Nonprofits need help managing operations with limited resources. There's much to juggle, from donor engagement to volunteer coordination and fundraising.
The right nonprofit apps can streamline processes, boost productivity, and drive impact. We've curated a list of the 12 best nonprofit apps in 2024 to help organizations thrive and make a lasting difference.
12 Best Apps that Your Nonprofit Must Have in Your Toolkit
- Zeffy: Best Free Fundraising App for Nonprofit Organizations
- Bloomerang: For Donor Management
- POINT: Best for Finding and Managing Volunteers
- Google Workspace: Best for Productivity
- Canva: Best for Creating Brand and Marketing Collaterals
- Mailchimp: Best for Email Marketing
- Eventbrite: Best for Event Management
- Hootsuite: Best for Social Media Management
- Join It: Best for Online Giving and Member Management
- Asana: Best for Project Management
- QuickBooks: Best Accounting Software
- Boardable: Best Board Management Software
1. Zeffy: Best Free Fundraising Tool for Nonprofit Organizations
A must-have app in your nonprofit toolkit is Zeffy, a 100% free, all-in-one fundraising software. It’s powerful yet simple to use, for both nonprofits and donors!
Zeffy is a 100% free platform built to streamline your nonprofit's fundraising efforts and maximize your impact. With a user-friendly interface and a wide range of features, Zeffy simplifies hosting successful fundraising events, managing donor relationships, and tracking donations, allowing you to focus on your mission without worrying about the technical aspects of fundraising.
Features
- Event ticketing
- Online and in-person donations
- Raffles
- Auctions
- Donor management
- Memberships
- Online store
- And more!
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Zeffy operates on a truly 100% free model.
Unlike other nonprofit apps that charge a percentage of your donations, Zeffy ensures that every dollar you raise goes directly towards your cause. The platform sustains itself through voluntary contributions from its users.
2. Bloomerang: For Donor Management
Bloomerang offers donation software and management tools for nonprofits to better engage with their donors.
You’ll find details about each donor's generosity and engagement score to learn about their capacity and affinity for giving. By optimizing communication with your donor base, you can achieve better retention rates.
Users can easily create a donor base, prioritize personalized communication, and identify major gift opportunities with Bloomerang.
Features of Bloomerang
- Engagement meter and generosity scores
- Marketing and engagement tools
- Voice-to-text to capture notes from a call or meeting
- Bloomerang payments and dynamic donation buttons
- Fundraising dashboard to monitor the progress of campaigns
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Bloomerang’s Standard Plan starts at $125 per month and $83 per month if your organization raises under $250k annually. Plans depend on the number of contacts you want to track, meaning the more donors you have to pay.
3. POINT: Best for Finding and Managing Volunteers
POINT is a free comprehensive volunteer management platform designed to help nonprofits find, recruit, and engage volunteers from one place.
You can create a POINT page, an online volunteer hub comprising your nonprofit’s profile information, donation link, event sign-up, and needs registry. Share the link on social channels to boost volunteer recruitment.
Features of POINT
- Event sign-up and check-in
- Volunteer-facing mobile app
- Cloud-based data management and coordination
- Live analytics and automatically generated reports
- Website integration
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
- POINT Core with basic functions: Free
- POINT Pro: $99 per month
- POINT Network: Custom pricing
4. Google Workspace: Best for Productivity
Boost productivity and collaboration with Google Workspace. It offers a custom email for nonprofits and access to a full suite of tools – Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Docs, Sheets, Forms, Sites, and more resources.
With Google Meet and Google Calendar, you can schedule virtual meetings. You can also collaborate on grant proposals or annual reports in real-time through Google Docs and collect volunteer registrations with Google Forms.
The platform allows managing member access and creating two-factor authentication for secure log-ins.
