When you run a nonprofit, it can feel like you have a million things on your to-do list and no matter how hard you work, the list never seems to get shorter. And often those things on your lists aren’t directly related to what your organization is all about–helping people. If you feel this way…
When you run a nonprofit, it can feel like you have a million things on your to-do list and no matter how hard you work, the list never seems to get shorter. And often those things on your lists aren’t directly related to what your organization is all about–helping people.
If you feel this way about marketing your organization, then you need to check out these FREE tools to help you spend less time marketing and more time doing what you love. (And saving on your marketing budget with free tools doesn’t hurt either, right?)
In this article, we’ll break down 10 essential and totally free (with some upgrade options) marketing tools for nonprofits to help you tackle that to-do list and make the most out of your marketing time and budget.
First, let’s chat about why marketing your nonprofit effectively is so important.
Although it might not seem like a big deal, effectively marketing your nonprofit can affect every aspect of your activities.
A strong marketing plan can help set your organization up for success–which is why you need these essential tools.
Write compelling, error-free marketing copy with Grammarly. Grammarly is a great tool to catch both outright grammatical errors and unclear or stylistically clunky writing.
This is important because your copy helps build your nonprofit’s brand. Having a neat, clean copy shows your potential donors or volunteers that you care about presenting the best face for your organization possible. In other words, Grammarly can make you look good!
Grammarly is a free marketing tool that can be applied to various applications both on your desktop and on the web.
Grammarly’s key features can also be free for qualifying nonprofits. Know more about it here.
Use Canva to create eye-catching visuals for social media, emails, and more. Canva is your one-stop shop for design. You can upload your own elements like pictures, videos, or audio and use Canva’s powerful tools to make them shine.
If you’re a new nonprofit, you can even use Canva to design your logo!
Although Canva is a great free tool, there are some perks that come with a Pro account. These perks include access to premium images and animations and some organizational tools like the ability to create a brand kit folder.
The good news? Canva provides nonprofits with pro accounts for free. All you have to do is review the eligibility requirements and apply.
The most compelling images for your marketing content will always be directly related to your work. Pictures from your latest outreach event or volunteer moment will be more powerful because they show the audience your work in real-time.
However, you don’t always have access to those images–and sometimes you need a high-quality image quickly. That’s where Pexels comes in.
Pexels has an extensive library of free stock photos shared directly by creators. Using their search function, you can find the photos you need to make your marketing materials stand out.
It’s a cliche, but a picture really is worth a thousand words sometimes. That’s why it’s essential for your nonprofit to use a tool like Pexels!
Sendinblue offers a basic free plan that allows up to 300 emails a day and unlimited contacts.
Use Sendinblue to build campaigns that will catch the eye of potential donors with graphics, clear layouts, and tools to help you send at the right time. They also feature powerful list segmentation tools to make sure you’re sending the right email to the right segment of your list.
This tool also offers flexible pricing based on how many emails you actually send.
One way to be sure you don’t roll over your allotted email time is to use a powerful donor management software like Donorbox to segment your lists ahead of time. You can sort your donors by factors like campaign, donation frequency, donation amount, timeframe, and more. Donorbox also lets you integrate with leading CRM tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Blackbaud RE NXT, etc. to help you manage your donors better and improve your communication.
You might have a beautiful website, but until you understand how it’s being found on Google–and who is visiting and interacting with it–you won’t know how successful it is as a marketing tool for your nonprofit.
That’s where Google Analytics can help–for free! Using Google Analytics allows you to see how your website is performing, how any ads you have might be performing, and how you might better leverage your online positioning to turn website visits into donations.
Nonprofits can create a free account on Later to plan and publish their content on social media easily as well as analyze them. Later also offers a 50% discount to eligible nonprofits for their paid plans and a 100% discount to those fighting racism and social injustice.
With Later, you can easily schedule and publish Instagram reels and posts, TikTok posts, find relevant content and share, and track which posts are doing well.
Bitly is both a link shortener and a great tracker with keen analytics to help you see how your links are working on social media.
Shortening and branding links make them more attractive on social media posts. It also makes for a more memorable link, which means more users are likely to remember it.
With their free pricing options, you can get 50 shortened links, custom back-halves, QR codes, and link history and reporting per month. Bitly’s starter and basic plans priced at $8/month and $29/month can also be affordable for many nonprofits.
Nonprofits need to ensure that the content they create and add to their website must appear on Google search results. Simply put, potential donors and volunteers must find you easily.
With Website Auditor’s free plan, you can –
…and more. They also have paid plans starting from $125/ year.
To have a robust marketing plan for your nonprofit, you need to think ahead. Yes, your annual year-end campaign is a big deal, but you should be planning out your marketing touch points months in advance to make sure your employees have everything they need to successfully market your organization.
With Asana’s free version, you can create unlimited marketing tasks and projects, have unlimited file storage, have assignee and due dates, a calendar view, 100+ free integrations, and more. Asana also gives a 50% discount on their paid plans to eligible nonprofits.
Peer-to-peer fundraising makes it possible to market your nonprofit for free. You must be having your own army of supporters in the form of board members, volunteers, friends, and family. When you enable them to run peer campaigns for your organization, their networks get to know about you. For free!
Donorbox Peer-to-Peer makes it the simplest. You can sign up for free and there are no monthly contracts. The tool only charges a minimal platform fee of 2.95% on donations coming to your peer campaigns. The main campaign is charged at 1.75%. But that’s for our Standard plan. Nonprofits have the option to upgrade to our Pro and Premium plans to reduce this rate to a flat rate of 1.5% for all tools.
All you need to do is toggle a switch on your fundraising campaign on Donorbox to turn it into a peer-to-peer one. Then you can invite your supporters to fundraise for you, right from the tool. Your invitees will receive an email invitation and they can easily get started. You can also keep the invitation open for all by having a button on your main campaign page.
Here’s an example from Maya’s Hope, the nonprofit which is running a successful peer-to-peer campaign on Donorbox.
We’ve presented 10 powerful tools to help you make your nonprofit marketing plan the best it can be. Whether you need help creating marketing materials, organizing your tasks, analyzing the success of your website content, or marketing your mission, there’s something here to help you achieve your goals–for free.
We hope this list helps you bulk up your toolbox.
Along with Peer-to-Peer, Donorbox also helps nonprofits raise money and manage donors through a number of simple and effective features. Some of our most popular features include Recurring Donations, customizable Fundraising Pages, Crowdfunding, Events, Memberships, Text-to-Give, Peer-to-Peer, Donor Management, QuickDonate, etc. 50,000+organizations have chosen us across 96 countries! You can be a part of this success story as well. Sign up for free!
Donorbox Premium gives you access to expert fundraising coaching, a team of tech wizards, and a highly dynamic set of fundraising and donor management tools. pricing is personalized for every organization. Book a demo today!
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Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower