accredited non-profit.
>> Yes, that's correct.
>> Of course, it's going to be you on the back end that
denies this particular non-profit, right?
>> No, we try not to deny anyone.
>> You're going to deny one called Tess though.
>> Yes.
>> So once you've signed up though,
the money shows up at how does that express itself?
>> There's a whole team in the back.
So what usually happens is,
once they're verified there'll be notified by e-mails,
then they can go through TechSoup which is one of
our partners and get some additional licenses,
so you get Office 365.
You could get Dynamics, there's a bunch of different scopes,
so essentially TechSoup would essentially help you on board.
>> Nice. So this is a partner that gets you prepped.
So you've gone and you've filled out this form,
now you've got Azure money.
>> Yes.
>> Could I make a better website with it?
Do you think you could do that without saving?
>> Yes, easily.
>> Maybe we can fast order that part.
>> Okay. So I've already gone ahead and registered for his demo,
but just in case anyone was a little bit curious,
you would just go on portal.azure.com,
and then you just sign up for the free trial.
Let's say you just weren't sure as even as
a non-profit that you wanted to apply for it,
you can just do a free trial,
you get $200 of credit for 30 months,
and then you also get 12 months of free Microsoft products.
>> You get you get a bunch of free products at azure.com/free.
I think you get 200 for a month or a year right.
So it's a non-trivial amount,
and you could try it out and even put together
a website while you're waiting for your donation to come through.
>> Yes, as a matter of fact a website that I built on average is
about $75 a month to operate it.
So you could definitely, you don't need a server,
you don't need a code, you could
literally go server less and do everything on the Cloud.
>> Let's do it.
>> Okay. So I'm
just going to go ahead and show you where to
go to create your WordPress.
I've already created one,
so I'm going to move on from that but in
case anyone was interested and
wanted to see how that process works,
just search "WordPress", then you create,
right here you put it into name of your apps,
so we'll just do test.
They'll create a new resource group or you could
use existing resource group,
I already have an existing resource group
that I could technically put this in,
which is called textbook demo,
but just for this I'll just say test.
Right here, it already
chooses a database for you and
MySQL is one of the best ones out there.
This is where you can go and you can
change your plan if you want to.
So most of the non-profits that I work with are in Central US,
you want to go with a data-center that is the closest to you.
>> Right.
>> Right here.
>> That one's picked Central US.
>> Exactly.
>> Of course where you can pick the size-
>> Right.
>> Small, medium, large kind of thing.
>> Yeah. So right here, I'm just going to say,
"Create new" and in pricing standard,
I went with the S1 when
created mine just because I had a lot more to
offer and it was only about $75 a month.
But you can also choose different one based
on sort of like the traffic that you're expecting on your website.
>> Right.
>> But I don't think that non-profits would need more than the S1.
>> The nice thing about Azure of course,
is that when it's time to go and do your money
raising and you're going to get more traffic,
you raise it up, you raise the premium
and then you bring it back down at the end of [inaudible].
>> Right. Yeah, that ability to
scale is pretty amazing with Azure.
>> Yeah.
>> So this is just pretty much you apply then you can change that.
Let's go back to
right here then you just sort of click on "Create".
It takes about two minutes to create this.
It's super quick.
>> Right. Just not fast enough for this show?
>> It is not fast enough for this show, that's right.
>> Okay.
>> Do you have one already made?
>> Yes, I do. So let's go ahead and
leave here and go to my dashboard.
>> It's interesting, people may
think if you're a non-profit or like you said,
I liked the way you phrased it an accidental techie,
they may think that Azure is
overwhelming but just the fact that you were
able to go create and type in WordPress.
You didn't type in virtual machine,
you didn't type in Azure App Service plan,
you type in "WordPress" and it was available to you.
You can do this if you're a non-profit?
>> Right. A nice thing about it you don't think
about like the virtual machine that you have set up.
You don't have to do any of the infrastructure stuff.
It's already set up for you.
All you have to do is literally create your password and
login into your WordPress and then start making changes.
>> Awesome.
>> So I created this last night.
So I'm just going to go ahead and start.
It already started.
>> You probably had it shut down so you save some money, right?
>> Yes. You want to make sure that
you shut it down and there are also things that
you can explore such as automatically shutting it
down and then I think you could probably put
a message out there on your website saying,
"Hey, we're down right now for some maintenance."
if you wanted like people to know that
your website hasn't expired or anything like that.
>> Yeah. All right.
So this was the WordPress that you
made day before yesterday or a couple years ago?
>> Yes.
>> So that's going to fire up to take a moment
because it's going to warm up.
>> Right.
>> I've actually gotten in trouble in the past where I've left
things on overnight certainly I'm
not on my website on all the time.