Features of Google Workspace
- Automated and AI-powered (artificial intelligence) productivity process
- Google Workspace Vault to protect important information
- Real-time collaboration and cloud storage
- Product adoption insights for Workspace apps
- Google Chat with private rooms for up to 8,000 users
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
The free version allows up to 100 participants in video meetings and 30GB of cloud storage per user. You can also upgrade to paid plans at 79% discounted rates for nonprofits.
5. Canva: Best for Creating Brand and Marketing Collaterals
Canva is a graphic design tool that’s easy to use. It has a huge collection of editing tools, templates, graphs, and stock illustrations. Your nonprofit can use the tool to design all kinds of brand and marketing collaterals to spread the word about your mission.
Among its many features, the brand kit is a huge asset for nonprofit organizations. It allows you to store colors, logos, and fonts, ensuring consistency across your collaterals.
With its on-the-go free app, you can create and edit professional-quality posts and upload them straight from wherever you are.
Features of Canva
- Photo editing tools such as transparency, cropping, photo vignettes, and blur sliders
- Design grids and photo frames for attractive presentation and customization
- Bubbles and text boxes with thousands of fonts and sizes to choose from
- Content planning, scheduling, and social media management
- Access to 75+ million premium images, videos, music, and other graphics
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Canva offers eligible nonprofits free access to its premium features for up to 50 users, but some premium elements require payment.
6. Mailchimp: Best for Email Marketing
Mailchimp is a popular marketing platform that enables nonprofits to create professionally designed emails, automate campaigns, and build landing pages and subscriber forms.
The platform offers insights about donors and segments them into a specific list. With that understanding, send targeted messages at the right time to your supporters and provide a seamless and consistent experience with your organization.
You can also use Mailchimp to monitor website traffic. Its free website reports allow you to analyze your website's performance on a simple yet detailed dashboard.
Features of Mailchimp
- A/B testing and email scheduling
- Tailored emails to donor segments
- Free email templates with drag-and-drop editor
- Automated workflow
- Analytics and reporting tools
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Mailchimp offers a one-month free trial and a 15% discount for verified nonprofits and charities.
- Standard: $6.87 for 12 months
- Premium: $137.35 for 12 months
Check out some alternatives to Mailchimp →
7. Eventbrite: Best for Event Management
Eventbrite is reputable and trusted by organizations, from nonprofits to small businesses to community groups. It is a dedicated event platform that allows you to create, share, and collect tickets from your donors for in-person and virtual events.
The platform offers access to exclusive attendee data, matching you with the people most likely to attend your event. With its powerful marketing tool, you can promote your event through emails, Eventbrite ads, social media ads, and landing pages.
Features of Eventbrite
- Flexible ticket types for in-person or online events
- Integrated social media and email marketing tools
- Detailed analytics and robust reporting
- Check-in feature with barcode and ticketing scanning
- Attendee tracking and management
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Eventbrite is free for events with up to 25 tickets. Beyond that, you’ll have to invest in one of the paid plans.
- Flex: $9.99 per event for up to 100 tickets
- Pro: $29.9 per event for up to 100 tickets
- Premium: Custom pricing for unlimited tickets
Note: There’s also a service fee of 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket and a payment processing fee of 2.9% per paid order.
Zeffy vs Eventbrite: Check out our complete comparison →
8. Hootsuite: Best for Social Media Management
Social media outreach is critical for nonprofits today. Hootsuite is a full toolkit that helps your nonprofit manage social media accounts from desktop and mobile devices.
The tool helps you create schedules for your posts in advance, implement ad campaigns, and measure performance and results across all social platforms from a single place.
Hootsuite social listening tools also monitor mentions, keywords, and hashtags so you always know what people say about your nonprofit.
Features of Hootsuite
- Set permissions for members and protect social media presence
- AI writing tool and attractive templates for social media posts
- Audience management and multi-platform publishing
- View social trends and conversations
- Grammarly is built-in and supports integration with Canva
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Hootsuite plans start at $49 monthly for one user and offer up to 10 social media accounts. A free version allows one user to monitor two social media accounts. Hootsuite offers discounts to nonprofits with TechSoup and Percent.
