A registered nonprofit can get Google Workspace at no cost, with email addresses on its own domain: that is the Google for Nonprofits offer, priced at $0 per user per month. On the Microsoft side, the nonprofit offers page as observed in August 2026 no longer presents a free licence, but a 75% discount on Microsoft 365 Business Premium. An ordinary Gmail or Outlook.com account is still possible and free, and it will cost you later, at the moment two volunteers need to reach it.
The three ways to create the address
A free consumer account. You open a Gmail or Outlook.com account in the organisation’s name: ourcharity@gmail.com. Five minutes, no cost, and it works. This is what most small nonprofits do, and for a three-person group receiving ten messages a month it is not unreasonable. Two reservations: the address does not carry your own domain, which matters when you approach a council or a funder, and above all that account belongs to somebody. We come back to that below, because it is where everything turns.
A domain name and the hosting that comes with it. You buy ourcharity.org from a registrar, typically 10 to 20 per year, and the offer nearly always includes one or more mailboxes. You get contact@ourcharity.org. This is the simplest option to understand and the cheapest over time. It gives you a professional address and makes you the owner of the domain, and therefore of the address, independently of anyone’s personal account.
Google Workspace, free for eligible nonprofits. The least known option, and often the best. It deserves its own section.
Google Workspace for Nonprofits: free, with conditions
Google offers nonprofits an edition of Google Workspace billed at $0 per user per month. It includes professional email addresses at your nonprofit’s domain, video meetings for up to 150 participants, 100 TB of storage shared across all users, and the security and management controls. The ceiling is 2,000 users, which no grassroots organisation will approach.
To qualify you have to be registered as a charitable organisation in one of the countries Google lists, meet the country-specific requirement, and accept the Google for Nonprofits additional terms. Verification runs through Goodstack, Google’s validation partner.
Three categories are excluded, and it is worth knowing before you build the application:
- governmental entities and organisations,
- hospitals and health care organisations, though charitable healthcare foundations may qualify,
- schools, academic institutions and universities, though their philanthropic arms may qualify.
That last one surprises a lot of parent associations. The association itself, registered in its own right, is not a school and is in principle eligible. A school is covered by Google for Education instead. If that is your situation, our schools page treats the subject separately.
You still need a domain name: Google Workspace supplies the addresses, not the domain. Budget those 10 to 20 per year either way.
Microsoft 365 for nonprofits: the terms have changed
Many volunteers are still looking for a free Outlook licence for their organisation, because Microsoft used to grant them. As observed on 24 August 2026, the Microsoft nonprofit offers page no longer presents a free licence. It offers Microsoft 365 Business Premium at a 75% discount for eligible nonprofits, a Microsoft 365 F3 offer for field staff and volunteers, and a 15% discount on the Copilot add-on. Organisations with licensed E3 or E5 seats also get up to five additional F3 seats for volunteers per seat.
It is not a bad offer, and if your organisation already runs on Word and Excel it holds up. But the honest comparison in 2026 is this one: Google grants a free edition to eligible nonprofits, Microsoft grants a substantial discount on a paid plan. If all you need is an email address on your own domain, the arithmetic is quick.
Choosing the name of the address
One rule, and it matters more than it looks: the address names a function, never a person.
contact@, office@, membership@, treasurer@. Never mary.smith@ for the public contact address, and above all never the chair’s personal address. The day Mary hands over, which happens every two or three years in a volunteer organisation, a function address transfers in ten minutes, while a personal address takes two years of history with it into a mailbox nobody can open any more.
Two or three addresses are plenty at the start. An organisation that creates eight on day one ends up with six mailboxes nobody checks.
The real problem arrives right after
The address exists. It works. And two weeks later comes the question nobody planned for: how do the secretary, the treasurer and the chair all get into it?
The instinctive answer is to share the password. It is the most common arrangement in the voluntary sector and the most fragile. The provider can lock the account when it sees sign-ins from three different towns. Every departure forces a password change for everyone. Nobody knows who answered what. And the day the person who created the account leaves on bad terms, the organisation loses its address. We went through those mechanics in sharing a mailbox without sharing the password.
