Microsoft Tech for Social Impact announces new innovations to help nonprofit and philanthropic organizations deliver on their missions

Microsoft Tech for Social Impact announces new innovations to help nonprofit and philanthropic organizations deliver on their missions

By Justin Spelhaug, VP of Tech for Social Impact, Microsoft Philanthropies

Today we’re announcing the general availability of a new skilling platform called Community Training and a new AI-powered model in Fundraising and Engagement called Likelihood to donate. These new offerings are designed to help nonprofits improve their fundraising and program delivery and enable them to spend more time pursuing their mission.

Here is how:

Community Training: A new platform to train the world

Nonprofits and governments need affordable and easy-to-use tools to upskill the communities they serve, whether a government-agency training citizens on safe sanitation practices, a nonprofit training geographically dispersed volunteers, or an organization delivering digital skilling to students and jobseekers in the most remote parts of a country.

Microsoft’s Community Training platform, powered and secured by Microsoft Azure, is a lightweight, mobile-optimized skilling platform that enables learners to access and engage with content anytime, anywhere, from the device of their choice – even in low-bandwidth environments. Organizations can easily add their custom content to support community skilling opportunities at scale, while also including assessments and certifications to learners. Instructors and facilitators can reduce their workloads with automated methods to manage learners, communicate information easily, and measure learning outcomes – all in a cost-effective, single platform that is easy to deploy and manage. We are already seeing tremendous scale and usage of the Community Training platform with 590 public preview customers, more than 18 million learners, and 117 million course completions across the globe.

UNICEF’s flagship digital learning and skilling programmes, the Learning Passport and the Passport to Earning, use Community Training to deliver high-quality, relevant, tailored learning to children and young people around the world, including those impacted or living in emergencies. The Passport to Earning equips young people with job relevant skills that position them to access economic opportunities. With support from partners including Microsoft, the Passport to Earning has skilled and certified more than a million young people in India in areas of financial literacy and digital productivity. The Learning Passport offers over 16,000 courses in 58 languages to support foundational learning, skills development, teacher training, early childhood development, mental health and more. Since 2020, UNICEF has reached over 6 million learners in 36 countries and learners have completed over 2 million courses. 

Another organization using Community Training is Magic Bus, a nonprofit in India that works with young people and adolescents living in poverty. Magic Bus has used Community Training to educate millions of young people on basic IT knowledge and skills, helping them succeed in India’s rapidly growing economy. They are providing skilling across several states across India, including some of the most remote, hard to reach areas.

Learn about Magic Bus and their use of Community Training

Likelihood to donate: Helping fundraisers find the right donors

Globally, donor participation decreased significantly in 2022, according to a report by Independent Sector, limiting financial resources to already cash-strapped nonprofits. Today it is more important than ever that an organization recognizes the trends of their donor base, understands donors’ preferred fundraising engagement methods, and optimizes marketing dollars to drive results. That’s why earlier this year we announced the private preview of Likelihood to donate, a new AI-powered donor propensity model built into in Fundraising and Engagement, part of Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit. Likelihood to donate uses machine learning to find the behavioral trends and demographic insights from nonprofits’ Fundraising and Engagement data to help predict current and future giving opportunities by donor. Simply put, the model helps fundraisers find the right donors. This model is grounded in Microsoft's commitment to trust, meaning customer data is never shared or used to train the model for other customers.

Team Rubicon, a veteran-led humanitarian organization supporting people and communities before, during, and after disasters, has been one such customer testing the Likelihood to donate model to better understand their donors’ giving tendencies. With the increased frequency of large natural disasters, Likelihood to donate will help Team Rubicon clearly identify new donors within their current base, supporting their community work.

Similarly, The Contingent, a nonprofit working to transform the child welfare system, has been using Likelihood to donate in private preview to help the organization scale more effectively across the US and continue matching foster families with children in need. The Contingent projects that their organization will grow 70 percent in the year ahead, expanding their intentional donor-centric focus and pursuit to grow beyond Oregon to Arkansas and Indiana, and elsewhere nationally, and Fundraising and Engagement and the Likelihood to donate model will be an integral support solution in this growth.

In closing

Nonprofits are on the front lines of today’s biggest societal issues, and need all the help they can get. Technology like AI presents a tremendous opportunity to help nonprofit organizations move faster, reduce costs, and help people around the world. We’ve spent these last six months listening, learning, and building the technology to help nonprofits achieve their mission, and I’m excited to begin this next chapter.

Learn more about our technology and nonprofit offers at aka.ms/nonprofits

* UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product or service

Audrey Odogu (MSc),(AITAD),(MSPIN)

CSR Lead Nigeria at Microsoft, Speaker, Moderator, Award Recipient of 2023 Top 50 Women in Management Africa, Cervical Cancer Advocate, Non-Profit Partnerships, Non-Profit Management, Podcast Host, Facilitator

2mo

Excited to be a part of the milestone achieved with UNICEF and Microsoft in Nigeria. Looking forward to more successes.

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Malik Wasim

International Development and Humanitarian Practitioner

3mo

Absolutely awesome!

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Dean Manzoori

Chief Executive Officer at UniVoIP

3mo

Nicholas Bacich

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