Successful marketing is crucial for nonprofits and charities. To keep your organization running, you have to draw people to your cause with compelling content and encourage them to donate. For this, you need the right marketing tools for nonprofits.
But how do you know which software is best for mission-based organizations?
That’s what this post is all about. But first, the basics.
Why is marketing important for nonprofits and charities?
Marketing helps make people aware of the realities on the ground. It helps explain what these organizations do, why they make a difference, and how people can help.
Just imagine a nonprofit that promotes high-quality healthcare globally through the use of technology. Which method is likely to get people to donate to the cause? Publishing a blog post titled “How is AI used in healthcare?” that illustrates the benefits of the tool in a small-town hospital or simply asking for donations just because? I’m sure you’ll answer the first option.
That’s because the marketing content–the blog post–can help people better understand the intricacies of the world they live in. As a result, they can easily put themselves in the shoes of those in need and empathize with them.
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With excellent marketing, nonprofits and charities can truly connect with potential donors, volunteers, partners, and supporters, who, in turn, feel compelled to act and make a difference.
What types of marketing tools do nonprofits need?
Nonprofits and charities like yours have to keep a lot of plates spinning when it comes to marketing. Creating engaging content, communicating with donors, managing marketing channels. . . the list goes on.
The thing is, you’re doing all this on a shoestring budget. So, everything from your marketing automation software to your online form builders should be affordable and boost efficiency at the same time.
You also want tools that are easy to set up and have user-friendly features, of course. What’s the point of a cheap and feature-rich tool if you can’t use it in the first place?
20 marketing tools for nonprofits and charities
Now that you know what to look for, here are 20 nonprofit marketing tools to consider.
1. Woorise: forms and landing pages
Woorise is an all-in-one marketing platform that lets you create engaging landing pages. Tailor your pages using the drag-and-drop interface and customizable form templates for signups, donations, and event registration.
The platform supports recurring donations and multiple payment gateways. You can also create surveys and quizzes to get to know your donors better. Woorise offers analytics and reporting, and integrates with useful tools like CRMs and email marketing.
Pricing: Woorise offers discounts to nonprofits.
2. Salesforce: CRM
Salesforce is a CRM with specific functionality for nonprofits through the Nonprofit Cloud. It includes tools for fundraising and program management and houses all relevant data in one place for easy access and analysis.
Alongside real-time reporting, you can track enrollment and attendance for your programs, analyze fundraising against goals, and process gifts. The software automatically converts new donations into new donor profiles.
Pricing: Nonprofits can receive 10 free licenses through the Power of Us Program. There are discounts for additional licenses.
3. Givebutter: CRM
Givebutter has a built-in CRM for donor management alongside marketing and engagement tools. Your fundraising, event ticketing, and donor database are all in one place, making tracking easy.
You can create searchable donor segments with custom filters and tags, and send out personalized communications from your dashboard. The tool generates automatic receipts after each donation or ticket sale, plus dynamic reports.
Pricing: Free. Platform fees only apply if you choose to disable tips. There’s a small charge for the payment processor.
4. Canva: marketing design
Canva is a graphic design tool that enables anyone to create marketing assets. It offers customizable templates for designing web pages, social media posts, and other visuals, all with drag-and-drop functionality.
There’s also a vast range of images, videos, fonts, and animations, plus a brand kit to help keep designs consistent. The collaborative platform lets you share designs and folders with colleagues. Nonprofits get 100GB storage.
Pricing: Free access to premium features for eligible nonprofits.
5. Piktochart: infographic creation
Piktochart’s content creation tools focus on infographics, helping you to visualize processes or concepts for your audience. It comes with customizable templates for charts, presentations, and reports, as well as a brand kit.
You’ll access icons, illustrations, and 3D graphics, and video editing tools. You can collaborate with teammates via comments and revisions.
Pricing: Free forever plan and discounted annual plan for nonprofits.
6. Pexels: stock photos
If your nonprofit doesn’t have ready access to photos, Pexels lets you download and use stock photos for free. The images are created by a community of photographers, with new ones uploaded every day.
All photos are high-quality and licensed by Pexels. They’re tagged and easily searchable by typing in keywords or using the Discover pages. Pexels supplies free videos, too. You can modify any image or video. No attribution is required.
Pricing: Pexels is free.
7. HubSpot: marketing hub
HubSpot offers its tools to nonprofits as separate modules (Hubs) or as a bundle with any combination of products. The Marketing Hub provides email marketing, social media management, segmentation and automation, plus A/B testing and analytics.
The Content Hub comes with AI-powered content generation, lead capture, and podcast hosting and publishing tools. There’s also the CMS Hub with a website builder and SEO tools, and the Sales Hub with CRM.
Pricing: 40% discount for nonprofits. Free versions of all Hubs are also available.
8. Typito: video creation
Typito lets you create marketing and fundraising videos with an easy drag-and-drop interface and no editing skills required. Use the pre-built templates and add professional text effects, graphics overlays, music, or sound effects.
You can choose from 20+ video formats and aspect ratios, with editing tools to crop, resize, and merge videos. The platform automatically creates closed captions and provides a live preview of your content. Integration with Facebook and YouTube lets you upload directly from Typito.
Pricing: 50% nonprofit discount on all annual plans. There’s also a free basic plan.
9. WordPress: website creation
WordPress is a web builder tool, hosting, and content management system (CMS) designed to simplify website creation and editing. Choose from numerous themes and use the built-in editor to drag and drop pre-built block patterns for your web pages.