Anticipate it while you are creating the account, it costs nothing:
- Set a recovery address that belongs to the organisation, not the outgoing treasurer’s personal phone.
- Record somewhere, in the organisation’s own documents, where the domain and the mail are hosted, and in whose name.
- Decide right away who checks the mailbox, and what happens when that person is away.
- Plan the handover the way you plan handing over the keys to the premises. Our guide to handing over the mailbox between volunteers walks through the procedure.
The creation checklist
- Buy the domain name in the organisation’s name, not a member’s. Typically 10 to 20 per year.
- Check your eligibility for Google Workspace for Nonprofits, with your registration details to hand.
- Create two or three function addresses, never personal ones.
- Set a recovery address that will survive the next committee change.
- Write down in a shared document who holds what: domain, mail, admin credentials.
- Decide, before you need it, how several people will access the mailbox.
When several volunteers answer every week
As long as one person checks the mailbox, everything above is enough. As soon as two or three volunteers answer members, you need to know who is handling which message, without having to call each other.
That is what a shared inbox does. With Trupeo, you connect the address you have just created, at Google, Microsoft or any host over IMAP, and each volunteer signs in with their own account. Each conversation gets one owner, an open or done status, and internal notes. A handover becomes a change of access rather than a transfer of password.
Verified nonprofits get 50% off: the Duo plan for 2 people and 1 mailbox goes from 10 to 5 per month excl. VAT, and the Team plan for 3 people or more goes from 20 to 10 per month excl. VAT. See our nonprofit offer and our pricing.
For what comes next, two useful reads: organising a nonprofit’s email for putting things in order, and our nonprofit email templates for the messages that come back every season.
Frequently asked questions
How do I create a free email address for a nonprofit?
Two routes. The simplest is an ordinary Gmail or Outlook.com account in the organisation’s name: free and immediate, but without your own domain. The most solid is Google Workspace for Nonprofits, billed at $0 per user per month for eligible organisations, which gives you addresses on your own domain. You still have to buy that domain, typically 10 to 20 per year.
Is my nonprofit eligible for free Google Workspace?
You need to be registered as a charitable organisation in one of the countries Google lists, meet that country’s specific requirement, and accept the additional terms. Verification runs through Goodstack. Governmental entities, hospitals and health care organisations, and schools and universities are excluded, with exceptions for their charitable or philanthropic arms.
Is Microsoft 365 still free for nonprofits?
The Microsoft nonprofit offers page, as observed in August 2026, no longer presents a free licence. It offers a 75% discount on Microsoft 365 Business Premium for eligible nonprofits, an F3 offer for field staff and volunteers, and 15% off Copilot.
Does a nonprofit need its own domain name?
It is not required, and it is recommended as soon as you write to partners, funders or public bodies. An address at contact@ourcharity.org costs the price of the domain, typically 10 to 20 per year, and above all it belongs to the organisation rather than to a personal account. That is what makes a handover possible.
How can several volunteers access the same address?
Not by sharing the password, which exposes the account to being locked and makes every handover painful. Depending on your provider you can use Gmail delegation, a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox, or a shared inbox that connects on top of your existing mail and gives each person their own credentials, with one owner per message.
Sources:
- Google Workspace for Nonprofits: the free edition at $0 per user per month, professional email addresses at the nonprofit’s domain, 150-participant video meetings, 100 TB of shared storage and the 2,000-user maximum.
- Google for Nonprofits eligibility requirements: the requirement to be registered as a charitable organisation in a listed country, verification through Goodstack, and the exclusion of governmental entities, hospitals and health care organisations, and schools and universities.
- Microsoft 365 for nonprofits: observed in August 2026, the 75% discount on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, the F3 offer for field staff and volunteers, the 15% discount on Copilot, and the additional F3 seats granted per licensed E3 or E5 seat.