Adobe has long produced professional software for creating compelling documents and media, but many nonprofits have been stuck by their donation policies and steep costs in the past. Many of those nonprofits are likely to be overjoyed with TechSoup’s news yesterday that  Adobe has just loosened their donation program rules to allow many more nonprofits to access their products at reduced rates. While there are several changes to their policy, one of the most biggest moves is that now more health care organizations are eligible for the discounts. In the past, only health care organizations providing services to people with disabilities were eligible, but now organizations including “nursing homes, rural medical facilities, mental health organizations, and family planning organizations” will be able to receive the discounted software as well.

For more details on their software donation guidelines, read TechSoup’s page outlining their program, and you can also use TechSoup’s new tool to help you determine whether or not you are eligible. For organizations who are still not eligible for their discounted software, TechSoup also keeps a stock of non-current Adobe products that these organizations can purchase at reduced rates.

Here at NPower, we have also seen the benefits of Adobe’s increased generosity in regards to the kinds of trainings that they are supporting financially. Many NPower clients have appreciated the 50% discount on Adobe classes over the last few years. Starting this summer, Adobe has begun to allow us to also subsidize private trainings on their products and educational coaching sessions. Now, all private Adobe trainings will also be discounted by 30% from the regular consulting rate. The discounts on NPower trainings are available to all nonprofits, even if they don’t fit into the eligibility for discounted Adobe products at TechSoup. Visit this page on our website to learn more about the discounts on our public and private Adobe trainings.

Adobe is also providing support for a wider range of training offerings at NPower, so you will see new offerings in our upcoming class schedules. On September 23rd we are holding the first of these new offerings, InDesign and Photoshop Educational Coaching. In this session, students will bring in InDesign or Photoshop projects to receive guidance and support from our expert trainer. As each student will receive a great deal of personal attention, registration to these sessions will be limited to 5 students. Keep an eye out for the October edition of our newsletter to hear the details about our Website Projects Educational Coaching offering.

Thank you Adobe for your continued support of our training offerings, and for allowing more nonprofits access to your products at reduced rates!

Earlier this week our friends at Microsoft Community Affairs hosted a webinar to show nonprofit organizations What’s New in Office 2010.  Product Manager Markus Weickenmeier and TechSoup Staff Writer Elliot Harmon walked the participants through the compelling new features in Office 2010.

Through our Scheduled Support customers, we are seeing a lot of interest in Office 2010 with many having upgraded already or making plans to do so.  Before diving into the presentation and demo, a quick Live Meeting poll was conducted to see what version of Office the participants were using.  The results showed that almost 20% (out of 253 responses) have already upgraded to 2010 with 44% and 27% on 2007 (or 2008 for Mac) and 2003 (2004) respectively.  It’s interesting to see a more aggressive adoption of 2010, compared to the slower migration to 2007.  I suspect that this is being influenced by the upgrade of older Windows XP computers to newer desktops running Windows 7.

Getting back to the webinar, below are some the new features and capabilities that stood out for me:

• Online Collaboration: Office 2010 allows for online document collaboration regardless of location – across branch offices, from home, while travelling, with volunteers or board members.  This is supported in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, although the implementation varies by application.  For Word and PowerPoint, co-authoring is provided through the desktop application.  Spreadsheet collaboration is accomplished using the free Excel Web App.  OneNote supports multi-user access in both the desktop and web applications.

• Social Connector: With the Outlook Social Connector, you can synchronize Outlook contacts with social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Windows Live, and SharePoint.  When one of your Outlook contacts updates their profile on one of these sites, this information will be available in your address book.  Beyond the social aspects, the Connector allows you to quickly view your history of email, meetings, and attachments with any contact, which can help with that needle in the haystack search for a piece of information that you desperately need to locate right now.  Some of the features are still in Beta, but the Facebook Connector is currently available and supports earlier versions of Outlook (2003/2007) as well.

