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Startup Tools · · 12 min read

24 Powerful Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools to Scale Your Mission

According to Guidestar there are approximately 1.8 million recognized 501(c)3 organizations based in the United States. The Stanford Social Innovation Review notes these organizations account for 5-10 percent of the United States’ economy and about 10 percent of U.S. employment. Since 1998, annual r

Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools to Scale Your Mission

Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools

According to Guidestar there are approximately 1.8 million recognized 501(c)3 organizations based in the United States. The Stanford Social Innovation Review notes these organizations account for 5-10 percent of the United States’ economy and about 10 percent of U.S. employment.

Since 1998, annual revenues from nonprofit organizations in the U.S. has been rising nearly every year. Statista shows a steady increase in annual revenues from $1.04 trillion in 1998 to $2.62 trillion in 2016.

Nonprofit organizations are a crucial part to not only the U.S. economy, but also to our global economy. It’s inspiring to see so many talented and dedicated leaders leap into the nonprofit sector to enhance giving into the modern era.

As we read and understand these numbers, it becomes obvious that these nonprofits need to have business efficiency set up just as scaling startups and brands have.

These nonprofit marketing resources and tools listed are here to help new and growing nonprofits set up their tech and tool stack appropriately to help scale their mission.

Many of these nonprofit marketing resources and tools have free plans or heavily discounted plans for organizations.


Design

Canva – Free nonprofit marketing design tools

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Canva - Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools

The design tool made with nonprofits in mind. Discover the easy way to create high-impact social media graphics and nonprofit marketing materials. Register now to get Canva’s premium features for free.

As a nonprofit, you know the importance – and challenges – of spreading the word. With the free Canva for Nonprofits program, you get access to premium design tools to help you create impactful nonprofit marketing and campaign materials. Canva is easy to use, so your whole team can use it.

Canva for Nonprofits has everything you need to create powerful marketing campaigns. Create social media posts, presentations, infographics, websites, reports, posters, flyers and signage.


Yearly – Yearly makes it fun and easy to design annual reports, event recaps, donor proposals and board presentations

Yearly makes it fun and easy to create digital annual reports that inspire and delight, saving nonprofit organizations time and money. Yearly’s mission is to change the way annual reports are created and experienced. Yearly aims to break the mold and disrupt the age-old annual report.

Use Yearly themes, or customize your own with your organization’s colors, fonts, and logo.

Upload photos, videos, stories and data — making your report shine on desktop and mobile devices.

Integrate social media, link to your donation form, and poll your audience — keeping your users engaged.


Productivity

Boardable – Affordable Board Management Software for Nonprofits

Boardable is powerful nonprofit board software that centralizes all communication between you and your board — whether you’re in meetings or between them.

The intuitive tools empower you to work more efficiently with your board and committee members. Find the best meeting times, securely store all of your documents, participate in discussions, and much more — all in one convenient place.


PandaDoc – E-Signatures and Document Software for Nonprofits

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PandaDoc - Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools

Streamline your document processes to expand your reach with more submissions, volunteers, and donations. PandaDoc enables nonprofit organizations to streamline contracts, simplify volunteer recruiting and onboarding, and makes it easy to manage donors and keep processes transparent.

Spend less time creating, approving, and signing sponsorship or other contracts with templates and unlimited eSignatures.

Simplify administrative tasks with automated volunteer and donor applications, agreements, event registration, liability waivers, and more.

Make it easy to help with integrated payments – donors and sponsors can pay online without ever leaving your documents.


Keela – Smart Nonprofit Software

Keela’s robust relationship software empowers you to manage everyone  involved with your organization. From donors to members to volunteers, Keela keeps data in one place. Keela’s tools have been created by experts with a first-hand understanding of how to build a successful non-profit.

Keela’s sophisticated, easy-to-use communication tools help you spread the word about the valuable work you do every day. Connect with your donors, build new relationships, and grow the good you do.

Gain a better understanding of your donors and campaigns with smart, customizable data features. Monitor and optimize campaigns, manage donation records, and build custom reports to share with board members in one click.

Nothing is more frustrating than having to switch between multiple platforms to do your job. That’s why they built Keela to integrate with the most popular nonprofit tools and resources.


Fundraising and Accepting Online Donations

RallyUp

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RallyUp turns fundraisers into show-stopping virtual experiences worthy of your cause. Expand your audience, amplify your cause.