Oh there you go. It's already up.
>> So there it is. This is the website that I had going.
>> So we haven't seen any code yet,
but now I want to get money, right?
I want to have people donate to my website,
to my generic WordPress site.
Give me money. How do I do that?
>> So let's go and log in.
>> Okay.
>> All right. Welcome to WordPress.
>> Yes. There we go. So one of the things that we
mentioned is being able to get your donors to donate.
So one of the things that I like about
WordPress is that they have a ton of plugins.
One of the plugins that I
particularly like is the Give one just because
it's free and it was built by developers, it's also open-source.
So I like the idea of using open-source for non-profits.
Just because when you think about open source,
it's all about like communities trying to like leverage
each other to drive impact and
this the thing that nonprofits are doing.
>> Okay. So the donation plug-in and fundraising platform,
I like that, is well,
it got five-stars. [inaudible].
>> Yes. It has five stars and over 800,000 people are using it.
>> Oh, wow. Okay. So this is well thought of in the community?
>> Yes.
>> That's good to know.
>> Yes, they have over 35 contributors.
You can go and see all their contributors. It's pretty awesome.
>> All right. Great. So you go and install that plug-in and then
that fundraising platform becomes part of
WordPress that we're running now on Azure [inaudible]?
>> Yes. Then you'll have to do
a little bit of customization but it's very straightforward.
You'll have to essentially like out of forum to say,
what kind of donations that you want like
you just wanted to be free form so you
just want people to be able to put like $5 and
donate that to you or do you want to have a certain package
like donate $5 and then like this is like I don't know silver and-
>> Yeah. I'm sure
monthly contributions and all that kind of stuff.
>> Right. Exactly.
>> But the nice thing about it is
that you are able to sign up for Azure,
you got your free trial which enables you
to put on WordPress at some point,
you would then get your donation from Microsoft philanthropy.
>> Yes.
>> Which then gets you a lot of
flexibility and a lot of enough money to do anything.
>> Right. Yeah. Everything about it I think 3,500
roughly is about $200-250 a month.
>> Yeah. That's a lot.
>> That's a lot of money when we're talking
about Azure especially when we're talking
about pay as you go and you only pay for what you use.
It's really nice. So you can definitely
play around with that amount.
>> So you've gone and you've activated that and then
you go through this process and set up "Give."
>> Yes.
>> So you've shown how easily someone could
set up a website without any code.
>> Yes.
>> Even an accidental techie.
>> Yes.
>> Could do that.
>> Yes. I'm an accidental techie and I am a Binger.
So if I don't know anything I-
>> Are you a Binger?
>> I work at Microsoft.
>> It's all good. You can
Bing or you can use the other one if you need to,
if you can't find it, it's all good.
>> I like to research I guess I should say
and essentially I'll just put in that kind of information.
I'll like search for something and
the other thing as well since we talked
about being able to
engage with them and being able to tell your story.
Wanted a big things that we're seeing as well is that donors
specifically like to be able
to engage your Instagram is social media.
So what you could do is if you have social media,
you can go ahead and connect your Instagram account.
>> Yeah. Your social accounts bring in your feeds of
your photographs of the different events that your nonprofit has.
>> Yes. This one I'm particularly.
There's one right here that I've tested out that I enjoyed using.
It's by a developer that also runs a non-profit that does this.
So Scott Evans. Yes. There it is.
>> That's your favorite?
>> Yes. Just because it was pretty straightforward when
I use this and I was just able to type in Instagram,
when I needed to go into my widget and set it up.
Then all you have to do is give them the information
to your Instagram account and there you go.
You can literally link your Instagram account to
your website and be
able to have your donors see what you're up to,
what you're doing into communities
and sort of getting them engaged in your story.
>> Very cool. Let's switch back to the tab that shows us
where we can learn more about the Azure Foundation
and about how to get involved.
So the Azure foundation for nonprofits can help you out, can't it?
>> Yes. It can help you think
about your infrastructure essentially.
>> So if you're an accidental techie and
you'd like to know more information how to maybe,
security is another big thing that we
talk about if you wanted to learn more about that.
You go in and you could enable to
security monitor backup right here and you can download
the Accelerator Pack and essentially read through
the presentations to find out
how you can make your website even more secure.
>> Very cool. So you've got Microsoft
Philanthropies offering up to $3,500 a year,
US dollar in Azure donations to eligible non-profits.
The Azure Foundation there to help you out
and you can go and put together
WordPress or whatever makes you happy.
If you're a more sophisticated nonprofit,
you can use that money to run your existing infrastructure.
>> Yes. Exactly. Who doesn't like free money?
>> Who doesn't like money? Fantastic. I am learning all
about Azure for Nonprofits today on Azure Friday.
[MUSIC]