Google Apps for Non-Profits?

[AV Guy]

I was looking to switch over from an Exchange setup and evidently Google has changed their policies to specifically exclude churches from the free version - http://www.google.com/nonprofits/eligibility.html. This really blows a hole in my plan! I'm very tired of dealing with Exchange. I don't know if we can afford their business plan. I've been using an individual account for gmail, docs and calendar, but need to be able to manage all our users, about 20. I don't know of any other free options out there.

[Arlin]

Yes, I believe they did change policy to specifically exclude churches... happened to me after we applied:
Been using free google apps for a while
Decided to upgrade to google apps for non-profits, application submitted.
Google changed policy to exclude churches.
Application denied... bummer.

Luckily, since we were using free edition of Google apps for a while, I think we are grandfathered in so the recent change to limit the number of users to 10 does not affect us.

[cmchamp]

Thanks for the heads up.
I had gotten my church a GoogleApps account when this thread started. They have changed the guidelines since then.

[cmchamp]

You may have to look at WindowsLive as an option.

[cw4u]

Are they changing this for existing users?

I'd hate to see that happen.

[bkrupski]

They may have changed their eligibility policy back. We just registered. We had to confirm our 501c3 status via a third party site. We initially got a rejection message, but I followed the steps in the message which included sending a message saying that we were appropriately listed in the third party site as a valid orgnanization. We were then approved the next day.