You can also add plugins for additional functionality, such as building forms, accepting donations, and managing events. You can even embed a web video conferencing API to hold video chats with potential donors through your site.
WordPress provides a nonprofit guide to help you make the most of the platform. There’s also a large online support community.
Pricing: WordPress offers a free plan.
10. Wordable: publishing automation
Wordable lets you publish Google Docs to WordPress (and other platforms) in one click, so you don’t have to copy/paste and then reformat the copy and images.
You can automatically add alt text to images, set links to open in a new tab, and compress large images. Once you’ve connected Google Docs to your WordPress site, you can publish in bulk, and create templates to save your preferences.
Pricing: Free plan with five exports per month.
11. Bitly: link management
Bitly creates shortened URLs and QR codes to help potential donors find you online. A short URL is easier to remember and type! And by including a QR code in your marketing materials, people can easily scan it to donate or get further info.
Bitly offers customizable and dynamic QR codes, alongside the link-in-bio feature for creating and sharing clickable URLs from any social media profile. Advanced tools allow you to track and analyze your clicks in one place.
Pricing: Free plan with five links and two QR codes per month.
12. WebSite Auditor: site audits
This SEO audit tool runs a thorough health check of your website to make sure it’s easy for users to navigate and search engines to crawl. (High-performing websites have higher SERP rankings, raising awareness and visibility.)
WebSite Auditor detects issues like broken links, content gaps, and poor mobile optimization, and provides tips on how to fix them. It will also generate Google XML sitemaps and robots.txt files, and improve your site’s HTML code.
Pricing: Free to download
13. Buffer: social media management
Buffer helps you to plan, schedule, and publish social media content across all channels from a single dashboard. You can build a library of content ideas, while analytics tools tell you where and when to post for the best reach and engagement.
The AI Assistant can generate new ideas, repurpose existing posts, and suggest hashtags. Buffer also offers video creation tools for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok.
Pricing: 50% nonprofit discount, and free plan available.
14. Mailchimp: marketing automation
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform for creating and sending personalized marketing messages via email, SMS, and social media. It includes segmentation and targeting, audience management, and analytics and reporting.
The Campaign Manager helps you build campaigns across multiple channels. You can produce on-brand marketing content with pre-built templates. If you’re looking for some examples of generative AI to use instead, Mailchimp has a gen AI feature that can help you create your content from scratch.
Pricing: 15% discount for verified nonprofits and charities.
15. Asana: project management
Asana is a collaborative project management tool with real-time dashboards to help you track marketing tasks and resources. You can connect work to company goals, plan accurate timelines, adjust workloads, and manage events and calendars.
The built-in AI will suggest timelines and resource allocations, and detect potential risks. You can centralize marketing campaign assets and guidelines for consistency, and connect creative tools to Asana so that stakeholders can comment and approve in one place.
Pricing: 50% discount for nonprofits, plus a free plan for personal use.
16. Give Lively: fundraising platform
Give Lively lets you create customizable campaign pages with donation widgets, tracking thermometers, space for images, and built-in buttons for easy sharing. You can also generate pages for selling event tickets and sponsorships.
The Text-to-Donate feature gives you unlimited custom text codes for on-the-spot giving, taking donors directly to a secure web page. Plus, peer-to-peer fundraising enables your supporters to set up their own campaign pages to collect on your behalf.
Pricing: Free, although third-party payment processors may charge fees.
17. Dropbox: online storage
Dropbox makes it easy to store, manage, and back up your marketing files. With everything in the cloud, all team members can access it from any device.
You can also collaborate on important marketing docs, and deliver large files with trackable links instead of using email attachments. Security features include file recovery, password protection, viewer history, and access management.
Pricing: Free Basic tool with 2GB of storage. Nonprofit discounts available on paid plans.
18. SurveyMonkey: surveys
SurveyMonkey helps you collect and analyze opinions from donors, volunteers, and stakeholders via customizable surveys. You can create surveys from a library of templates and embed them on your website or use web links or email.
With 200 targeting options and custom screening questions, you can gauge communication preferences, evaluate attendee satisfaction after events, and ask people what other content they’d like to see. Then analyze responses with built-in dashboards and reporting.
Pricing: Discounts available for nonprofits on request.
19. Google Analytics: data analysis
Google Analytics tells you who’s visiting you online, how they found you, and how they interact across your websites and apps. This helps you determine a target audience, decide which channels to use, and optimize your marketing efforts.
You can monitor key landing pages such as donation pages, and connect Google Analytics with your Google Ads account if you have one. Meanwhile, Google Trends shows you what people are searching for in real time, so you can check interest and engagement in your topic.
Pricing: Google Analytics and Google Trends are free.
20. Google Ad Grants: ad credits
The Google Ad Grants program gives eligible nonprofits and charities $10,000 in free advertising credits every month. You can use them to bid on keywords that target your ideal audience. If you win, Google places your ads at the top and bottom of its SERPs. The grant automatically reactivates each month if you continue to meet the requirements.
Google Ad Grants agencies can help you ensure compliance and make the most of the grant. For the best results, look for an agency that operates in the area where your organization is registered. They can help you determine the best local keywords to use to promote your cause.
Final thoughts
The best marketing tools for nonprofits help you improve efficiency and engagement without blowing the budget. Choose wisely.
With the right tools for content creation, donor management, analytics and more, you’ll easily grab people’s attention and, ultimately, turn them into long-term supporters.
