Samfora vs Microsoft Dynamics 365: what to do before Fundraising and Engagement retires on 31 December 2026

The short version

If your organisation runs Microsoft Fundraising and Engagement, you have nine weeks left. Microsoft ends support at 11:59 PM Pacific Time on 31 December 2026. No new features have shipped since 15 July 2024, and after New Year there will be no security updates. Microsoft's recommendation is that you "work with your Microsoft Partner" to configure Dynamics 365 Sales afresh, or buy a partner solution from Barhead, mhance or SylogistMission (Microsoft's notice of 15 July 2024, checked 25 October 2026).

Read that sentence again. The answer to your fundraising product disappearing is a new consulting project on the same platform.

Dynamics is not bad. It is an impressive platform, built for companies with an IT department. The problem for a Swedish fundraising organisation is the shape: Dynamics is a blank canvas. Donor register, gift processing, Autogiro, Swish, sends and reports are things a certified partner builds, and every change goes back to the partner with an invoice.

Samfora arrives with all of that ready. Donors, members, volunteers, companies and foundations in one data model built for Swedish fundraising. Swish, Autogiro, Bankgiro and cards matched automatically to the donor profile. Email, SMS and automations in the same system. AI in the foundation. Companies enriched with financials, a contact person and research on their giving, private donors in ready-made segments, and Sweden's more than 17 000 foundations mapped. A fixed price with no consulting hours, at least 30 percent below Dynamics' total cost, data encrypted in Sweden, and a dedicated contact who does the migration with you in 2 to 12 weeks.

Where the products came from

Microsoft CRM launched in 2003 and became Dynamics 365 in 2016. Fundraising came to the platform through Fundraising and Engagement, an add-on that is now being retired, and through Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit. Microsoft's strength is breadth: Dynamics, Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Azure and Copilot in one ecosystem. Its weakness for a nonprofit is the same thing. The platform knows nothing about Swedish fundraising until someone has taught it, for a fee.

Samfora was founded in 2025 in Stockholm, and the platform's first line of code was written in January 2026. We build it together with Swedish organisations such as UN Women Sverige, IM Individuell Människohjälp, Operation Smile, Operation Aid, ALS-fonden, Regnbågsfonden, GAPF, Stiftelsen Expo, Reformaten, Ny Gemenskap, Framtidsjorden and cureFAchildren, with no twenty-year-old code to look after. We are a software company, not a consultancy. We make money when you use the product, not when you need help with it.

Area by area

Price and total cost

Microsoft's nonprofit licences are cheap, and that should be said. Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise costs 23.80 USD per user per month for eligible organisations, Business Central 32 USD, and Power Apps is free for up to ten users (microsoft.com/nonprofits, checked 25 October 2026). If the price were the licence, Dynamics would be hard to beat.

The price is not the licence. A Dynamics implementation for fundraising is a partner project: data model, gift processes, Autogiro files, Swish connection, sends, reports and training. The implementation normally costs several times the annual licence, then ongoing maintenance with the partner comes on top, plus Dynamics 365 Customer Insights if you want to send email and SMS at volume. In our interviews with Swedish organisations, total CRM cost for an organisation with 10 to 100 million in turnover lands between 350 000 and 1.5 million kr a year, whichever of the big systems they chose. Consulting hours are often three to five times the licence. In the worked example in our Salesforce comparison, an organisation with 100 million in income lands at about 1.7 million kronor a year, and Dynamics differs from Salesforce on the licence line, not the partner line.

Samfora has a fixed price by size. Every module, Rule for email and SMS, every integration, storage, support, migration and ongoing development are included. No per-user licence, no consulting hours. SMS costs 0.50 kr each. In total we land at least 30 percent below Dynamics once licences, communication and consultants are added up.

Implementation and partner dependency

Dynamics is sold by Microsoft and delivered by partners. That is not a flaw in the product, it is the business model, and Microsoft says so itself in the Fundraising and Engagement notice: work with your partner to identify the future configuration. For an organisation with three to fifteen employees and no IT function, that means every configuration request is a project and a cost.

There is an objection we often hear from management teams: "We can do the same thing in our Dynamics." That is true, technically. Dynamics can do almost anything. The question is who does it, when, and what it costs. Dynamics is a database you already pay for but have no time to run. Samfora arrives with the work done: the data model, the payment flows, the sends, the reports, and a human who migrates your data. For organisations with large growth ambitions we go one step further and offer a charity-deployed engineer who works hands-on inside your operation. Get in touch if you want to know what that involves.

You get a dedicated contact who maps your data, imports donors and donations and trains your team. You spend 2 to 4 hours a week during the migration, and after go-live you run the platform yourselves. Time to go-live is 2 to 12 weeks depending on data volume. Hela Människan and GAPF each moved from NGO Pro to Samfora in under a month.

Swedish payment rails: Swish, Autogiro and Bankgiro

Swish and Autogiro are how Swedish fundraising works. Dynamics has neither. Swedish payment rails need third-party add-ons or a custom integration, and what a specific partner solution covers varies. Always ask in writing: does the solution handle Autogiro mandates and Bankgirot's files, does it match Swish gifts to donors, and what does each part cost per year.

In Samfora, Swish, Autogiro, Bankgiro and card payments are part of the product. Payments arrive through Repejo and Stripe, the bank account is read through open banking so that 100 percent of what comes in becomes donor data, and every transaction is matched to the right donor profile. Duplicates are stopped against the external ID, and uncertain matches become review tasks for a human, never guesses.

Integrations

Microsoft's ecosystem is enormous. Power Platform has hundreds of ready connectors, Power Automate builds flows without code, and the integration with Teams, SharePoint, Outlook and Business Central is best in class. If your organisation is built on Microsoft 365, that is a real argument.

But the Swedish fundraising stack, payment provider, bank, email and SMS platform, accounting, is not a ready connector in Dynamics. It is built by the partner and billed by the partner, both when it is built and when it breaks.

We see integrations as a moat, not a revenue line. Samfora connects to Repejo, Stripe, Adoveo and samfora.org for payments and campaigns, to the banks through open banking, to Rule for marketing automation, email, SMS and RCS, to Outlook and to your accounting through SIE, with an open API and webhooks for the rest. Support reaches you directly in Microsoft Teams, where you already work. We build the integrations, they are included in the price and we maintain them.

AI and automation

Microsoft has Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Copilot Studio for custom agents, and it is serious technology. Two things to know. First, Copilot only sees what the partner has configured into Dynamics, so Swish gifts in an Excel sheet and sends in a separate tool are out of view. Second, Microsoft's documentation for environments in Sweden says that limited pseudonymised data may be stored outside the EU Data Boundary for security and operations, and that Bing search in Copilot features is processed in the United States (Microsoft Learn, checked 25 October 2026).

Samfora is built with AI in the foundation. Today: AI field mapping on import, email and SMS drafts written from your own data, segmentation in plain language, and analytics. Agents with a human in the approval loop are in development. The AI features run on Mistral and other European models, and more European models are launching at speed. No model is ever trained on your data.

Data storage, security and GDPR

Microsoft has a datacenter region in Sweden, and Dynamics 365 can store data there. But the default is that your environment is placed in a macro region, EU/EFTA, where data may sit in any of the region's datacenters. If you want your data guaranteed in Sweden specifically, you need to meet Microsoft's criteria or buy the Advanced Data Residency add-on (Microsoft Learn, checked 25 October 2026). Microsoft is an American company under American law.

Samfora stores all data encrypted in Sweden. Hosting and storage run within the EU/EEA, we only use sub-processors that meet the same requirements, and nothing is transferred to third countries. Your data is never used to train AI models. A data processing agreement is ready, every data subject right is supported and consent is handled automatically per channel and purpose. The whole database is yours: export everything with one click as Excel, CSV or SIE. Larger organisations with special requirements can run Samfora on their own servers.

Data model: donors, members, volunteers, companies and foundations

In Dynamics the data model is whatever you make it. Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit provides a common nonprofit data model, but donors, members, volunteers and foundations the Swedish way are configuration. The partner builds the fields, flows and views, and every new need is a change request.

Samfora has five objects at its core: donors, members, volunteers, companies and foundations. Every donation, send and interaction lands on one complete profile. The member module handles memberships, fees and renewals in the same profile as the gifts. The corporate and foundation modules are covered in the next section. Through samfora.org, peer-to-peer campaigns, corporate donations, invoices, card donations, monthly giving, matching campaigns and donors' own self-service pages are included as well.

Companies and foundations: enrichment and grants

Dynamics has no built-in enrichment of Swedish companies and no database of Swedish foundations. Company data is bought as a separate service, for example from Vainu, which connects Nordic company data directly to Dynamics 365 Sales (vainu.com, checked 26 October 2026), or built in by the partner. It is data built for B2B sales, not fundraising, and it is one more licence. Foundations and applications are something the partner configures.

Samfora enriches every company in the register out of the box, with no add-on: revenue, net result, profit margin and headcount from the annual report, a primary contact person, website and social media following, and research on the company's giving with known donations, a giving profile, sourced examples and its ESG report. Ready-made segments for corporate leads and corporate donors are in place. Right now several of our customers are using it in their Christmas campaigns to small and medium-sized businesses. None of the systems we compare ourselves with has this built in.

The foundation module maps Sweden's more than 17 000 foundations from the county administrative boards' foundation register and matches their purposes against yours, so you can see which foundations could fund your work, and it handles the applications in the same system. We are testing it with current customers from November 2026, it is included for Samfora customers in 2026, and in 2027 we open it to every nonprofit in Sweden.

Reporting and analytics

Dynamics with Power BI is one of the strongest analytics environments on the market, and Power BI is part of many Microsoft 365 agreements. It is also something you build: data model, data flows, reports. The fundraising reports do not exist until someone has created them.

Samfora reports on what Swedish fundraising actually measures: monthly donors in and out, reactivated donors, campaign results per channel, corporate income and average gift, all on data that was matched automatically. The analytics module is included, and you can ask the questions in plain language.

For private donors, ready-made segments are there from day one: monthly donors, one-time donors, donors who have given twice, major donors with a 12 or 24 month window, and lapsed donors. The segments update automatically and can drive sends and automations directly. RFM analysis, which scores every donor on how recently, how often and how much they give, launches at the turn of the year, with lifetime value per donor to follow.

Ecosystem and maturity

Microsoft has twenty years of Dynamics, a global partner network, Azure and a compliance portal for the board. Samfora was founded in 2025 and builds the platform together with Swedish design partners. We do not have Microsoft's ecosystem and we will not have it.

What we have instead is a guarantee: at least a 50 percent reduction in administrative time after the first year, or your money back.

Fundraising and Engagement is retiring: your plan for the nine weeks

Support ends on 31 December 2026. The Christmas campaign runs at the same time. Do not do both at once.

Before Christmas: secure the data.

• Export the full donor register with contact details, communication preferences and consents.
• Export all gift history, one-off and recurring.
• Export Autogiro mandates and agreement details for monthly donors.
• Export the campaign and appeal history you want to keep.
• Do not touch the installation until the export is verified. Microsoft's own uninstall guide says all Fundraising and Engagement data must be migrated first, otherwise it is deleted when the solutions are uninstalled (Microsoft Learn, checked 25 October 2026).

Between Christmas and New Year: choose a path.

• Microsoft's Fundraising template app or a reconfigured Dynamics 365 Sales through a partner: same platform, new project.
• A partner solution from Barhead, mhance or SylogistMission: more complete, still partner-dependent.
• Samfora: a ready platform for Swedish fundraising, migration with a dedicated contact, no consulting hours.

January: migrate.

• Clean before import: duplicates, address formats, phone numbers, which consents are still valid.
• Run in parallel for four to six weeks. Confirm that Autogiro collections run correctly in the new system before cancelling old mandates.
• Measure administrative time before and after. That is how you know the switch paid off.

If you want help with the export now, whichever path you choose later, get in touch. Getting your data out costs nothing.

Where Dynamics is the better choice

• Your organisation lives in Microsoft 365 and wants Teams, SharePoint, Outlook and Business Central tightly connected to the CRM.
• You have your own IT function or a Dynamics partner on an annual contract you are happy with.
• You are a large or international organisation with several legal entities, programme delivery or case management.
• You have your own analyst and want to build everything in Power BI.
• You are small, Power Apps for ten free users is enough, and you have a Microsoft-savvy volunteer.

Where Samfora is the better choice

• You are on Fundraising and Engagement and do not want to start yet another consulting project to get back what you already had.
• You fundraise in Sweden and want Swish, Autogiro, Bankgiro and cards matched to the donor profile from day one, without add-ons.
• You want email, SMS and automations in the same system as the donor data, at a fixed price.
• You want to know exactly where your donor data lives (Sweden) and that it never trains any AI.
• You raise money from companies and foundations and want the companies enriched and Sweden's foundations mapped in the same system, with no add-on services.
• You want private donors sorted into ready-made segments that drive your sends, with RFM and lifetime value on the way.
• You have 5 to 100 employees, no IT department, and want to be live in weeks.
• You want a vendor that takes the risk: your money back if administration is not halved.

Samfora and Dynamics 365 at a glance