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Concern Regarding Goodstack Eligibility Decisions for Addiction-Recovery Non-Profits

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
November 14, 2025
16 replies
374 views

I am writing to express a significant concern regarding the recent shift from TechSoup to Goodstack for Adobe’s nonprofit licensing and verification process.

Our organization serves individuals seeking freedom from addiction, and we fully meet the eligibility criteria listed on Adobe’s own website. However, since Adobe transitioned to Goodstack, every request we have submitted for nonprofit-sector software access has been rejected—despite years of approval through TechSoup under the same mission and status.

After extensive correspondence, I learned that Goodstack is applying its own “internal policies,” which are not publicly disclosed by Adobe, and which explicitly exclude organizations whose mission is helping people overcome drug and alcohol addiction. This practice effectively discriminates against a vital segment of the nonprofit sector—those working directly with some of the most vulnerable individuals in our communities. Addiction recovery work is an essential public good, and excluding it from nonprofit benefits undermines the very purpose of Adobe’s support programs.

For many nonprofits like ours, Adobe tools are essential for communication, education, outreach, and donor relations. The inability to access these nonprofit-licensed resources creates unnecessary barriers to our mission to help people rebuild their lives.

We ask Adobe to urgently review Goodstack’s filtering criteria and ensure that your nonprofit program reflects Adobe’s own published standards. We also strongly encourage you to consider returning to TechSoup, whose system consistently and fairly supported legitimate nonprofit organizations—including addiction-recovery ministries like ours.

Standards and accessibility

Correct answer Tariq Ahmad Dar

Hi @Ambrosial_adventurec427,

Thank you for reaching out and we hear your frustration. We understand how difficult and discouraging it can be when your organization's application is declined without a clear explanation tied to Adobe's published eligibility criteria.

We want to acknowledge that we are aware of concerns being raised about the verification process and we take this feedback seriously. Adobe's published eligibility criteria for the nonprofit program is available at: https://adobe.com/nonprofits/acrobat.html#nonprofit-terms

If your organization meets the specified criteria and has been denied without a valid reason that aligns with those terms, we would like to investigate this matter further. Please provide us with your organization's details along with the reason for the denial you received, so we can escalate the issue to the appropriate team at Adobe via private message.

We appreciate your patience and are sorry for the experience you have had.

Note: To send a Private Message - Click on Profile Avatar and on the profile page, you will see a button “Send message.”

~Tariq

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efficient_observer034d

Participant

I am adding our experience because we are currently facing a very similar situation.

We are a small U.S. 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. Goodstack has verified our nonprofit status and my association with the organization, so this is not a verification issue.

Goodstack has classified our organization as Rehabilitation and has told us that this classification makes us ineligible for Adobe's nonprofit program.

We do not provide rehabilitation services, addiction treatment, clinical care, healthcare, medical services, or residential services. Our work is educational and community based. We provide workshops, community gatherings, public educational content, conversations with experts, and educational resources related to addiction recovery and its impact on individuals and families.

What makes this particularly difficult to understand is that essentially the same activities were previously approved for Adobe nonprofit pricing under our previous nonprofit entity. The nature of our work has not changed.

We have been corresponding with Goodstack since September 4 and have gone through several levels of review, including review by their subject-matter expert. Goodstack has now informed us that Rehabilitation remains their classification and that they will not conduct any further classification reviews or escalations.

I have asked Goodstack a very specific question:

What exact Adobe eligibility criterion makes an organization classified as Rehabilitation ineligible, where is that criterion published, when did it become effective, and what changed from the criteria under which essentially the same work was previously approved?

I have reviewed Adobe's published nonprofit eligibility criteria and cannot find Rehabilitation listed as an excluded category.

This is important to us because we use Adobe products in our nonprofit work. As a small nonprofit, the standard commercial monthly or annual cost is significant, which is why we are continuing to pursue a clear answer.

@Tariq Ahmad Dar, you mentioned above that Adobe would like to investigate cases where an organization appears to meet Adobe's published criteria but has been denied without a reason aligned with those terms. I would be very grateful if our case could also be reviewed by Adobe. I am happy to provide our organization details, complete Goodstack correspondence, and official nonprofit documentation privately.

T

Tariq Ahmad Dar

Community Manager

Hi @efficient_observer034d,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience with Goodstack.

While I am not an expert in this domain, I would be happy to discuss this internally. I will keep you updated if we need any further information from you.

Thanks,

Tariq

A

Ambrosial_adventurec427

Participant

It would be interesting to know how many people actually get approved under Charitable Status.

