7 Apps Every Nonprofit Needs To Use

1. HelpBridge
2. Humanity
3. Sprout Social
4. Check-in for Good
5. CiviCRM
6. One Today
7. VolunteerMatch

If there’s any common thread linking non-profit organizations, it’s that money always seems to be tight. You’re usually relying on donations and volunteers to keep your non-profit running and functioning properly. It’s a constant struggle to stay on the budget for most budding, and even veteran, non-profit groups.

Thankfully, there are plenty of companies that offer free tools to non-profits to help them out in their noble causes. Not only that, but there are also tons of free online tools out there that can really help nonprofits in a lot of facets of their work.

Mobile apps are especially good to look at when looking for free tools that can give your organization a productivity boost without having to spend any money.

Here are seven great examples of fantastic, and completely free, applications that can come in very handy if you’re running a nonprofit.

Are you equipped for this new age of technology? Is your operation as efficient and effective as it could be? Here are seven free apps every nonprofit should know about.

1. HelpBridge

This is a fantastic app for getting your family, friends, and entire community involved in your efforts. It helps to raise awareness not only for your causes but for other organizations that you believe in.

HelpBridge is a mobile app that makes it very easy to notify people who are close to you about what it is that you are doing. It allows you to send emails and SMS messages to all of your contacts at once and get them to support your causes.

It’s great to use when you are working to raise money for a community that has been ravaged by a natural disaster, for example, because it makes rallying the community easy. But it’s also great for raising awareness on a daily basis about what your organization does and what current challenges you are facing.

It’s a perfect way to keep in touch with your supporters and potentially find new ones in the process.

2. Humanity

Humanity is a business management platform built on the cloud. With this app, you can manage your staff, create schedules, track attendance, log away time, and much more.

You can access Humanity on any device from anywhere, making it a great solution for businesses that have team members working remotely or from a variety of different locations. Also, if you have ever encountered any issues with scheduling conflicts or coordinating team members, you will find it easier to foster a culture of accountability with this app and avoid these types of issues entirely with the help of this incredibly intuitive software.

Though Humanity is primarily for managing staff and schedules, it does integrate with various third-party tools too. So if you need to take your staff data to payroll, you can simply export the excellent and accurate timesheets created in Humanity and send them to your favorite payroll management app.

3. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media management app that allows you to track and monitor your social media efforts. You can engage customers who are talking about you, schedule and publish posts at a set time, keep contact records, and more. It’s pretty similar to Hootsuite, which is another well-known social media dashboard, but Sprout Social is a bit simpler to use.

Using Sprout Social, you can set up a customizable inbox where you can check all of your social interactions from a single place. If you don’t have time to constantly check out all of your social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), this is a good solution because you can check them all by just opening one app. This makes it quicker to keep up-to-date with customer interactions and make sure you don’t miss anything on any social platform.

Sprout Social also has great support and educational webinars for those who want to learn more about how to use the platform.

4. Check-in for Good

The Check-in for Good app allows donors to take a variety of actions for raising money for when it comes to causes that are important to them. Users of the app can find donation hotspots (generally places of business), check in, and make micro-donations as they see fit.

Businesses can support causes they care about by setting up these hotspots and in doing so can gain more exposure for themselves in the process of helping others. So it’s a win-win scenario.

At first glance, it may not seem like this app would be useful to non-profit organizations, but it actually is very useful. You can also use the Check-in for Good platform to create partnerships with local businesses that also benefit from promoting your cause. It can not only help you get more exposure for your mission, but it also makes it easier for people to donate to it.

5. CiviCRM

The CiviCRM platform is primarily used by non-profits to manage contacts and donators. If you have a large database of contacts but no system to organize them, it would be a good idea to give this app a try.

CiviCRM is an efficient database solution that allows you to search your contacts on the fly. You can also create contribution forms, membership sign-up forms, as well as event pages across several content management systems like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla!.

You can also send customized emails to the people in your database and view reports. If you are looking for a better way to oversee your contacts, CiviCRM should prove worthwhile.

6. One Today

This is an app brought to you by Google that allows nonprofits or even individuals to create campaigns that they are trying to get funded. It’s an app that can be used by people who have ideas for startups, musicians looking for money to record an album, and for tons of other situations. Of course, it’s perfect for non-profit fund raising as well.

It’s what Google calls a micro-donation app, which allows people to choose to contribute one dollar per day to some of their favorite causes. It also has a social element to it all, allowing people who are donating to match contributions made by their friends to various organizations.

It’s a great app to check out if you are looking for a unique way to seek new donations for your organizations.

7. VolunteerMatch

One of the hardest things about running a non-profit is finding people to help you. Most nonprofits rely on the tireless work of volunteers, who are not always easy to find. If you are using VolunteerMatch, finding people to help you gets a lot easier.

It’s a great tool to use for presenting your cause to a large database of ready and able volunteers. Best of all, it lets you search the volunteer database by location in order to potential try and find volunteers who might be interested in joining your organization and lending a helping hand.

Conclusion

Whether you are looking for ways to increase your productivity or create more online awareness for your organization, there are a bunch of excellent apps worth checking out. All of these apps can be used free by non-profits, which in an additional bonus. If you do some research, you’ll find that many different online services offer special terms and discounts for non-profits, so be sure to take advantage of such opportunities.

When looking to incorporate apps into your daily work, check them out first and try to see how they could help you run your organization more efficiently. You don’t need to download or install every app that is offered for free to non-profits. Look for solutions that have the potential to solve existing challenges in your day-to-day operations, as you do not need to get bogged down with apps that don’t support your daily work.

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