9. Join It: Best for Online Giving and Member Management
Join It is a membership management software designed for nonprofits, clubs, and other growing organizations. It organizes all your donors and contacts and offers details about each member to create personalized ways to connect.
The solution integrates with your existing website and creates multiple membership tiers. Join It automates payment reminders and collects payments using different currency methods.
Features of Join It
- Offers custom fields to collect specific members' information
- Standards automation and embeddable membership widgets
- Integrates with various software like QuickBooks, Mailchimp, and more
- Offers insight into website usage and membership conversions
- Sort and segment members’ data
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
There is a free trial and a 10% discount for nonprofits. The standard pricing is:
- Starter: $29/per month
- Growth Package:$49/per month
- Total Package:$249/per month
10. Asana: Best for Project Management
Asana is a notable project management software that allows you to handle your work, projects, and tasks online and in one place. It is a web-based task management and collaboration tool for managing employees, keeping track of their work, and allowing them to connect with each other, exchange information, and more.
You can also set “goals” on Asana to keep your team on the same page and “milestones” to encourage and motivate hard work. Asana offers you a library of templates to create your own processes and standardize routine tasks.
Features of Asana
- Adds labels to tasks to sort, filter, and automatically report on work
- Organizes work as a list, timeline, calendar, Kanbad board, or Gantt chart
- Get automatic updates on work that is important
- Visualize the state of the team’s work with real-time insights and charts
- Time tracking and automated workflows
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
Asana’s free plan allows you to add up to 15 teammates. With Asana's nonprofit pricing, you can get paid plans at a 50% discounted rate.
- Personal: Free
- Starter: $10.99
- Advanced: $24.99
11. QuickBooks: Best Accounting Software
QuickBooks is one of the best accounting software for nonprofits. It's powerful and simple, helping nonprofit organizations manage their finances more accurately and efficiently. Your organization can sort expenses by fund or programs, create custom reports, and track budgets from anywhere.
The accounting tools allow you to create and email reports automatically, from statements of financial activities to statements of financial positions, budget vs. actual, and more. With QuickBooks, you can even accept donations from multiple methods from wherever you are.
Features of QuickBooks
- Ability to view detailed financial reports in real-time
- User-friendly tools to create, manage, and monitor budgets tailored to specific needs
- Creates custom reports for different stakeholders, such as board members and supporters
- Automated payment processing and customizable receipts to share with donors
- Keep track of volunteers' hours and employee information and manage tasks
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
The pricing for QuickBooks for nonprofits ranges from $45-100 per month.
12. Boardable: Best Board Management Software
Level up your board governance and leadership with Boardable. It is designed to empower nonprofit boards to connect and stay organized - no matter where they are. Using a centralized portal, Boardable makes it easy for nonprofit professionals and board members to schedule and hold meetings, even for dispersed teams.
With fully integrated video conferencing and customizable agenda templates, there’s no need to use multiple platforms for planning, meeting, and collaborating. Meeting minutes, documents, discussions, and all essential materials are secure and accessible from one place.
Features of Boardable
- Agenda builder and document center
- Virtual polls and voting
- Team-focused workspaces
- Consolidates meeting materials into digital board packets
- E-signature and public meeting page
Strengths and Weaknesses
Plans and Pricing
- Core: Free
- Essentials: $17.99/per month
- Professional: $26.99/per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for large boards
How to Choose the Best Nonprofit Apps
You don't need to invest in every app available for nonprofits. Look for solutions that actually improve your workflow and solve existing challenges in your operations.
Here are certain factors to consider when picking out tools for your nonprofit.
1. Identify Your Needs
Decide what you need the app for - where are you currently facing issues in managing your organization? Are you spending too much time handling the accounts? Are you unable to acquire new donors or facing problems with employee management?
Consider the things that you want to simplify and automate through software.
2. Research Available Apps
Once you've identified your needs, it's time to look for apps that address your issues. Find a few powerful tools to test out before committing. Most companies will provide a demo of their products, and that’s the best way to ensure that they can solve your pain points.
