A Company EVERY non-profit Must Know

If you direct a non-profit organization, you know that money is tight and your organization is measured on how much of that money leaves your organization and gets to the people or organizations that need it. If you’ve never heard of Techsoup, you must read on!

While a non-profit’s mission might be different than a for-profit company, the way the organization runs is not. Non-profits have the same types of expenses and one of those is technology. As a non-profit, you have to purchase expensive software to keep the business running. Techsoup, a nonprofit corporation too, can reduce your technology costs substantially.

The idea is quite simple. Techsoup maintains a network of corporate and non-profit technology partners whose sole mission is to provide low or no cost technology solutions to qualifying non-profits. You might think that the way they do this is by offering outdated products but this isn’t true. Most products are current versions and for those that aren’t, who would balk at having powerful productivity software virtually free of charge that happens to be a version of two behind?

Let’s look at a few examples: If your non-profit uses Quickbooks Premier edition to manage your books, you may have purchased it for $339.00 at a certain online store. If you qualify for the Techsoup program, you only pay $45.00! The newest version of Microsoft Office, Office 2010 Professional Plus would cost about $400 to purchase at a retail outlet but qualifying non-profits can purchase it for only $31.00!

How can your non-profit get involved with techsoup? First, you must be registered as a 501(c)(3) organization. If you have been operating without being registered in your state, contact a business registration service (like ActiveFilings.com) today to get the paperwork on file.

Once you do that, you send the verifiable documents to Techsoup and within a small amount of time, your organization will be eligible for this valuable program.

This is just another way that registering your business can save you money in the long run.

Some non-profits believe that providing valuable community services without going to the expense of registering their business saves money but just by doing the math for the two examples given above, the money spent on registration services will quickly be made back using services like Techsoup.