TechSoup Canada is thrilled to announce that Zoom, one of the world’s most popular video conferencing platforms, is now a donor partner.
Zoom Meetings is a video conferencing platform with a comprehensive suite of features that enable deep collaboration. High Definition (HD) video and an intuitive interface create a seamless experience for both desktop and mobile users, and Zoom’s commitment to accessibility ensures that users with disabilities are able to participate fully.
Through TechSoup Canada, Zoom is offering eligible nonprofits a 50 percent discount on one-year subscriptions to both its Meetings Pro Plan (for up to nine hosts) and its Meetings Business Plan (for 10 hosts). In each of these plans, a meeting can have up to 100 participants, all of whom can be on HD video.
With a range of optional add-ons also available at 50 percent discounts -- from Zoom Webinars and Zoom Rooms (software for conferencing in rooms equipped with off-the-shelf hardware) to additional hosts -- Zoom can help your nonprofit connect to the people who matter most.
How are nonprofits using Zoom?
As a technology in its early maturity, online conferencing is more prevalent in the nonprofit sector than ever before. More organizations are using conferencing software on a daily basis to manage virtual teams, connect with volunteers and donors, and engage the community through learning opportunities such as webinars and digital courses.
Within this context, nonprofits around the world are using Zoom’s feature-rich platform to do some impressive things. For example:
Movember Foundation streamlines internal communications
The Movember Foundation is dedicated to improving health and quality of life for men all over the world. During the Foundation's rapid global expansion, internal communications became scattered and strained -- at one point, the organization was using six different conferencing platforms, and it was hindering productive collaboration.
The Foundation was eager to address this problem by consolidating its communications under a single conferencing platform. Ultimately, Movember chose Zoom for its ease of use, versatility, and HD video capability -- plus, it was a mere tenth of the price of some of its competitors.
In the first three months alone, the team logged nearly 7,000 hours of meetings on Zoom. “Zoom has helped us to become truly collaborative as an organization and save countless hours," says the Foundation's head of technology Byron Hill.
Students Rising Above delivers high-impact digital content
Students Rising Above (SRA) provides educational and professional support to first generation university students who have lived experiences of poverty, neglect, and often homelessness. To be effective, this support must be built around the emotional needs of the individual student -- but it also must be scalable, as the SRA network comprises hundreds of student participants.
SRA strikes this balance by delivering eight to 12 Zoom webinars every month, crafted around topics that range from the distinct socioemotional challenges SRA participants face to strategies for career successs.
Not only does Zoom provide a reliable, lag-free experience for nearly everyone, it also makes it easy for SRA to invite the best guest speakers -- even the ones who aren't tech savvy.
According to Vanessa Barbic, SRA's director of online programs, webinars that feature SRA program alumni as speakers are so "wildly popular" with students that they often inspire the alumni to become student mentors.
Feature: How to host a Breakout Room in Zoom Meetings
So you're hosting a global team meeting on Zoom, and you want each department to discuss a set of strategy questions and then present their recommendations to the entire team. What do you do? Open a Breakout Room!
Breakout Rooms allow participants to split off from the main meeting into private discussions, and then to rejoin the main meeting afterwards. It’s a unique feature that enables small-group collaboration without disrupting the flow of the meeting, and it's available in both the Meetings Pro and Business Plans.
To use Breakout Rooms in your next meeting, you’ll first need to enable the feature on your Zoom account. Log into the Zoom web portal, click either “My Meeting Settings” or “Meeting Settings,” and then navigate to the Meeting tab. Toggle the switch next to the Breakout Room to enable the feature on your account. (If this option is grayed out, you’ll need to contact the person in your organization who administers your Zoom account.)
From here, you’ll have the option to specify a) the number of rooms you want to create and b) how you want to populate those rooms. If you want Zoom to randomly assign all of the meeting participants into different rooms, select “Automatically.” If you want to put specific people into specific rooms, select “Manually.” (With this option, anyone who is not manually assigned into a breakout room will remain in the main meeting.) Then click the “Create Breakout Rooms” button.
If you’ve chosen the manual option, you’ll now have the option to assign participants into specific rooms -- do this by clicking “assign,” and then selecting the participants you want for that room.
Once you’ve populated the rooms, you can click “Start All Rooms” to launch the breakout discussions.
Participants will then receive prompts to join their respective rooms. Once they do, the rooms will start up and the main meeting will continue.
While the rooms are in session, hosts can keep participants informed of developments in the main meeting by using the “broadcast message” function.
Hosts can also use the “Stop All Rooms” feature to close out the rooms and bring everyone back to the main meeting. And if there’s any confusion prior to that, participants can click “Ask for Help,” which allows the host to join the breakout room conversation and answer questions directly.
How can I make the most of this offer?
The access to Discounted Rates on Zoom Meetings plans will offer the most substantial savings when coupled with additional add-ons such as Zoom Video Webinars, Zoom Rooms, Zoom H.323/SIP Connector, and Large Meetings (for more than 100 participants). So if your nonprofit plans on hosting webinars, setting up video conferencing rooms in your workspace, or collaborating with hundreds of remote users, be sure to consider Zoom.
Is my organization eligible for a donation of Zoom Meetings?
This program is available to eligible Canadian Registered Charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian nonprofits incorporated either provincially or at the federal level and Canadian public libraries with a library symbol from Library and Archives Canada. For a more detailed breakdown of eligible and ineligible organizations, check out the Zoom program details.
How many donations of Zoom Meetings can I request?
For eligible TechSoup Canada members, organizations may request one subscription of Zoom Meetings per fiscal year (July 1 to June 30). Organizations may renew their subscriptions with this donation each year.
Not registered with TechSoup Canada, but think you are eligible for donations of Zoom Meetings?
The first step is to register with TechSoup Canada — it’s free and simple. Once we have processed your registration, we will let you know if you qualify for Zoom.
Registering with us also grants you access to discounts and donations from up to 30 other donor partners, which includes popular software like office productivity suites, graphic design software, accounting packages and security programs. Find out how the donations program can work for an organization like yours!