Some nonprofit apps that you can think about investing in:
- Event Management:
This app should help you plan and manage fundraising events from start to finish. It should include features for event ticketing, managing RSVPs, tracking attendees, collecting donations, and marketing.
- Communications and Collaborations:
The app should offer features like in-app messaging, document management, push notifications, and email integration to keep your team and supporters informed.
- Fundraising:
The app should support different fundraising campaigns, such as peer-to-peer, crowdfunding, annual fundraisers, etc. It should help to engage donors and have additional functionalities like recurring donations to raise more money.
- Volunteer Management:
Effective volunteer management solutions should offer volunteer sign-up, volunteer scheduling, and the ability to find and communicate with volunteers.
3. Easy to Use
No matter the nonprofit app you choose, make sure it's easy to use and doesn't require special training and skills. The app should have an intuitive and user-friendly interface, allowing you to seamlessly accomplish tasks like creating a donation form or following up with donors.
Check to see if it can also automate certain monotonous tasks, such as sharing donation receipts, event reminders, updating membership dues, and more.
4. Support and Resources
The availability of customer support and resources is another important factor to consider when deciding. Even the best apps can lead to issues related to usability or compatibility with other tools.
Having a fast and easily accessible support team will address the problem immediately, saving time. Look for 24/7 customer support, a live chat feature, and assistance through emails and phone calls.
Make sure that the software provider offers training or product demo videos. They should have a dedicated resource center on their website comprising articles to guide you through their different functionalities.
5. Review Your Budget
As a nonprofit, you have to use the organization's resources wisely. This means looking for ways to keep costs down so that most of the funds go to help your nonprofit serves.
Any tool you decide to adopt should be affordable and within your budget. Most software providers offer certain features for free, while more complex features are offered for a fee. Use the free version first to explore the tool and evaluate its effectiveness for your organizations.
Most apps also offer discounts and offers for nonprofits, but the prices can be a bit high for charities. Think of the time and resources the tool can potentially save you. Compare the benefits and features of the tool with the price to decide whether it's worth it.
Final Thoughts on Nonprofit Apps
Whether you’re looking for ways to improve your nonprofit’s internal productivity or enhance your fundraising efforts, there are a bunch of reliable apps worth considering.
By offering a 100% free pricing model, Zeffy ensures that your nonprofit can access a full suite of powerful fundraising and donor management tools without any financial barriers. With Zeffy, you can streamline your fundraising efforts, build lasting relationships with your donors, and create a sustainable future for your organization, all at no cost to you.
FAQs on Nonprofit Apps
1. How do apps help collect donations?
Nonprofits greatly benefit from using apps to run their processes more efficiently. Depending on its specific capabilities, nonprofit apps can help you to:
- Manage your staff and projects
- Get new supporters for your nonprofit
- Handle donor relationships and implement stewardship programs
- Streamline and automate day-to-day operations
- Collect funds and distribute acknowledgment receipts and invoices
2. What is the best app to schedule social media posts?
Social media scheduling tools simplify content planning and publishing for nonprofits, allowing more time for crafting engaging posts and interacting with supporters in real time.
While Hootsuite is a great option for social media management, there are other tools if you want more options. Sprout Social, Feedly, and Co-Schedule are a few more that cater to different needs. These tools offer features for content creation, campaign tracking, and detailed campaign reports.
3. Which fundraising platform is best for nonprofits?
Here are some of the top fundraising platforms for nonprofits:
- Zeffy
- GoFundMe
- Givebutter
Zeffy is an excellent choice for nonprofits seeking a comprehensive and cost-effective fundraising platform. With its 100% free pricing model, Zeffy enables organizations to maximize their fundraising potential without incurring any platform or transaction fees.
Using Zeffy's user-friendly tools for event ticketing, peer-to-peer campaigns, and donor management, nonprofits can streamline their fundraising efforts and focus on making a greater impact in their communities.
