The dangers of free licenses for Non-Profit

A non-profit asked my help because suddenly all of their 365 licenses were gone. I got access and checked: indeed, they got 10 free Business Premium (Nonprofit) licenses 5 years ago. Apparently, in June Microsoft deprecated those licenses, and no one noticed, as they only logon a few times per year. Microsoft says they try to find out why the bill says 18 June while in reality it was earlier (less than 30 days), but even if there was an error on their end: all of data is irreversible gone, "as per Microsoft policy".

Yes, the organization should have had an up-to-date contact email address where they would receive news of their free license being deprecated; and yes, backups are always necessary; but still I think Microsoft could handle ~~this~~ *the deletion and recovery* better.

Edit: we're talking about a 5 person non-profit of volunteers for a kindergarten who meet 4 times per year and used Sharepoint accordingly.