Microsoft has reaffirmed its commitment to help non-profits leverage technology for greater impact through Tech for Social Impact, within Microsoft Philanthropies, an initiative that brings together donations, grants, sales and partner ecosystems to empower non-profits to address the world’s most pressing social challenges on a global level.
One of the non-profits supported by Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact locally is the Inspire Foundation.
“Microsoft has supported Inspire for many years through the Community Software Donation programme as well as Employee volunteering days.
During discussions with Inspire and their IT partner Kinetix, we identified their digital transformation journey as being critical to the organisations operations.
Through the TSI Grant scheme we managed to secure funds for Dynamics365 licences as well as for the deployment and training of the users.” said Angela Micallef, Philanthropies Lead at Microsoft Malta.
As a company at the forefront of digital transformation, Microsoft is committed to bringing the benefits of technology to all. When looking at the challenges that non-profits face, they often struggle with lack of technical capacity, scarcity of resources, lack of partners and few technology solutions customised for their environment.
“Microsoft Dynamics 365 will empower Inspire Foundation employees and enable greater staff productivity by seamlessly connecting organisational data with Office 365, surfacing it within familiar tools like Outlook, Excel, and Power BI, and aligning donor resources and volunteer skills to connect beneficiaries with the services and information they need the most. Additionally, it will optimise their operations by offering complete ERP capabilities to streamline their organisational operations from field to office and reduce costs. It will provide specialised capabilities for finance, supply chain, human resources, and distribution - so Inspire can focus on their mission,” added Angela Micallef.
During a recent meeting at Microsoft office at SkyParks Business Centre, Antonello Gauci explained how: “Inspire Foundation recognised the need to accelerate its digital transformation journey, especially in light of GDPR requirements. We conducted an audit of our information systems with the help of our IT partner Kinetix and identified a number of areas for upgrade. This is a huge reform in our processes, especially in the way we manage our clients’ personal data, files and information. The new customer relationship management system being put in place by Kinetix is based on our unique requirements and will enable all data to be managed in real time, resulting in a lot of important efficiencies for us to be able to work better.”
Microsoft has a long-standing commitment to global corporate philanthropy. Since 2016, it has donated more than $2.5 billion in cash grants, software, hardware and cloud technology to hundreds of thousands of non-profits and helped 90,000 such organisations move to the cloud.
More recently, in September 2017, Microsoft launched Tech for Social Impact (TSI), powered by a sustainable social model where profits are reinvested into expanding support for non-profits. The TSI team is dedicated to making world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable, so that non-profits can drive even greater impact.