Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement retirement soon: time for a new platform?

Is your nonprofit organisation currently using Microsoft^® Fundraising and Engagement (MS F&E)? Bad news: this solution, part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit, is nearing the end of its lifespan and will be retired soon. Do you have a Plan B ready to move to a new platform?

In this comprehensive article, we’ll explain what the Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement retirement means for you, give you the retirement timeline so you can plan ahead, explore why we think Salesforce^® Nonprofit cloud should be your go-to replacement for MS F&E, how you can make a smooth transition off Microsoft’s platform, and lots more.

The clock’s ticking ever onward to the final retirement day and there’s no time to lose – so read on! 

What’s happening to Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement?

In July 2024, Microsoft made the big announcement that Fundraising and Engagement, its flagship platform for these core nonprofit activities, will be retired at the end of 2026. It was a big bombshell for organisations and their users who have built their nonprofit technology infrastructure using MS F&E, and left nonprofits around the world wondering “what do we do now?”

As of the announcement, Microsoft is no longer proactively selling Fundraising and Engagement, and will be removing it from their price list after December 31, 2024. The big date in the timeline, however, comes right at the end. At 11:59 PM Pacific Time (US) on December 31, 2026, all technical support will cease. Microsoft will continue to provide necessary security updates after this date but they won’t make any other enhancements. 

What does all this mean for you? 

If your digital fundraising and engagement has MS F&E at its core, it’s standing on a pretty precarious platform. After the final retirement date, if you face any bugs or other issues (besides security vulnerabilities inherent in the platform itself), you’re out of luck – Microsoft won’t provide any support to fix your problems. 

Importantly, Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement is a platform with no future. As MS F&E won’t receive any enhancements from Microsoft after the clock strikes midnight and 2026 ends, it will effectively be “frozen in time”. It won’t evolve along with the rest of the wider nonprofit technology landscape, with the changing needs of the sector, your specific area of focus, or your organisation. It will never get more useful to you – only less and less useful as requirements inevitably grow and shift in the future. In short, “if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind”, as the saying goes.

None of this will make for happy reading if you’re one of the many nonprofits currently using Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement. And, although the end of 2026 may seem a long way off at the time of this article’s publication, significant technological change isn’t usually something that can just happen overnight. 

Some of the factors to be considered, as soon as possible, are:

• Which platform you’ll choose to replace Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement
• The potential costs of this new platform, as well as those entailed in migration
• Time and organisational upheaval involved in migrating from MS F&E
• Training your staff in your new platform and ensuring adoption among them
• Improvements you can make now you’re making a fresh start on this new platform

That may seem a lot to think about but don’t worry. If you’re concerned about how you’ll address even just one of those, we can help you. Right now, the main thing to focus on is the very first one in the list: what is the platform you’ll move to now? 

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud: the leading donor management and fundraising software

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud is the ideal platform to replace Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement – not just a good replacement but a better one. Here’s why: 

Designed with nonprofits in mind

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers a purpose-built solution for nonprofits, with features that cater specifically to donor management, program tracking, and volunteer coordination. In contrast, Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement lacks the same level of nonprofit-specific functionality and, with its retirement, will no longer receive updates or support, leading to potential stability and security concerns.

As flexible as you need it to be

Customization is another key advantage of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. It offers extensive flexibility through its vast ecosystem of third-party apps and integrations, allowing nonprofits to tailor the platform to their unique needs. MS F&E, on the other hand, has limited customization options, and with its retirement, organisations will struggle to adapt the platform as their needs evolve.

Easy to use and well-supported

The user experience is also superior with Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, featuring an intuitive interface and a strong emphasis on user adoption. Salesforce provides regular updates and resources specifically aimed at nonprofits, ensuring that users can maximise the platform’s potential. Conversely, MS F&E’s interface is already somewhat dated and will not be seeing a face lift before its retirement.

A thriving, worldwide community 

Salesforce’s strong community and support network is a significant benefit. With a large global community of nonprofits, abundant resources, and dedicated support, Salesforce users are never alone. As MS F&E phases out, its smaller user community will likely dwindle, making it difficult for organisations to find the help they need and those in-demand resources will become more costly.

Free licences and discounts

Through Salesforce’s Power of Us Program, eligible nonprofit organisations can receive their first 10 Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud licences (or Sales/Service Cloud licences) at no cost. What’s more, additional licences can be obtained at a discount. This makes Nonprofit Cloud a very affordable platform for nonprofit organisations, many of whom deal with challenging budgets.