T

Tariq Ahmad Dar

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi @Ambrosial_adventurec427,

Thank you for reaching out and we hear your frustration. We understand how difficult and discouraging it can be when your organization's application is declined without a clear explanation tied to Adobe's published eligibility criteria.

We want to acknowledge that we are aware of concerns being raised about the verification process and we take this feedback seriously. Adobe's published eligibility criteria for the nonprofit program is available at: https://adobe.com/nonprofits/acrobat.html#nonprofit-terms

If your organization meets the specified criteria and has been denied without a valid reason that aligns with those terms, we would like to investigate this matter further. Please provide us with your organization's details along with the reason for the denial you received, so we can escalate the issue to the appropriate team at Adobe via private message.

We appreciate your patience and are sorry for the experience you have had.

Note: To send a Private Message - Click on Profile Avatar and on the profile page, you will see a button “Send message.”

~Tariq

M

Mystic_epicness004e

Participant

You have known about this for a long time and yet you still are not doing nothing about it. I don’t need to see the eligibility because I’ve read the eligibility over and over and we should have qualified and yet denied continually as “Badstack”can’t conduct a proper validation.

Neither Goodstack “badstack” or yourselves seem to know the actual criteria and what we have all had to go through to actually get charitable stays and deliver to our community. Whatever you do now, it’s going to be way too Little way too late…

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Ambrosial_adventurec427

Participant

Goodstack are not fit for purpose and Adobe should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen. They are the ultimate scammers and swindlers and just deny deny deny deny without evidence, without proper administrative procedure. THEY SHOULD BE BANNED

MNapierFESC

Participant

I’m having a very similar issue. I work for a non-profit that conducts forensic evaluations for the court. Goodstack continues to tell me that we do not meet ADOBE’s eligibility requirements because we are being classified as a ‘mental health’ organization. I haven’t found anything within Adobe’s eligibilty requirements that supports this argument for denying my application for the non-profit discount. We also had been getting Adobe’s nonprofit discount through Techsoup for years with no issues. It’s only since the switch to Goodstack that I’m having this issue. Not to mention, the support emails from Goodstack are all automated and I can’t get any real help with this issue. Just automatic denials with no genuine explanation.

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AnkitVerma

Community Manager

Hi @MNapierFESC,

Thank you for flagging this, and we understand how frustrating this is, especially when the replies you're getting are automated and aren't explaining the actual reason behind the denial.

Eligibility for Adobe's nonprofit offers is assessed against our published criteria, which you can review here: https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/using/non-profit.html

Validation and eligibility determinations are handled by Goodstack. If you disagree with how your organization was classified, that's something to take up with them directly through their contact channel here, rather than the application form: https://goodstack.io/get-in-touch. When you reach out, having your organization's charitable status documentation on hand will help them review the specifics of your case.

Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks,
^AV

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Jon29028350f6kq

Participant

Thanks for your reply to this. We’re in a similar position, although we managed to get Goodstack to review our classification of ‘mental health’, to somthing more acurate… which they then rejected our application for. On Adobe’s published criteria I can’t see anything that would exclude us from the discounts or the other organstisions mentoned in this thread. Is there any more clarity that Adobe can provide on what has changed since the schme was managed by TechSoup or is it a case of Goodstack being overzealous in their determinations?

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Jordan33962273zvrxAuthor

Participant

Still no resolution to this months later…. I am a bit saddened in Goodstack and Adobe for not seeing the importance of addiction recovery programs as qualified non-profits.

justlearnskills

Community Expert

@Jordan33962273zvrx wow that is a significant and understandable concern! Because the Adobe Community is mainly for users of Adobe products and sometimes staff will come online to help answers questions and posts, you might be better off in sending a message through Twitter/X?

m

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Jordan33962273zvrxAuthor

Participant

Unfortunately I do not have a twitter/x account. I stopped using it a few years ago for my sanity. I wish I could get through to someone at Adobe though to express this issue, because the switch to Goodstack has not been good at all for our non-profit.

We are slowly having to move away from Adobe products just so that we can keep functioning. I would much rather use Adobe, it is all together in one nice place and thier suite is great! ...but now we have to use multiple other software solutions just to keep in budget and maintain our level of service to the community. Other big companies such as Microsoft and Canva have been really helpful to us, and I do wish Adobe would take the same active stance on helping organizations who are helping their community rather than looking to profit financially. Going to a second third party verification tool that does not have the same rules for discounts as are posted on Adobe's own website is overall just not great.....

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