Recently, Google announced that Google Apps Premier Edition is available at a 40% discount ($30/user/year) for U.S. nonprofit organizations with over 3,000 users. Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and our own blog has been carrying news for some time about the fact that Google Apps Education Edition is free for U.S. nonprofit organization with under 3,000 users.

I spoke with Jay Boren, an Associate in Google's Philanthropic Affairs office not long ago about the move to offer greater discounts and expanded use of their Apps to larger nonprofits, educational institutions, and philanthropic causes. Here's what he had to say about it:

In-kind donations are an important part of our corporate philanthropy. We recognize that the nonprofit sector is tackling many of the world's most difficult problems and we want to help as many nonprofit organizations as possible promote their cause, raise money, collaborate with each other, and operate more efficiently. That's why we offer qualifying nonprofits, which often have limited budgets, free advertising and free use of our products that other companies have to pay for.

Many nonprofits have already begun using Google Apps Standard Edition, which is free for any users for non-commercial, less-enterprise-level applications. Google Apps Standard essentially creates and stores documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that can be used collaboratively online. It has several functions similar to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. However, many organizations may find that using the Google Apps Education and Premier Editions are better suited to their needs because they're more robust in that they host an organization's email, shared calendar, and chat system using the organization's own domain (like TechSoupGlobal.org).

Google Apps Education and Premier Editions also include email system migration tools that are geared to computer networks rather than individual users. They allow organizations to move an email/calendar system to Google Apps without losing existing email. They also include other back-office type software tools like APIs (application programming interface) that feature single sign-on, automation of your domain, user provisioning and management, email routing controls and reporting, a centralized control panel to manage users and customize services for your organization, a status dashboard that lets your system administrator monitor the status of known issues, and 24x7 no-cost customer support by phone, email, and user-driven community forums. Google guarantees 99.9% uptime.

The various components of Google Apps Education and Premier are:

• Gmail. Offers add-free email and email storage (7 gigabytes per user) and search tools that allow users to find information and do instant messaging from inside their accounts. Gmail also receives mail from different email addresses with a feature called mail fetcher.
• Google Calendar. Users can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others. It is also useful for sharing meeting agendas. It has mobile phone calendar sync feature as well.
• Google Talk. Users can call or send instant messages to their contacts at no cost, anywhere in the world.
• Google Docs. Permits sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and also collaborating in real-time on documents with colleagues online. Google Docs also allows mobile phone access to documents.
• Google Sites. Offers coding-free web pages for intranets and team managed sites. It essentially allows groups to work together to keep related documents, web content, and other information in one place, on one site.
• Google Video. This service is not available in the standard edition. It offers secure video hosting and sharing.
• Google Groups. User-created groups providing mailing lists, easy content sharing, searchable archives

To round out its cloud services, Google has also recently launched an online storage service, which is associated with Google Docs, called Google Online Storage. That service provides 10 gigabytes of free storage, and also more storage for additional monthly fees. It is similar to Amazon's Simple Storage Service or EC2 service.

To view TechSoup's current roster of online software and services, check out TechSoup Products that Live in the Cloud and Reduce IT Energy Consumption.

Additional Resources:

• Comparing Online vs. Traditional Office Software
• Google Apps Education Edition FAQ
• Google Apps interactive tutorial
• NTEN Webinar Recording on using Google Apps from January 2010
• NTEN Coverage of Google Apps

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