Open your cause to a wider community than ever before with limitless ways to attract, inspire and engage your donors.

RallyUp believes in the incredible work that nonprofits do all around the world.

From making sure children have access to clean water, to saving sea turtles, they know there is incredible passion and some serious hard work happening at every nonprofit every day.

RallyUp also believes that nonprofits deserve access to cutting-edge tools to help them do the work that matters so much to them.

When nonprofits have the right tools, they raise more money, work smarter, and make a big change in the world.


GiveForms – Powerful Fundraising for Nonprofits

GiveForms lets you seamlessly embed a form on your website, allowing visitors to donate using credit card, PayPal, Google Pay or bank transfers. With a focus on intuitive, human centered design, GiveForms goal is to help you increase your online donations.

The GiveForms mission is to build the best giving experience in order to maximize recurring donations, delight your donors, and grow your movement.


Classy – Online Fundraising for the Modern Nonprofit

Classy is a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate social impact around the world. Since 2011, we’ve enabled millions of donations from over 190 countries.

Based in San Diego, CA, Classy is trusted by more than 4,000+ organizations of all sizes and causes, from major events like disease outbreaks, disasters, mass shootings, and social movements, to mainstay world challenges like environmental issues, child trafficking, human rights, and animal rights.


Donately – Online Donation Forms & Fundraising Pages

More than 1,000 organizations and individuals with causes trust Donately to manage their online donations. Built with simplicity in mind, our features give you more time to raise money online and our software grows with you, so the possibilities are endless.

Whether you’re a seasoned expert on online fundraising or providing your donors an online giving option for the first time, Donately makes it simple for donors to support your cause. Start with donation forms, fundraising pages, and text messaging to provide modern and beautiful avenues to collect donations digitally.


Give Lively – A Free Fundraising Platform for Nonprofits

Give Lively built and support a powerful and practical fundraising platform that is free for nonprofits and intuitively easy to use for donors.

Their goal is to help nonprofits of all sizes take advantage of the digital fundraising movement by dramatically improving the giving experience for everyone – nonprofits and donors alike.


Merchandise and Apparel

Bonfire – Modern nonprofit marketing made simple with custom T-shirt fundraising

Bonfire is the easy way to raise money online with custom shirts & hoodies. Create an online store to make it easy for your supporters to browse all of your custom shirts and apparel. They’re free to create and it only takes a few minutes to customize to match your brand or cause.


Finance and Accounting

Freshbooks – Accounting Software Built for Non-profits

Built for non-profit organizations, FreshBooks is easy to use accounting software. Your non-profit works hard to help others, and FreshBooks will work hard for you. With the best non-profit accounting software at your side, your accounting tasks will be effortless.

Create customized invoices for your clients complete with your organization’s logo. When you need to send out thank you emails to your clients for their donations, create a personalized thank you email in seconds. With the best non-profit accounting software at your disposal, you can add time and expenses to your invoices with ease so that your clients aren’t bothered with multiple invoices.


Charity Charge – The credit card program for your nonprofit

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Charity Charge is a Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to serving nonprofits, schools and associations. We work with organizations nationally as large as $100 million in revenue including chapters from United Way, Junior League and YMCA.

The company believes that nonprofits should have access to a “business” credit card designed specifically for their needs.

That’s why we made one that reduces financial risk, has no annual or per card fees, and has rewards opportunities for cash back and discounts. The company works with organizations nationally as large as $100 million in revenue including chapters from United Way, Junior League and YMCA.


FreeWill – FreeWill provides planned and major giving tools that your donors will love (and actually use)

Wills made on FreeWill are 5x more likely to leave a gift compared to the national average

More than 400 nonprofits have already used FreeWill to raise over $1,997,656,000 in bequests, qualified charitable distributions, and stock gifts.

FreeWill understands that different organizations have different needs—that’s why we approach each nonprofit partner individually, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Whether you’re a large international organization or a small local nonprofit, come find out how FreeWill can work for you.

Their no-cost estate planning tools are made possible by the support of hundreds of nonprofit organizations that work on meaningful issues.

Many people who create their estate plans on FreeWill choose to leave a gift to a cause they care about, and we hope you’ll consider doing the same. It’s never too soon to consider the legacy you want to leave behind.


Email Marketing

MailerLite – Create email marketing your way

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MailerLite - Nonprofit Marketing Resources and Tools

Take email marketing beyond the inbox with advanced tools made easy. Enjoy award-winning live 24/7 support along with all the features you need to succeed. Attract new people and turn them into loyal subscribers through websites, landing pages, pop-ups, and embedded forms.

