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:

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!