Nonprofit Validation Services

Yes, any charitable donation or discount can be promoted to the more than 1 million nonprofit organizations in the TechSoup global community that access offers in our e-commerce marketplace.

Organizations are validated according to local validation criteria defined by TechSoup, based on local country law, that enables all of our social impact, corporate, and foundation clients to validate and give to valid nonprofit organizations.

During the validation process, the nonprofit may be asked to share appropriate documents with TechSoup and its international nonprofit partners. Validation may also include verifying that the agent is reasonably qualified to represent the organization. Agent validation provides reasonable assurance that an account’s user is an authorized representative of the registering organization. TechSoup’s international validation partners also review the organization’s mission and primary activities and categorize the organization accordingly.

During the steps the nonprofit takes to request your donation or discount, TechSoup will provide a link that you can send or share for the nonprofit to get validated. After validation, TechSoup can send the validation and eligibility results by email or by API. TechSoup will work with you to set up a user experience flow so that after validation, the nonprofit can proceed to purchase or access your offer.

The validation process includes reviewing the organization’s mission and primary activities and categorizing the organization under a TechSoup activity code.

These international activity codes reflect the nonprofit’s primary activity and can be used to target or filter for nonprofits that have a particular mission or issue focus, such as a UN sustainable development goal (SDG). We encourage you to offer your donation to all nonprofits, but you can exclude based on key data including activity code, country, or annual budget if needed.

As TechSoup is a nonprofit helping other nonprofits, the donation and discount offers that we promote must be charitable. Most nonprofits can afford little, and we ask that you donate or discount as much as possible. If the company can only afford a discount initially, TechSoup recommends an exclusive nonprofit offer that starts at least 50 percent off a two-year subscription or total costs.We can advise how a donation or discount can be customized based on the most efficient ways to leverage commercial pricing. Other aspects of your offer can contribute to this charitability, including discounted or pro bono setup or support and educational content that will help the nonprofit improve in the subject area.

Currently, we validate organizations formed as nonprofits, charities, or NGOs based on local law in 236 countries and territories. In some instances, a school or social enterprise may fall within this framework if it is established locally as an NGO. However, our current service only includes those schools or social enterprises that independently meet our NGO criteria. Government organizations typically fall outside the NGO framework, although there are occasional exceptions for government-created organizations that operate independently of government control. We are also exploring pilot programs to serve non-NGO schools and social enterprises in some jurisdictions.