Provided you set aside the time to explore and experiment, your nonprofit can use the free or low-cost tools and resources listed below to significantly improve your digital marketing and fundraising campaigns.
Websites & Email
1. Google Analytics :: analytics.google.com
Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It is important to note that you must upgrade to Google Analytics 4 by July 1, 2023.
2. Campaign URL Builder :: ga-dev-tools.web.app/ga4/campaign-url-builder
This a free tool from Google that allows you to easily create UTMs to track your website performance, such as referral traffic from social media campaigns and conversions from online ads.
3. HTML Tutorial :: w3schools.com
Knowing basic HTML is a must-have skill for digital marketers and fundraisers. Tools like WordPress (website and blog content) and MailChimp (email marketing) are much easier to work with if users can make simple HTML edits.
4. Hotjar :: hotjar.com
Hotjar helps you better understand how users behave on your website site through heatmaps, recordings, and surveys.
5. Internet Archive Wayback Machine :: archive.org/web
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is an online library of almost 500 billion screenshots of websites since 1996. Nonprofits can use it to study past versions of their website and to monitor their progress in web design over time.
6. Mailmunch :: mailmunch.com
Mailmunch enables users to create a variety of pop-up email forms for their website. The service provides analytics and easy integration with multiple third-party tools. See also OptInMonster.
7. Newsletter Spam Check :: mail-tester.com
This free tool reveals if your website domain is on a blacklist, flagged for spam, and properly set up for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols.
8. PageSpeed Insights :: pagespeed.web.dev
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool provided by Google that analyzes how fast your website loads and displays on mobile and desktop devices. Having a fast-loading website is essential for a successful SEO strategy. See also experte.com/pagespeed.
9. SocialSnap :: socialsnap.com
SocialSnap is a very useful WordPress plugin that enables you to customize the titles, messages, and images that your website and blog content display when posted on social media. SocialSnap also provides customizable social share buttons that can be added to your website or blog content.
10. Squarespace :: squarespace.com
Squarespace is a do-it-yourself, low-cost website builder. Ideal for small nonprofits with limited funds for digital marketing. See also Duda and Wix.
11. Textiful :: textiful.com
Textiful empowers public speakers to collect email addresses at events via text message.
12. Wired Impact :: wiredimpact.com
Wired Impact is a website platform built specifically for nonprofits. Their website templates are mobile-compatible, built on WordPress, and include recurring giving, event and volunteer management, email newsletter sign-up, and blogging. See also Firespring.
13. WiseStamp :: wisestamp.com
WiseStamp allows you to create HTML-based email signatures for your nonprofit. However, if you decide to use this service, pay for it because the free service requires WiseStamp branding.
14. wpbeginner :: wpbeginner.com
wpbeginner is a comprehensive how-to guide for using WordPress for websites and blogs.
Social Media
1. Accessible Social :: accessible-social.com
Accessible Social is a free resource hub for digital marketers to discover how to make social media content accessible.
2. Buffer :: buffer.com
Buffer enables social media managers to schedule posts on social networks throughout the day and evening. The analytics tool evaluates the effectiveness of your posts and provides the best times to share your content.
3. Emojipedia :: emojipedia.org
Using emojis on social media can increase engagement and when used in email subject lines, can increase open rates. Emojipedia enables you to easily copy and paste emojis using desktop computers.
4. Facebook Fundraising Tools :: socialimpact.facebook.com
Facebook Fundraising Tools enable nonprofits and their supporters to fundraise on Facebook. The tools include a Donate button for pages, posts, and live videos as well as peer-to-peer Fundraisers. Meta pays all processing fees for eligible nonprofits.
5. Instagram Fundraising Tools :: socialimpact.facebook.com/instagram
Instagram Fundraising Tools enable nonprofits and their supporters to fundraise on Facebook. The tools include a Donate button for profiles, reels, and live videos as well as peer-to-peer Fundraisers. Meta pays all processing fees for eligible nonprofits.
