Essential online tools and resources for nonprofit organizations

In today's fast-paced and highly competitive digital world, online tools are essential. When you have access to so many resources, it can be difficult to narrow your choices down to one or two. The team at Graf-Martin Communications also knows that nonprofit budgets may be limited. So, you need to strategically select a resource that will assist your organization but won’t break the bank. But where do you start? Here are our top 5 discounted (and some free) resources to help your nonprofit organization succeed.

1. Google for Nonprofits

Google for Nonprofits offers eligible organizations access to Google products and discounts that can help solve the challenges nonprofits face: finding new donors and volunteers, working more efficiently, and getting supporters to take action. Google for Nonprofits is currently available in 65+ countries.

Google for Nonprofits provides access to these Google products at no charge:

• Google Workspace for Nonprofits and nonprofit-specific discounts for Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise editions

• Google Ad Grants

• YouTube Nonprofit program

• Google Maps Platform

With Google Ad Grants, nonprofits can receive $10,000/month in ads on Google Search which will help raise awareness for your organization. Never used Google for Nonprofits before and want to apply for grants? Graf-Martin can help! 

2. Canva Pro 

Canva is a graphic design program that can assist you in easily creating visual content for social media and marketing materials. You can create appealing graphics quickly and easily with thousands of templates, elements, and fonts. With the premium version, Canva Pro, there are even more tools to explore, such as video creation. 

With Canva, you can set up a brand kit that includes your brand colours, fonts, and logos, to create a consistent voice across all programs. It’s also easy to create and save branded templates so everyone on your team can access them.

Canva offers a Canva Pro account for free to registered nonprofits. You can view eligibility guidelines here. 

3. Asana

Asana is a project management tool designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Whether your nonprofit team is tracking a big or small project, you will be sure to stay organized by utilizing Asana’s basic tools: project workflows, task assignments, team establishment, due dates, and comments.

Asana is free for up to 15 teammates. If you have more than 15 people on your team, or you would like to upgrade to utilize more features, Asana Premium is available for $17.52 per month. They also have a business plan, priced at $39.58/month. Registered nonprofits, however, get a 50% discount. You can learn more about their pricing here. 

4. Hootsuite 

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows you to manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard. With Hootsuite’s free plan, one user can pre-schedule social media messages for up to three accounts.

For smaller nonprofits with less than two channels to manage, Hootsuite offers a “free-limited” plan with a 50% discount on the unlimited set-up, which lets you manage more than two social channels. With this software, you can schedule and manage your social media posts all in one place. Hootsuite also includes built-in analytics so you and your team can see how well your social media posts are doing. 

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing service that lets you easily customize and brand your emails. You can use their range of templates or create your own. MailChimp also provides analytics that allows you to see how many subscribers have opened your email, which links were clicked the most frequently, how many people unsubscribed after receiving your email, and even how your response compares to the industry average.

If you have less than 2,000 email subscribers, your email send limit is 10,000/month and 2000/day, you can use MailChimp’s most basic plan for free. This is great news for nonprofits who are fairly new to the industry and have limited funds. They have paid plans as well, which are divided into 3 categories on their pricing page here. Also, MailChimp offers a 15% discount for nonprofits and charities.

Bonus: WayBase

WayBase is an online database platform that helps individuals and ministries find each other. WayBase provides information for more than 34,000+ Christian ministries in Canada, which allows you to facilitate networking and connections between those working in similar industries. You can use WayBase to find a church, counsellor, media, and many other ministries.

The Starter Plan allows you to access WayBase for free. Along with accessing data from 34,000+ Canadian Christian ministries, you can share content on the Engage app, find and create causes, enable community updates, and access national reports.