Google has announced that it will no longer be supporting (well allowing!) free G Suite Legacy packages from the 1st July, 2022. You might be reading this because you’ve had an email telling you that!
I’m sure this is going to affect many thousands of people, businesses and charities (including me, my family and several of my clients).
However, if you’re a charity or nonprofit (I’m using the term nonprofit on this post for simplicity), and you meet some requirements, it’s possible (and relatively simple) to move from G Suite Legacy over to Google Workspace Nonprofits!
Google have a page about moving to Workplace Nonprofits, but I’m writing this post to hopefully explain it all in one place and perhaps in simpler terms!
There are different nonprofit eligibility rules for different countries – but I think that if you’re a registered nonprofit/charity in your country, you’re probably eligible! (In the UK, this includes churches, etc.)
Confirming your eligibility
To confirm your eligibility, Google (and many other tech companies) use a third party service called TechSoup. The eligibility page link above also tells you where to register a nonprofit to confirm its eligibility.
In the UK (where I am), this is with ‘tt-exchange’ which is done through a company/service called ‘Digital Charity’.
So if you’re in the UK, you need to register the nonprofit/charity with Digital Charity (it might be that the nonprofit has already got an account for other tech/digital related things). (Sorry but I can’t tell you about any other countries because I don’t know about them, but check the eligibility page link above!)
Once you’ve registered with Digital Charity (or your local place to register!) you can apply to get a ‘Tech Soup Token’. This is what’s used to tell Google you’re a Nonprofit. (Again, different ‘checkers’ do this is different ways and I can’t help with this.)
When you apply for a token, it can take a day or so for the email with it to come through, so don’t worry if it doesn’t arrive straightaway! (The token is a string of letters and numbers with a bit of the nonprofits name/domain in the middle – normally without vowels in.)
Making the switch!
When you’ve got the token, you can then make the move to Workplace Nonprofits.
This is done by going to: https://www.google.com/nonprofits/account/signup/us (In the UK, this link also works https://www.google.com/nonprofits/account/signup/gb – I suspect they go to the same place…) and signing in with an ‘administrator’ account for your domain on G Suite/Google Workplace.
Once logged in, click the blue [Continue] button. You’ll then have a couple of pages which you confirm with using the blue [Next] buttons. There will then be a page where you can enter the token and another [Next] button to click.
There are then some more screens with [Next] buttons confirming the Non profit’s name and contact details. There’s a final screen with a tick box to say you don’t discriminate against people – tick the box and click the [Submit] button.
You should then be told that you’re approved and can activate the Non profits account. There should be a blue [Activate products] button to click. (You might have to confirm that you’re already using Google Workspace and enter the domain again – there’s no need for the www bit in the domain!)
Once this is done, there should be a page with a section at the top titled ‘Google Workspace for Nonprofits’ and in there will be a message saying “Status: Activation request received. This can take several days to be reviewed. You will be notified by email once a decision is made.”
It normally takes a day or so for an email to come through, hopefully confirming that you’ve moved to Google Nonprofits. This email will come through to the email address on the administrator account used to ‘activate’ Nonprofits – so make to sure check it!
When the email arrives, follow its instructions. That should be it. You can carry on using your email accounts and other services like normal.
I hope that’s of some help. I’m afraid that I’m not really able to help if you have any issues. The above has worked for several of my clients…
But what about if you’re not a Nonprofit?
Well, that’s a bit of a different story and might well probably involve some money! I’ve written a post looking at some alternative options to Google Workspace and also one about how you can export your emails and other information from Google with Google Takeout.
Google have a support page about the end of G Suite Legacy Free, which you might also find useful.