6. Linktree :: linktr.ee
Used most often on Instagram and TikTok, Linktree enables nonprofits to create landing pages with multiple links and calls-to-action. Ideal for “Link in Bio/Profile” campaigns, it’s a better practice to create a “Link in Bio/Profile” landing page on your own website, if possible.
7. Loomly :: loomly.com
Loomly is an online social media calendar that allows multiple users to collaborate from one master calendar. The service also provides analytics about content performance and insights into trending topics on social media.
8. ManyChat :: manychat.com
ManyChat enables users to create Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp chatbots without any coding experience.
9. NameCheckr :: namecheckr.com
NameCheckr easily allows social media managers to search nearly 50 of the most popular social media sites to see whether their first choice of usernames is still available.
10. RiteTag :: ritetag.com
RiteTag allows you to track in real time the performance of your campaign hashtags. Their dashboard shows you how many people are using your hashtag on Twitter and Instagram and enables you to track trending hashtags.
11. SnapWidget :: snapwidget.com
SnapWidget allows you to display your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram photos in a collage format on your website or blog.
12. Social Print Studio :: socialprintstudio.com
Social Print Studio enables users to download photos directly from Instagram and Facebook to create print calendars, cards, and tiny books. Ideal for staff and volunteer appreciation.
13. Tiltify :: tiltify.com
Tiltify is a fundraising tool that allows streamers to fundraise for your nonprofit on Twitch. Tiltify also empowers donation processing on TikTok.
14. YayText :: yaytext.com
Yaytext allows you to easily use unicode text to format unique messages using s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶, 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒔, and 🅜🅞🅡🅔.
Our Certificate in Social Media Marketing & Fundraising program covers the fundamentals of social media marketing and fundraising for your nonprofit. Participants will learn how to create a social media strategy, how to craft a content marketing plan, and current best practices for using social media for community engagement and fundraising.
The program requires the completion of three webinars and costs $100 USD. To earn the 2024 certificate, you can attend the webinars live or view the recordings – or a combination of both. Learn more & register!
Graphic Design & Photo Editing
1. Canva :: canva.com
Canva’s drag-and-drop features and pre-designed layouts enable users to easily create graphics and documents. See also Snappa.
2. Coolers :: coolors.co
Coolers is a color scheme generator that allows users to explore hundreds of color palettes for graphic design projects.
3. Creative Market :: creativemarket.com
Creative Market is an online marketplace of graphics design assets. Nonprofits can purchase customizable graphics ranging from website themes to infographics.
4. Giphy :: giphy.com
Giphy enables users to create animated video GIFs and GIF slideshows with captions.
5. Fivver :: fiverr.com
Fivver is an online directory of affordable and skilled freelance graphic designers. See also 99designs.
6. Iconfinder :: iconfinder.com
Iconfinder is an online database of nearly one million icons and many of the social media icon sets are available to download for free. See also the Noun Project.
7. Lingo :: lingoapp.com
Lingo allows users to organize all their visual assets in one place and provides templates for branding kits and guidelines.
8. Looka :: looka.com
Looka is an AI-empowered logo design tool that then builds additional branding assets using your logo design.
9. iStock :: istock.com
iStock by Getty Images has high-quality, royalty-free visual content for a low cost. See also Unsplash and Shutterstock.
10. PicMonkey :: picmonkey.com
PicMonkey is an easy-to-use photo editing platform that enables users to embed text upon photos, apply watermarks, and create photo collages through a simple drag-and-drop process. For advanced photo editing, see Adobe Creative Cloud.
11. Venngage :: venngage.com
Venngage is an easy-to-use infographic and presentation design tool that allows hi-res image and PDF exports. See also Piktochart.
Video & Video Editing
1. Animoto :: animoto.com
Animoto is an online video maker that makes it easy for anyone to drag and drop their way to powerful and professional marketing videos.
2. CauseVid :: causevid.com
CauseVid allows users to easily create personalized Thank You videos that can be delivered by email. See also ThankView.
3. ClipChamp :: clipchamp.com
ClimpChamp is a video editing tool that empowers users to easily create video ads for Facebook and Instagram.
