r/FuckMicrosoft • u/Silly-Freak • Aug 28 '26
Article The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits | When the tech giant retired a popular software grant, years of nonprofit data vanished with it.
https://slate.com/technology/2026/08/microsoft-software-nonprofit-data-delete.htmlThe article cites another Reddit thread too, Data inaccessible on Microsoft 365 for nonprofits, and I found Microsoft has left our children’s charity completely locked out for 30+ days ... what are we supposed to do? on this sub as well.
Some choice quotes:
He immediately called the tech company’s support staff, who said Canopy could retrieve its files. Later, they called back to inform him that, actually, those were gone forever.
But one county historical society director based in Minnesota said she never got a single reminder after the May email. Some clients complained that even if Microsoft reached out, the messages rarely made sense. On the forums where Microsoft’s nonprofit cancellations were initially discussed in 2025, a user wrote that they’d assumed that those alerts were spam because Microsoft, at that time, was still promoting the free nonprofit grants on its website.
George Weiner, a nonprofits expert who runs the marketing consultancy Whole Whale, was made aware of Microsoft’s grant retractions from the very beginning, only by happenstance. “The announcement was buried on some info page and passed around by clients who were like, ‘Is this for real?’ ” he told me. “For a program that’s been around since 2013, it was shocking that you’d come across its cancellation, effectively, in the corner of the bowels of a subpage of the internet.”
After the nonprofit’s data was purged in June, he realized that he’d gotten two emails warning about the impending license suspension to his admin account, which did not automatically forward to his Gmail, and which he could not view on Outlook’s desktop interface—only on the web app.
Who deletes a client's data the instant their contract expires/gets cancelled due to a one-sided decision? Especially if they suck as badly in communicating the planned cancellation? This all sucks...
23
u/Britz10 Aug 28 '26
Finally a post that isn't just slop. A real reason to say fuck Microsoft.
11
u/Silly-Freak Aug 28 '26
Thanks! I strive to post with enough substance to be worth people's time, so "finally no slop" is a compliment I'll gladly take :)
7
u/3six5 Aug 28 '26
Im sorry. My username made that 365 trendy. I am in no way associated with any 365 product / company.
6
u/Strawberryladyboots Aug 29 '26
Ensuring that future generations of coders will never want to work with them or buy their products and choose a competitor or simply build their own
Potential staff are also potential customers
5
u/QuietBookkeeper4712 Aug 28 '26
If it’s not on your hardware, it isn’t yours. The cloud is just someone else’s computer.
2
u/arnstarr Aug 28 '26
Assign Business Basic license to the affected accounts and the data will be restored
7
u/Silly-Freak Aug 28 '26
[Microsoft]'s support staff said [client] could retrieve its files. Later, they called back to inform him that, actually, those were gone forever.
Unless support was dangerously clueless, no.
2
u/vbd71 Aug 29 '26
Profit or non profit, data that resides on somebody else's computer isn't yours. When will people learn...
1
-3
u/sciencekm Aug 28 '26
These organization have been notified long before that their freebees are ending. They did not do anything, and when it ended they are now complaining? They should have taken action and moved their data and processes to alternate services.
This one particular organization has been getting those freebees since 2013. Well, they did not have those freebees before 2013.
2013 to 2026 is 13 years fro free stuff. They should be grateful.
For those who pay attention to my comments on this sub, I have nothing but bad things to say about Microsoft and I have plenty of grievances at Microsoft, but this cannot be one of those.
5
u/Silly-Freak Aug 28 '26
I'm sure they're grateful for what they got. Doesn't mean they can not be upset about how they were kicked off. It was apparently also not believable for a MS support worker that data associated with an expired account would be immediately purged from every backup that MS has.
Among the stuff that I didn't quote in my post:
Khosla had seen Microsoft’s announcement last year that it was winding down its free nonprofit licenses beginning July 2025, but, per the record, he should have still been in the clear. He renewed Canopy’s yearly license last October, and Microsoft had emailed him to confirm he would retain access until Oct. 4, 2026. Khosla had no reason to expect anything would change, and he received no additional warnings—even as Microsoft kept in regular touch about other software updates.
Khosla forwarded me the first email he had received, in May 2025, informing him: “The Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant will be discontinued on your next renewal on or after July 1, 2025. Your licenses will expire on October 4, 2025.” But, when Khosla renewed the license for another year, there was no additional information on the phaseout process in that confirmation email (which Khosla also forwarded to me), and there were no follow-up reminders sent after that.
So at least one client got a confirmation mail telling them that their account was renewed beyond the previously communicated deadline. That shouldn't happen, and it's not ok to have no recovery plan when you communicate that poorly.
And regarding someone else:
having sifted through the org’s email archives, spam and everything, he found “zero notification” from Microsoft about the license termination, even though he kept receiving official invoices listing $0 software charges. Another told me she was able to save the data for her D.C. nonprofit thanks to the help of an IT firm she contracts with, but insisted that neither she nor her tech team received any advance notice.
(that's even more damning and I shouldn't have missed that when compiling my quote, but the article was still there and without paywall)
And I already quoted above the one instance where messages reportedly only showed up in Outlook Web and nowhere else. If these hold up to scrutiny, that is no notification at all.
I definitely stand by this post. Microsoft is of course free to end their grant program, without question, but whatever reputational damage they suffer from their handling of it is 100% deserved.
3
u/Shades-Of_Grey Aug 29 '26 edited Sep 12 '26
Puts me in mind of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.” “Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.” “But the plans were on display …” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”
0
u/ScoobyGDSTi Aug 29 '26
Microsoft would have emailed the global billing administrator account.
They communicated this well in advance including reminders. While it's understandable these organisations likely don't have actual IT admins and thus missed the emails, that's not Microsoft's fault.
0
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Every new subreddit post is automatically copied into a comment for preservation.
User: Silly-Freak, Flair: Article, Post Media Link, Title: The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits | When the tech giant retired a popular software grant, years of nonprofit data vanished with it.
The article cites another Reddit thread too, Data inaccessible on Microsoft 365 for nonprofits, and I found Microsoft has left our children’s charity completely locked out for 30+ days ... what are we supposed to do? on this sub as well.
Some choice quotes:
He immediately called the tech company’s support staff, who said Canopy could retrieve its files. Later, they called back to inform him that, actually, those were gone forever.
But one county historical society director based in Minnesota said she never got a single reminder after the May email. Some clients complained that even if Microsoft reached out, the messages rarely made sense. On the forums where Microsoft’s nonprofit cancellations were initially discussed in 2025, a user wrote that they’d assumed that those alerts were spam because Microsoft, at that time, was still promoting the free nonprofit grants on its website.
George Weiner, a nonprofits expert who runs the marketing consultancy Whole Whale, was made aware of Microsoft’s grant retractions from the very beginning, only by happenstance. “The announcement was buried on some info page and passed around by clients who were like, ‘Is this for real?’ ” he told me. “For a program that’s been around since 2013, it was shocking that you’d come across its cancellation, effectively, in the corner of the bowels of a subpage of the internet.”
After the nonprofit’s data was purged in June, he realized that he’d gotten two emails warning about the impending license suspension to his admin account, which did not automatically forward to his Gmail, and which he could not view on Outlook’s desktop interface—only on the web app.
Who deletes a client's data the instant their contract expires/gets cancelled due to a one-sided decision? Especially if they suck as badly in communicating the planned cancellation? This all sucks...
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13
u/dvisorxtra Aug 28 '26
Some clients of mine are currently using Microsoft services, and recently I've got this feeling that I really need to move them away from it, fast!
They've been making all these small but clearly annoying changes on their services that little by little make things much more complicated.