Google Workspace Nonprofits Guidelines: Discussion

[Jason Aune]

Discussion of Changes over the Years
If you haven't read or reviewed the Google Workspace Nonprofits Guidelines: Timeline feel free to do so here: link.
Otherwise the discussion of these changes are as follows.

In terms of the General Guidelines

• Google used Techsoup from 2015-2022 for it's validations
• They have always used and continue to use the term "charitable organization" which seems like a broader term to encompass all sorts of organizations that operate for the public good and are not businesses for profit
• They've always denied schools, government, childcare (who knows why they deny this option, risk?) and hospitals (a PHI respecting setup is quite complicated and involved and requires a dedicated team and ongoing support): in regards to schools there is an edition of Google Space for education that is for that category and Government belong in the Enterprise category with special attention and tools.
• in 2022 you see the first mention of "Percent"
• in 2023 you see the first mention of "Goodstack"

In terms of the Canadian Guidelines

• The most consequential part has always been how the second bullet is written: it started out as 3 and then 4 ways in which you would qualify; these paths are separated by an "or" statement and as long as you met the requirements for one of them as well meeting the general requirements you would be validated once you had submitted the appropriate proof
• Each of these has changed and shifted with certain word choices over the years but the spirit of each item is as follows:
• you are CRA recognized/approved federal charity
• you are a federally recognized non-profit
• you are a provincially recognized non-profit
• tax exempt non profit operating for the public good
• In 2023 we see this 2nd bullet receive a very impactful change which seeks to muddle the eligibility requirements: the word "or" is removed. Is this change meant to indicate that all of these requirements now apply? Because up until this moment you could provide proof of any of these areas

Bring on the Conflation
If you combine this dropping of the "or" with the requirements listed on Goodstack's website:
https://goodstack.org/nonprofit-definitions


you get this conflation of the history of the program and these two sets of requirements. Until 2023 the spirit of the non-profits program was that you could receive access to the non-profits program by not operating for profit and after demonstrating that you were recognized by your local or national government in this role.

But now. You see this other aspect coming to the surface.
You must be benefiting the "public good". And like the Google requirements the indication here is that all of these sentences apply.

Now is the point here that Google and Goodstack have decided to reject certain types of non-profits? Is there a quota of accepted accounts per county? Does Goodstack, despite it's stated mission, have a mission to reduce the number of approvals?

Goodstack keeps this requirement deliberately vague so they can reject as they see fit. In a recent communication with Goodstack regarding a validation request their rep Ashely, provided this response"



Bring on the Micro Requirements
So beneath the stated requirements are another set of micro-requirements that are brought up, available nowhere and are now applied with no reference or justification. So across Canada: all associations, foundations, trusts and co-operatives are all also rejected.

These sub rejections make absolutely no sense.
I am no lawyer or organizational expert but you can see easily that a trust would be ineligible by definition.

Next, it makes almost no sense to reject associations and foundations.

For foundations you simply need to look at this page to understand why:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/charities-giving/charities/registering-charitable-qualified-donee-status/apply-become-registered-charity/establishing/types-registered-charities-designations.html

And for associations they only exist if their aims are not profit. Regardless an association still needs to be provincial or federal recognized to be eligible for for Google Workspace Non-profits. So by definition unincorporate associations would 'struggle to'/not get approved unless they formalized their group and had it recognized by either body.

Lastly, when it comes to cooperatives this broad rejection, really flys in the face of the definition of what a cooperative is in the many different jurisdictions in Canada. As far as I can tell Goodstack was so unhappy with Canadian co-operatives applying to the program that they posted this adjustment to their requirements page:


which is the laziest, least helpful addition to the requirements in ten years. When I emailed this to them to point out that across their other country requirements there are plenty of situations where they accepted co-operatives


they retracted this change saying: "Additionally, since our last email, we identified that including the sentence referencing excluded organizations made Canada an exception in explicitly mentioning them. We have since removed this sentence and will provide clarification when it's asked." —it no longer appears on their requirements page. The implication of this rebuttal couldn't be missed: they reserve the right to reject anyone with secret/hidden requirements.

In Conclusion
So instead of doing the work in Canada like Techsoup has done to know the difference between different types of organizations and make judgements based on jurisdiction and the specific case they haven't even gone to the trouble to learn the difference between a co-operative in British Columbia and one in Saskatchewan.



Re-reading this sentence right now it's hard not to feel pretty frustrated. Not only does it conflate all the requirements but it expands adding extra secret requirements: must be able to offer donors a deduction and a non-profit organization serving it's members does not serve a charitable purpose.

As I stated above it's this "public good" notion creeping into the requirements and from the Goodstack perspective you can see the "must be charity with donors, etc" creeping in.

As I've pointed out above this notion of the public good and how this is definition is applied is about as arbitrary as it gets. How much good? How much public? What happens when it benefits certain groups over other groups? How do you make this call? And obviously, they are so many non-profit organizations that may be provincial non profits but not federal charities and may not have a mission to offer donors a deduction for charitable contributions: like if for instance they don't have donors.

In just under two years Google has created many additional barriers to being accepted to this program even when the organization already has met the posted requirements of the program.

At the helm of these adjudications is an organization, Goodstack, that either has a mandate to increase rejections or is disinterested in learning how each special situation is different which doesn't bode well as they are the so-called international authority on charitable organizations. It seems to me that they are much more interested in being the "Stripe of charitable donations" and on venture capital and AI then on validating organizations contributing to the public good. https://tech.eu/2024/11/18/goodstack-secures-28m-from-general-catalyst/