4. Loom :: loom.com
Loom allows users to create videos of your computer screen and camera. A useful tool for hybrid workplaces.
5. Lumen5 :: lumen5.com
Lumen5 converts articles and blog posts into video content – ideal for social media.
6. Story Swag :: iTunes
Story Swag is a mobile app that specializes in easy-to-create story videos for social media.
7. Veed.io :: veed.io
Veed.io is an easy-to-use video creation and editing tool that easily allows you to create videos for social media and add subtitles and photos and graphics to videos. See also Kapwing, Promo, and WeVideo.
8. Wistia :: wistia.com
Wistia is a video and audio creation tool that allows you to add email pop-ups to your videos and podcasts. It also provides unique analytics about your viewers and listeners.
Content Marketing
1. BrainyQuote :: brainyquote.com
BrainyQuote is a directory of inspirational quotes – ideal for creating social media graphics.
2. Issuu :: issuu.com
Issuu empowers users to transform PDFs into online digital flipbooks, email graphics, social stories, and more.
3. Postable :: postable.com
Postable allows users to easily send print cards and postcards through the postal service. Ideal for thanking donors, volunteers, and supporters.
4. SlideShare :: slideshare.net
SlideShare is ideal for featuring PowerPoint presentations about your organization’s work.
5. SurveyMonkey :: surveymonkey.com
SurveyMonkey is an online survey service that can be used to gather feedback from donors and supporters.
6. Year.ly :: yearly.report
Yearly makes it easy to design online annual and quarterly impact reports.
Our Certificate in Social Media Marketing & Fundraising program covers the fundamentals of social media marketing and fundraising for your nonprofit. Participants will learn how to create a social media strategy, how to craft a content marketing plan, and current best practices for using social media for community engagement and fundraising.
The program requires the completion of three webinars and costs $100 USD. To earn the 2024 certificate, you can attend the webinars live or view the recordings – or a combination of both. Learn more & register!
For Nonprofits Only
1. Boardable :: boardable.com
Boardable enables boards and committees to easily schedule, meet, and collaborate virtually or in person.
2. GolfStatus.org :: golfstatus.org
GolfStatus.org is an all-inclusive fundraising platform exclusively for golf fundraising events.
3. GrantAdvisor :: grantadvisor.org
GrantAdvisor allows anyone in the nonprofit community to anonymously write reviews about their grant experiences with foundations.
4. GreatNonprofits :: greatnonprofits.org
GreatNonprofits is a database of nonprofits that empowers donors and supporters to write reviews and earn a “Top-Rated Nonprofit” digital seal. See also Charity Navigator.
5. GuideStar :: guidestar.org
GuideStar is an online database of verified nonprofits in the United States. It’s essential that nonprofits update their GuideStar profile on an annual basis and work towards earning a Seal of Transparency.
6. Idealist.org :: idealist.org
Idealist.org is the world’s leading platform for nonprofit jobs and volunteer opportunities.
7. Instrumentl :: instrumentl.com
Instrumental is an online database of grant opportunities that matches nonprofits with the right funders and then enables nonprofits to efficiently track and manage their grants. See also Candid.
8. POINT :: pointapp.org
POINT is an online platform that empowers nonprofits to easily manage, engage, and mobilize volunteers.
9. Ribbon :: getribbon.org
Ribbon is an all-in-one platform for start-up nonprofits and fiscally-sponsored projects that provides the banking, accounting, fundraising, and organizational tools necessary for growing a successful nonprofit.
10. Rote :: inrote.app
Rote is a web-based grant writing tool that saves your past language in one place – organized, filterable, and at your fingertips when you need it to write a first draft of a new proposal.
11. Shopify Nonprofit Program :: shopify.com/nonprofit
Shopify allows nonprofits to create an online storefront at a discounted rate so your nonprofit can sell products online.
12. DonateStock :: donatestock.com
DonateStock enables donors to give – and nonprofits to easily accept and manage – stock donations online.
13. TapKat :: tapkat.win
TapKat enables nonprofits to easily create online sweepstakes including prize management and donation processing.
