Microsoft says it deleted some nonprofits' data early after their Business Premium grants ended, and it cannot be recovered
The company confirmed that an error removed data tied to expired Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant subscriptions before the retention period was over. It has not said how many nonprofits were affected and is offering them a free setup session.
Redmond. Microsoft has confirmed that an error deleted data belonging to some nonprofits whose free Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses ran out, before the period in which that data should have been kept had ended. The company says the data cannot be restored.
The confirmation was reported by The Register, a technology news site, on Sept. 28. "After the applicable notice periods concluded and subscriptions were terminated, an error resulted in remaining data, if any, being deleted before the retention period had ended," a Microsoft spokesperson told the publication. The spokesperson said the content affected would have been data associated with a customer's expired Business Premium subscription.
The grant that ended
Microsoft announced in May 2025 that it was discontinuing its Business Premium grant, along with its Office 365 E1 grant, for nonprofits. According to the company's nonprofit pages, existing grant licenses expire on each organization's next renewal date on or after July 1, 2025, and do not renew. Microsoft continues to offer nonprofits up to 300 free Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses and discounts of up to 75% on other plans, including Business Premium.
The company told grant holders to move their users to another plan before the old subscription was canceled "to avoid disruption and data loss," and said the change had to be made by hand in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Its general guidance for business subscriptions says an ended subscription passes through expired and disabled stages, during which an administrator can still reach and back up the data, before the data is deleted. For most offers those stages last 30 and 90 days, it says, though the length depends on how the subscription was bought.
What Microsoft has said
In an email to one affected customer, which The Register said it had seen, Microsoft wrote that it had investigated recovery options and that "unfortunately, the data cannot be recovered." The company also said it was "currently unable to provide a list showing which data may have been deleted or whether any data was deleted at all."
Microsoft did not say how many nonprofits were affected, when the deletions happened or what caused the error, according to The Register. The company said it regretted the impact and is offering affected nonprofits a free concierge service, a meeting with a Microsoft specialist to help set up a new Microsoft 365 environment and answer questions. The session does not bring back deleted data.
About this story
501c3.help wrote this story from the sources listed with it, not from material an organization sent. Our editors approved it on Sept. 30, 2026. Stories in The Nonprofit Herald are free, and nothing is asked in return. Editorial rules.
Found an error? Write to [email protected] and we will correct it.