Apply for Microsoft non-profit Azure Credits

[emilytrau]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I'd like to bring to the Foundation's attention of the availability/eligibility for Azure cloud credits.

As one possible suggested use case, this might help with greater flexibility in delegating resources for small-to-medium-sized community infrastructure projects, possibly with less organisational and financial overhead. However this is of course entirely for the Foundation to decide.

In any case, I just wanted to bring this resource to your attention. Thanks!

Describe the solution you'd like

Azure for Non-Profits is a program that gives registered non-profit organisations globally access to $3500 USD in Azure credits per year. This grant can be claimed by all eligible organisations through an automated online process that can be completed in just a few minutes of work. I've completed this process myself and it is quite straightforward and can be completed by someone authorised on behalf of the organisation.

The grant can be claimed automatically by any verified non-profit organisation. Microsoft relies on TechSoup for global verification, which has local affiliates that verify non-profit status against government registers. In the case of the NixOS foundation this will likely be TechSoup NL

1. Get started here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/nonprofits/azure
2. Create an account with the local TechSoup affiliate and apply for verification. Basic registration documents may need to be provided. Verification may take up to a few days
3. Link TechSoup account with Azure
4. Credits are automatically immediately granted
5. Get guided through setting up a standalone Azure cloud tenant

From here additional accounts, billing groups, or whatever is required can be done as like any Azure tenant.

[thufschmitt]

Thanks for pointing us to that, that could be very interesting for the new @NixOS/infra team! IIRC they wanted to rely on scaleway's OSS offering for exactly that, but it got discontinued.

cc @zimbatm

[JamieMagee]

I think the Azure for Open Source program is more appropriate for NixOS.

I work at Microsoft and successfully helped Alpine Linux apply for this program. I would be very happy to help shepherd an application for NixOS as well.

[zimbatm]

Great, that's super helpful. I filled and sent the form. Feel free to DM me on Matrix or by email ([email protected]) if you want to follow-up.

[JamieMagee]

@zimbatm did you ever hear anything back? If not, I can reach out internally and see where things are stuck.