Want help moving from Microsoft Fundraising and Retirement to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud? Get in touch with us today.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales vs Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud

Rather than switching to another vendor’s platform, Microsoft suggests replacing Fundraising & Engagement with its own Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. We do not recommend this – for one reason, because Dynamics 365 Sales is not nonprofit-specialised. You will see exactly why that’s a big deal soon. 

To help you make a confident and informed decision about this, we’ve compiled a comparison table that weighs up Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales against Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud in all the key ways. Here it is:

Your Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement migration to Salesforce

If you decide you want to move from Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, we will be glad to help you. VRP Consulting is a leading Salesforce Partner – especially when it comes to our work for nonprofit organisations, one of our core client bases. 

Here’s our process for Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement migration to Salesforce:

1. Discovery and assessment

• Needs analysis: Understand your current use of MS F&E, key requirements, and goals for Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud.
• Data audit: Evaluate your data structure, quality, and volume to identify necessary data cleansing and transformation.

2. Data migration planning

• Data mapping: Document how data from MS F&E will map to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, ensuring entities like contacts, donations, and campaigns are accurately represented.
• Data cleansing: Clean your data for accuracy and consistency before migration.

3. System configuration

• Salesforce setup: Configure Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, including custom objects, fields, and automation rules to match your needs.
• Integration: Reconfigure or develop integrations to replace those used in MS F&E.

4. Data migration execution

• Test migration: Perform a test migration in a Sandbox environment to validate data integrity and system behaviour.
• Final migration: Migrate your data to the Salesforce Production environment, minimising disruption.

5. User training and adoption

• Training: Provide role-specific training to ensure your team is comfortable with Salesforce.
• Go-live support: Offer support during the transition to address any immediate issues.

6. Post-migration support and optimization

• Ongoing support: Provide continued assistance and optimization based on user feedback.
• Documentation: Deliver comprehensive documentation for your new Salesforce system.

That’s not all. If you need help applying for Salesforce’s Power of Us Program, including selecting the products you will need, we can help with that, too. 

What’s more, if your needs are relatively simple, your budget is on the smaller side, and you need to make the switch quickly, we offer QuickStart Implementations of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. A QuickStart Implementation gets you up and running with Salesforce in as little as four weeks, smoothly and cost-effectively. We can discuss whether this is the right route for you in our initial discussions. 

Finally, and very importantly, our experts can also help you take this opportunity to identify areas for improvement and optimise your processes to make them work even better than ever, turbocharged by Salesforce and all its possibilities.

VRP’s award-winning work for other nonprofit organisations

VRP Consulting is well known within the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond for our work for nonprofit organisations. We’re very proud of what we’ve helped nonprofits to achieve with the power of Salesforce technology, and we relish both the chance to innovate on their behalf and help them raise their impact and make more of a difference. 

We don’t have enough room in this article to talk about all of the amazing nonprofit organisations VRP has been lucky enough to work for, so I’ll just briefly highlight a couple of them:

Ukrainian Red Cross Society

VRP’s work for nonprofits includes helping the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS), one of many International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) National Societies we have the privilege of working for. Close to the start of the war, our team integrated a third-party donation platform, implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud to further boost their fundraising efforts, configured campaigns and more. We were thrilled to receive a Salesforce Partner Innovation Award in the “Nonprofit Consulting” category for this work, and that we were able to assist URCS at such a vital time.    

If you’d like to read the whole story of our work for them, read our URCS case study here.

Noise Solution

Another great nonprofit client is Noise Solution, who help vulnerable young people through the power of music and self-determination by pairing their programme participants with musicians for music sessions that increase their confidence and well-being. We teamed up to bring them the power of AI, and received a Salesforce Partner Innovation Award for this work, too – in the “Tableau / CRM Analytics Award” category. What’s more, VRP and Noise Solution’s Work was also the UK winner of the Digital Revolution Awards’ “Excellence in AI” category.

If you want to learn all the details of our work together, read our Noise Solution case study here.

Need help preparing for the Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement retirement?

I hope this article has been useful to you, helping you understand everything the Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement retirement entails, and also how you can navigate a smooth and successful path away from MS F&E and onto new donor management and fundraising software that is ready to support you in the future, in all the ways you need it to. 

We’re here to support you, too. Our team will be very glad to use our experience and expertise, honed over years of enabling nonprofits to succeed with the power of Salesforce, to do the same for you. So, if you need any help or advice in making your own transition off Microsoft Fundraising and Retirement, we would love to hear from you – just get in touch. 

Get in Touch

About the Author

Dan Collis

Solution Architect, VRP Consulting UK

Dan is a Solution Architect and Senior Consultant within VRP Consulting’s UK team. He has more than ten years’ experience implementing the Salesforce platform as well as end-to-end knowledge of Salesforce roadmap management and project delivery.