Does anyone have any experience of software licencing for charities? I've recently joined the committee for my sons Pre-School, who are a registered charity, as the E-Safety Oversight and I'm pretty sure some of their PC's are still running XP... As such I was wondering what the options licences are for charities for things like Windows, Office and AV software? Also what the experience of getting said licences is like? Thanks in advance. Andy.
I have previously worked with charities that sourced software via CTX............. https://www.tt-exchange.org/ Geting the licences etc is pretty straight forward too.
you need to check the eligibility of the organisation, as there are a few who are not entitled, charity or not
As you know XP has reached it's end of life for support and may be vulnerable. Do you happen to have more details, would this be something they'd consider upgrading all the software and licences and how many computers/users they have.
You can apply for a free 'Google Apps for Education' package being a school. That'll give you office software alternatives. (docs) and email accounts for the staff - In the primary school I work in, I have chrome browsers setup with free preloaded games and software on. (which you control from within the admin panel) - I can pretty much lock it all down. (although you have to have an internet subscription)
Im speaking with strickly second hand information here. My father is a board member of a charity and deals with all of the new hardware/software issues. I do know that he got (i think) 5 full licenses for office for about £20 and i think windows 7 was somewhere in the regon of £5 per machine. Very little fuss involved, you just supply the registration number of the charity and then buy the stuff. The site he used was based in the UK, im not sure where you are. If you would like me to find out the web address for what he buys i can get it for you. just let me know
Ctx is one way to go but there are limitations in terms of the number of families and products you can get a discount for. Also eligibility for certain suppliers programs is governed by the charities turn over. ( my last work place was too large for the Cisco stuff) Alternatively give softcat a call, once charitable status is confirmed you can get edu / non profit pricing on loads off stuff. Generally with larger projects, I'd buy the server and cals for the first 100 from Ctx and the rest on my charity ms accounts direct from softcat. Don't forget office 365 e1 is free to qualifying charities and E3 licensing is dirt cheap vs corp. PM if you would like a contact at Softcat, was actually a good guy and not down my throat every 5 seconds trying to drupal up business.
