Launch of Fundraising and Engagement for Dynamics 365 Sales is part of new industry solutions approach at Microsoft

With the launch of Fundraising and Engagement for Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft's nonprofit industry strategy has advanced from offering toolkits and accelerators to now marketing a finished application.

Fundraising and Engagement takes Microsoft farther into the realm of industry-specific business applications than it has traditionally ventured, with a production-ready product that can handle donations and campaign management, program delivery, and constituent management. The launch is part of a larger plan to add tools and solutions on which nonprofit organizations and their Microsoft partners can build.

"As you look at our innovation strategy going forward, you'll see us pushing to create a set of cloud capabilities that work for all nonprofits, rooted in these finished applications that partners can extend," Justin Spielhaug, global head of Microsoft Tech for Social Impact, part of Microsoft Philanthropies, told MSDW in a new interview. "Fundraising and Engagement is a first destination but there are many more scenarios, frankly, that need to be supported and we have an ambitious agenda to start tackling those scenarios."

The key difference between Fundraising and Engagement and previous Tech for Social Impact initiatives like the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator and the Nonprofit Operations Toolkit is that Microsoft purchased and standardized IP from their partner MISSION CRM. Erik Arnold, CTO of Tech for Social Impact explained: