33 Free MS Office Templates for Non-Profits

We’ve looked recently at some of the free Google Docs templates to help non-profit organizations save time on common office tasks or creating presentations – but did you know Microsoft.com offers a selection of free Office Suite templates that are designed especially for non-profits?

Smaller non-profits, home-and-school associations, community groups and small membership-based clubs in particular should find a few useful items among the 33 free MS Office templates listed for non-profits at office.microsoft.com.

Some of these templates are provided by Microsoft, some by Avery – the company that makes printable stationery items like labels and business-card blanks – and one letter is drawn from McGraw Hill’s Handbook of More Business Letters:

• Bake sale poster – Publisher 2003
• Calendar creator (any year) – Excel 2007
• Car wash fundraiser sign – Publisher 2003
• Casino night fundraiser – Publisher 2003
• Charitable contributions database (2) – Access 2003, Access 2007
• Class fundraiser receipt – Word 2007
• Donation pledge form – Word 2003
• Donation pledge log – Excel 2003
• Donation receipt – Excel 2003, Word 2007
• Door hanger for fundraiser – Word 2003
• Fundraiser poster – Publisher 2003
• Fundraising goal banner with thermometer – Publisher 2003
• Fundraising project proposal – Word 2003
• Fundraising thank-you card – Word 2003
• Fundraising thank-you letter – Word 2003
• Jeans Day fundraiser poster – Publisher 2003
• Raffle tickets (9) – various designs: color or black-and-white; with or without stub; various page layouts) – Word 2003, Publisher 2007
• Request for contribution or in-kind donation – Word 2003
• Silent auction bid sheet – Word 2003
• Silent auction poster – Publisher 2003
• Silent auction sign – Publisher 2003
• Team fundraiser receipt – Word 2007
• Walk-a-thon fundraiser pledge form – Word 2003

Download our guide: Free Online Tools to Manage Your Board

I’ve linked directly to a few of these to give you a jumpstart, but do check out the full list of templates for nonprofits for screenshots and download links for all of these.

Is your software a different version?

MS Office software tends to be pretty good at backward compatibility, so that opens up your range of template choices. A template designed for Word 2003, for example, will usually also work well with minimal or no tweaking, if you’re using Word 2010.

Some of these templates play well with Google Docs, too, although you’ll probably need to experiment a bit to see if your particular template choice is going to make the transition smoothly.

More Free Templates

While you’re browsing around Microsoft’s gallery, have a look at their other categories of templates, too – not just those tagged as being for non-profit use.

See the selection of templates for Newsletters, for example – you’ve got a choice of 159 styles, designed variously for Word 2003, Word 2007, Word 2010, Publisher 2003, or Publisher 2007.

Schedules templates, too, may be intended for small business use, rather than non-profit use, but there’s no reason why they can’t be used for volunteer management, or to schedule staff hours or tasks to prepare for a fundraising event.

You can save a whole lot of time by using templates instead of building a document from scratch, and print-it-yourself items such as tickets, receipts, posters, and business cards can go a long way to ease a tight non-profit budget.  In fact, just a few minutes invested in seeking out templates to meet your needs can pay off in time and money saved, for months or years to come!