• Photo/Video Editing: With the new built-in features, you can easily clean-up a picture or trim a video directly within Word and PowerPoint.  While not as robust as stand-alone photo or video editing software, this in-house capability greatly simplifies the process of doing minor touch-up to increase its effectiveness in a report or presentation.

• Presentation Broadcasts: PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show allows you to easily share a presentation to a remote audience.  From the comfort of your desktop, you can broadcast a slide show that participants can quickly connect using their web browser or smartphone.  Using the video export feature, you can convert your presentation into a video suitable to be burned to DVD or shared online.

Thanks to Microsoft and TechSoup for putting this webinar together.  If you were not able to join the live event or would like to view it again, Microsoft has posted the presentation materials online at http://bit.ly/ngowebinar.  In addition, TechSoup has posted a blog about the webinar, including resources to learn more, at http://bit.ly/officewebinar.

Have a great weekend!

Update: (7/21/10) As of today, the TechSoup/Microsoft webinar on Office 2010 is FULL!  A recording of the webinar will be posted online after the event.  You can access it, along with other Microsoft Community Affairs webinars, at http://bit.ly/ngowebinar.

Join Microsoft Community Affairs on Tuesday, July 27th for a sneak peek of what’s new in Office 2010:

Event Title: Microsoft Office 2010: What’s the latest & why we like it

Event Time: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM PDT

Event Description: The latest version of Microsoft Office was released to the world last month. Should you upgrade? Should you care?  In this FREE webinar, co-hosted by TechSoup and Microsoft, nonprofits and public libraries can see what’s new with Office and why there may be some compelling reasons to make the switch.

Elliot Harmon from TechSoup, author of What Your Organization Should Know About Office 2010, will be joined by a Microsoft Office expert to highlight some of the new features like Web Apps for improved online collaboration, the Social Connector tool to bridge your Outlook to social media tools, as well as improvements to built-in image and video-editing features throughout the suite. In addition, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of upgrading at your organization, compatibility with older versions of the Office suite, and how you can go about upgrading your donation through TechSoup or Microsoft Software Assurance.

Register now!

When Windows 7 launched in October 2009, Microsoft made a special extra donation of it or Windows Vista available to nonprofits and public libraries through TechSoup. The Microsoft Software Donation Program allows organizations one opportunity to place a donation request each year. This special extra donation lets eligible organizations place another donation request outside of the program limitations as long as the request includes only Windows 7 or Vista. If you have not yet used your special extra donation opportunity, you have until June 30, 2010, to do so. For details, see Special Extra Donation of Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

Also, in case you were not previously aware, the TechSoup admin fees for many of Microsoft’s most popular software offerings, including Windows and Office products, will be increasing effective July 1, 2010.  For example, the admin fee for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, which is currently $20, will increase to $31.  So if you are planning to upgrade or add any Microsoft products over the summer, you can save money by placing the requests this month. And if you have been waiting for Office 2010, it is now available through TechSoup.

Does your nonprofit need better technology? Wish you had the latest version of that pricey software? Or sturdier hardware? NPower recommends TechSoup’s product donation program as a great resource.

Learn more about TechSoup’s product donation program and how to get started with a free webinar on Thursday, June 10, 11 a.m. Pacific time. Join TechSoup, get registered, learn what it means to be qualified and eligible for different donation and discount programs, and start requesting donations.

This webinar will walk you through all the steps of getting started and help you get on your way to low-cost, high-quality technology to help your organization run smoother and meet your mission. This webinar is best for people brand new to TechSoup or whose organization may be registered but are just not sure how to get started. TechSoup’s donation programs are open to eligible nonprofits and public libraries.

Register now!

How to order donations, and where to find how-to videos:

• Are you considering upgrading to Windows 7, but have already used your MS donation for the year? No worries! Through TechSoup, Microsoft is allowing nonprofits an extra donation for Windows 7. You need to place your order by June 30th, and you can read the other “fine print” here .
• Thank you to Microsoft Community Affairs for assisting with our Windows 7 presentation last month. If you missed the presentation, check out Microsoft’s helpful Windows 7 How-To videos  .

