We, the Regional Support Centre, have quite a lot in common with the Computer Charity Trust as they are a charity with a mission to demonstrate the effective use of technology; in their case, how it can improve the efficiency of charities and not-for-profit organisations.

As part of that it manages a software donations program called CTX (charity technology exchange),

...which enables charities, of any size, to access free licensed software (from Microsoft and a range of other partners).

Because the scheme hasn't had wide coverage I think it's worth a mention here, because it is actually very easy for a charity to get the software through the scheme.

There are some limits (I think that there is a maximum of 50 pieces of software of any particular type – eg 50 copies of Office, 50 Windows upgrades) but the scheme is designed to be very flexible, and is especially useful for smaller charities.

There's an easy to understand guide to getting started, and for each software supplier a specific set of eligibility criteria.

The Microsoft eligibility criteria for charity donations is quite wide but it does exclude schools already included in the criteria for Academic licensing (yes, private schools are often charities – that's probably why Microsoft set the criteria to exclude them!).

There are also quite a few case studies on the CTX website, which helps to illustrate what charities can do, and many of them are charities which work with children and learners...

Visit http://www.ctxchange.org/ to find out more.