14. TechSoup :: techsoup.org
TechSoup partners with technology companies to offer heavily discounted software to organizations worldwide.
15. TheShareWay :: theshareway.com
TheShareWay is a directory of donors offering food, beverages, raffle items and more for nonprofits to use in online and in-person silent auctions.
16. VolunteerMatch :: volunteermatch.org
VolunteerMatch is an online portal to volunteer opportunities posted by over 100K nonprofits.
Productivity
1. Calendly :: calendly.com
Calendly enables users to select meeting time slots via email to easily schedule meetings through Google, Outlook, Office 365, or iCloud calendar.
2. Dropbox :: dropbox.com
Dropbox is a cloud storage service that is frequently used for file sharing and collaboration.
3. Dulingo :: duolingo.com
Dulingo provides access to free language learning tools. For nonprofit social media managers that work internationally, Dulingo’s design and gamification make it fun to learn the basics of a new language.
4. Grammarly :: grammarly.com
Grammarly allows users to copy and paste content or upload documents to scan for spelling and grammar mistakes.
5. Keyword Tool :: keywordtool.io
Keyword Tool enables users to search for keywords related to their nonprofit, mission, and programs for effective online ads and SEO.
6. Noisli :: noisli.com
Noisli is a background noise that can help you focus while working.
7. Otter :: otter.ai
Otter uses Ambient Voice Intelligence to transcribe meetings, Zoom calls, and conversations into searchable notes that can be easily shared.
8. Small PDF :: smallpdf.com
Small PDF enables users to convert numerous files types into PDFs as well as edit and merge PDFs. See also Sejda and easy PDF.
9. Slack :: slack.com
Slack is a cloud-based tool for teams of staff and volunteers to collaborate on projects and communicate through focused messaging.
10. Signwell :: signwell.com
Signwell enables users to easily create an image of their digital signature.
11. Thesaurus.com :: thesaurus.com
Thesaurus.com allows you to search for alternative words that you use too often when writing web and email content.
12. Trello :: trello.com
Trello is a collaborative project management tool that provides boards, lists, and cards that enable your organization to prioritize your most important projects. See also Asana.
13. Tripp :: tripp.com
Tripp is a highly-rated VR meditation app.
14. TurboScan :: Google Play/iTunes
TurboScan is a mobile app that enables users to scan documents and images and convert them into PDFs. Ideal for converting travel receipts into PDFs.
15. Zoom :: zoom.us
Zoom is an affordable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing. Ideal for managing remote workers and volunteers and presenting webinars. See also GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
Security
1. DuckDuckGo :: duckduckgo.com
DuckDuckGo is a web browser that enables you to search the web privately. The service also offers a Chrome browser extension that blocks advertisers from tracking your activity online. See also Ghostery.
2. Email Blacklist Check :: mxtoolbox.com/blacklists
The Email Blacklist Check allows you to check whether your email server is blacklisted by entering your IP address or domain. If you discover that you are blacklisted, call your web and email host immediately to fix the problem.
3. LastPass :: lastpass.com
LastPass is a service that allows you to create and save passwords for multiple websites thus enabling secure easy login and password management. See also 1Password.
4. SiteLock :: sitelock.com
SiteLock is a cloud-based security tool that scans your website for malware and security risks and removes them immediately.
Miscellaneous
1. EventBrite :: eventbrite.com
Eventbrite enables users to create professional event ticketing and registration pages.
2. Google Alerts :: google.com/alerts
Google Alerts allows you to set up email alerts that you receive when your nonprofit is mentioned in the media.
3. Skedulo :: skedulo.com
Skedulo empowers nonprofits to manage the schedules of a hybrid workforce.
4. Gusto :: gusto.com
Gusto is an affordable solution for managing payroll, benefits, and HR.
5. MeetUp :: meetup.com
MeetUp is a service that focuses on helping people meet up offline and in person. For small regional nonprofits, the service could be used for local events and regular meetups.
6. Upwork :: upwork.com
From copywriters to designers, Upwork enables you to easily hire skilled freelancers. You can upload projects, receive bids, and browse examples of completed work.