The Confluence Gallery and Art Center has flourished since 1988 as a hub of the arts community in Twisp, Washington. The nonprofit gallery holds seven group and individual exhibits each year, showcasing the work of local and regional artists from North Central Washington. Special exhibitions draw from farther afield, highlighting noteworthy artists from the Pacific Northwest.

As participants in NPower’s statewide training and technology support program funded through the Greater Everett Community Foundation in 2008 and 2009, Confluence Gallery completed a Stable and Secure Assessment which pointed to a severe need to upgrade aging hardware. NPower consultants assisted Gallery staff in selecting a new desktop system, provided funds to cover the purchase (thank you GECF!), and procured software donations (Microsoft Windows and Office — thank you Microsoft!) to support key accounting and grant writing functions. In an “extreme makeover” story, Executive Director Sybil Macapia says Confluence Gallery is now in a much stronger position to support the administrative needs of the organization, and recently procured a much-needed grant that she links directly to the availability of that single new computer system.

Congratulations, Confluence staff! And thank you to the Greater Everett Community Foundation, Microsoft and our other supporters who make miracles like this one possible for nonprofits in Washington state.

Adobe, through TechSoup, is offering Photoshop, Creative Suite Design, and some of its other titles for Macs in a special promotion. These products are available to organizations that are not typically eligible for their discounted software, including health care organizations and schools and educational institutions. In addition to the Mac software, there are a few books on their software available through the program which can be used by Windows users. Here is the TechSoup page, which outlines this special offer.

We also have some Adobe classes for nonprofits coming up (all taught on PCs), and thanks to Adobe’s generous funding, these are all offered at half of the regular tuition rate:

• Photoshop Intermediate - February 9th at 9am
• Dreamweaver Foundations - February 16th at 9am
• InDesign Intermediate - February 17th at 9am
• Photoshop Advanced - February 18th at 1pm

Sharing this note from our Greater DC Region affiliate. We at NPower Seattle agree - Idealware is a great resource.

We are big fans of Idealware, a nonprofit website, which provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits. We find their product comparisons very useful and recommend them to you when you are selecting software solutions for your nonprofit. Topics covered include constituent databases, websites, email and advocacy, and a broad range of office productivity tools. They also have frequent webinars—cost is $40 for a live seminar and $20 for a recorded session. You might find some of the upcoming sessions of interest. Check out the Idealware site for more information —www.idealware.org.

Comparing Open Source CMSs: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plone
Thursday January 28th, 10:00 - 11:30 PST

Getting Started with Online Conferencing
Thursday February 4th, 10:00 - 11:30 PST

The City of Seattle Department of Information Technology is now accepting applications for the Bill Wright Technology Matching Fund. Grants of up to $20,000 are available from a total fund of $300,000. The deadline is Monday, March 8 at 5:00pm.

The Technology Matching Fund provides funds for digital inclusion projects located in Seattle, serving Seattle residents. The goals of the fund are 1) to increase technology literacy and access; 2) to provide residents with access to computers, the Internet and other information technology; and 3) to increase residents’ use of technology for community problem solving, civic engagement and community building.

You are invited to attend an upcoming information session to learn more about the application process, grant requirements, and what makes a successful application Interpretation services will be provided for you upon request.

Grant Information Sessions:

Wednesday, Feb 3rd
Delridge Community Center
4501 Delridge Way SW 98106
10:30am - 12:00pm

Saturday, Feb 6th
Miller Community Center
330 19th Ave. E 98112
10:30am - 12:00pm

Download grant applications and guidelines at www.seattle.gov/tech  or contact Delia Burke, Technology Matching Fund Manager, at 206-233-2751 or delia.burke@seattle.gov for more information.