Cast a wider net for a healthy flow of new customers and business growth. Build subscriber trust and boost engagement by using advanced email automation that results in highly targeted and personalized emails. The best part— automation setup is now a breeze.


Email Octopus – Simple, powerful tools to grow your organization

Email Octopus makes email marketing easier and more affordable so that nonprofits like you can put your time and money to more important work.

Email Octopus was founded in 2014 to help anyone with an audience grow. The mission is to provide nonprofit marketing with email that’s simpler, more intuitive, and better value.

From self-published authors to food blogging superstars and charities to online stores, we’ve helped over 56,000 organisations send more than 11 billion emails.

Join the charities and nonprofits reaching their readers with EmailOctopus


Social Media

Buffer – Simpler social media tools for authentic engagement

Tell your organization’s story and grow your audience with a publishing, analytics, and engagement platform you can trust.

Buffer offers a 50% discount to all registered nonprofit organizations. All we need to see is your official documentation, such as a copy of your 501(c)(3), or your country’s equivalent, to support your nonprofit status.


Edgar – The unique social media scheduler that does the scheduling for you

Why do the other guys make YOU do all the scheduling? Edgar automatically pulls posts from your content library to keep your social fresh every day, on repeat.

Never run out of stuff to post

Want to promote a special offer every other day? Share a blog post once a week? Edgar automates your recurring tasks, so you can kiss your to-do list goodbye.

Edgar builds a bottomless library of evergreen updates organized by category, so you control what types of content get shared and when. If he runs out of new updates, he’ll re-share older ones, so your social is always on – even when you’re focused on other things.


Hire Talent

Tech Jobs for Good – We help organizations working on social and environmental issues hire tech talent

Tech Jobs for Good is a job platform for mission-driven organizations to hire technical roles such as engineers, designers, product managers, analysts, and more. They believe that organizations doing meaningful and impactful work should have access to the best talent.


Good Gigs – Hire purpose-driven talent, and change the world together

Find full-time, freelance and remote professionals who care about your cause and share the same values. Hire good humans to do great work together.

Find energized employees passionate about your mission

Reach a community of professionals who want to work with mission-driven companies that have aligned values. Our community of change makers include experts in…

Save time and access our vetted freelance community

They save you days of work by scouting and providing you with a shortlist of vetted freelance talent for your project. No more back and forth getting references and availability, Good Gigs has you covered!


LinkedIn for Nonprofits – Hire the brightest nonprofit stars

Find your next great hire by posting open positions. Your job post will instantly be seen by quality candidates who want to make a difference. You’ll get a list of the best matches, plus tools to manage your top picks.

Find, connect with, and manage candidates all in one place. Then, prioritize your top candidates and reach out with a LinkedIn message.

Showcase your organization’s culture, diversity, and passion. Customize views to different groups (for example: Volunteers, Corporate partners, Government). Automatically show recommended jobs and insights to candidates with the Jobs tab.

With LinkedIn’s intuitive, data-driven insights, you will be able to answer tough talent questions with real-time data, make smarter talent decisions, and gain a competitive talent advantage in your market.


Google for Nonprofits

Google Workspace for Nonprofits

Be more collaborative, productive, and efficient with Google Workspace for Nonprofits

Workspace gives your nonprofit everything you need to get anything done, now in one place. All Google Workspace plans provide a custom email for your nonprofit and include collaboration tools like Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and more.


Attract donors, raise awareness for your organization, and recruit volunteers with in-kind advertising on Google Search.

Ad Grants provides access to $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising every month for text ads.

You’ll receive $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising from Google each month to create text-based ads, and get access to tools to help you build effective campaigns that can display on Google Search when people look for information related to your nonprofit.


YouTube Nonprofit Program – Engage your supporters using video

Unlock the power of video storytelling, so you can reach a global audience and amplify your cause. Plus, make it easy for supporters to give with YouTube Giving features (currently available in the U.S.).

You’ll get access to features especially useful for nonprofits:

  • Link anywhere cards let you link supporters to any external URL
  • YouTube Giving features can help with fundraising and rallying supporters
  • Creator Academy offers lessons tailored to nonprofits

Read more nonprofit content here.


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Causeartist is a multi media company spotlighting impact entrepreneurs, impact startups, and innovative nonprofits.

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