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starting a non-profit on a budget or with no money at all can be really hard fortunately there are several free resources and tools out there for folks just getting started or trying to grow their new nonprofit organization these might be resources that help you with your marketing your fundraising collecting donations or managing a team while you are getting things up and running in this video i'm going to share 13 resources that are free for non-profits that either i've used or have been recommended by other non-profit leaders i hope that this helps you out welcome to my channel my name is amber melanie smith and i am a non-profit founder and executive director of the nonprofit that i started many years ago and i make these videos here on youtube to help folks who want to make a difference want to start a non-profit want to create a social impact in the world with the tools and strategies they need to do just that as always i hope that you find this video helpful and useful don't forget to give this video a like and tell that youtube algorithm to share with more people subscribe to my channel for more videos like this and ring the bell to get alerts next time i post a video okay so let's jump in as i was saying there are a ton of free resources out there i'm going to share 13 i'm going to break them up by category as to how you would use them the purpose they might serve for your organization one thing to keep in mind is that some of these resources do require you to prove your official non-profit status with some kind of tax id or registration documents first and some don't and one quick note i am not in any way officially endorsing any of these products nor have any of them asked me to talk about their products in this video i'm just sharing some great resources that i found and other leaders have found and hope that they are useful to you as well okay so let's dive in the first category of free resources that i want to share has to do with managing a team or managing projects that you're working on as an organization i know things like this tools like this have really helped me stay organized especially as more and more people have joined our organization whether they are volunteers board members or even paid staff when you have a lot of people doing a lot of things it's really important to stay organized so that's what these tools specialize in the first free tool i'm going to share is a pretty commonplace one and that is google workspace for non-profits this allows you to have email accounts for your nonprofit organization that have your web domain in them so bob at nonprofitorganization.org whatever your nonprofit's web domain is it allows you to store files and share on their super useful at least i think so google drive and it allows you to have video meetings so these are a lot of great tools that can really be critical to keeping your team organized and collaborating and communicating now a project management tool that i have not personally used but came highly recommended by other non-profit leaders that i talk to is asana this is a project management tool that lets you assign tasks and activities and track your progress on those activities with your team you can see these activities and these things that are due in calendar format so really allows for collaboration and keeping everyone on track if you see your teammate has something to do in a week but they haven't started yet you can check in on them and be like hey team member how's that thing going do you need any support from me and help them stay on track of course with many of the tools that i'm going to mention there are some additional features available for a cost but the free version can often give you a really robust package of things you might need to get started the third tool that i'm going to talk about is another one that other nonprofit leaders have highly recommended but that i have not tried myself though i have heard good things from others outside the nonprofit world too and that is hubspot hubspot seems like it is sort of a combination of a crm which is a customer or client relationship management tool um think of like a database that helps you manage all of your many relationships that you might have as a non-profit whether that's with your donors or volunteers or people that you just want to make a note to follow up with so that you can build on the relationship you're starting with them so a crm it also has some marketing features like email marketing you could do a newsletter through this tool and it also has some project management purposes as well so organizing your tasks similar to how asana might the next category of free resources that i'm going to talk about is for marketing and outreach especially when you're just starting out as a non-profit building up your email list building up your base of followers can be really important because from that group of people you get to follow your cause are going to come your volunteers your future donors etc the first tool i'm going to talk about is one that i have used a bit and that is the social media scheduling tool buffer this is one of those tools that of course has additional features or expanded features for the paid version but on the free version you can manage and schedule social media for up to three different platforms so for example a facebook page an instagram and a twitter account so it's really helpful i hear from a lot of non-profit leaders that they want to do more on social media but they just don't have the time and a tool like this that can help you schedule your social media in advance can at least keep things going on your page while you are working on other things if you're not able to do more live posts the next tool i'm going to talk about is a graphic design tool and that is canva and i have used canva extensively i do my youtube thumbnails in canva i know lots and lots of other people who have used canva and it came very highly recommended by several other non-profit leaders that i heard from and it allows you to make professional looking graphics even if you don't have graphic design skill provides lots of templates it provides different sizes and dimensions of posts that you might need to go on different platforms like a facebook event cover graphic or an instagram post so it has it all sized out for you you can adjust as needed change colors etc now one really cool thing about canva is while they do have a free version and a paid version once you are a tax exempt fully registered nonprofit you can apply for the canva for non-profits program and end up getting their pro version free also the next tool i'm going to talk about is an email marketing tool and that is mailchimp and this is great for folks starting out i believe you can send emails to up to 2000 subscribers on the free version but every organization needs some way of staying in touch with their followers regularly sending out updates and events and even asks for donations over some kind of newsletter or email system and mailchimp is a possible solution for that the fourth tool i'm going to talk about in the marketing and outreach category is something i just learned about which it is super cool it's otter ai and it is for audio recording and accessibility otter ai has a free version and again like the other platforms it also has a more expanded paid version but from what i could tell on their website it was very affordable even at the paid levels and what this platform does is it can record your meetings or presentations or videos and transcribe them and provide speech recognition services to make sure that your content is accessible in this next section i'm going to talk about some free resources in a category that i get asked a lot about and that is raising money the first thing you should know is that it is relatively easy to place a donation button or connect to some kind of payment processing system like stripe or square or paypal there are a lot of options out there but that generally they're going to be taking some kind of small transaction fee from every donation in order to cover their own costs and that is how they're able to offer the platform at no like monthly fee for your organization when you are not registered as an official non-profit these fees might be anywhere from three to five percent-ish depending on the platform generally a lot of these platforms do offer a discount when you can approve your official non-profit status might bring it down to two to three percent of the transaction fee instead one thing you can do to help offset the cost of these transaction fees is to give an option on the donation page for your donors to opt in to pay that transaction fee for you and in my experience a lot of donors will willingly do that it's usually just a couple of dollars extra depending on the size of their donation and they recognize how it all works and they want to help your cause out so those are just the basic tools that will allow you to put a simple donation button on your website a donation form collect the money and then with the click of a button transfer that money into your nonprofits bank account but if you're looking for something a little bit more robust that can help with other processes within fundraising such as hosting a special fundraising campaign or crowdfunding where you would allow others to raise money for your organization through their own pages or selling tickets to fundraising events there are a couple of other free options out there for you as well the first i'll mention is called give lively this is a fundraising platform that promises to be free and non-profits can utilize it for special fundraising campaigns event ticket sales and one thing that i think is super cool is a text to give feature so you can instruct your donors to be able to donate simply by texting a certain number and that can increase your potential donations the next free platform i'll mention is called give butter and it has a lot of the same features that give lively has it has the fundraising campaign pages the text to give the event ticket sales etc they also recently introduced a new feature that allows you to raise money while live streaming videos so that could be pretty cool too and of course once again just like most of these other platforms that i've mentioned so far they have a paid version with expanded uh features as well now not every fundraising platform out there is appropriate for an international audience i know i've had several folks from outside of the u.s ask me about resources available to them for fundraising so i wanted to throw in this final one that i discovered called go croudera and it bills itself as especially good for raising money from countries around the world you don't have to be in the united states so that might be an option that you could check out if you are not in the united states and in looking for some kind of option that might work for your organization and i forgot to mention this before but i will be leaving the links to all of these in my description in case anyone is interested in checking them out and potentially benefiting from them and the final category of free resources that i'm going to talk about for this video is the category of finding and or managing volunteers for your organization there are a ton of tools out there for helping you manage the volunteer sign up process like sign up genius etc i'm going to mention one that is kind of newer and that has intrigued me a little bit i'm just kind of taking a look at it now and that is mobilize this platform mobilize allows you to manage signups for a particular volunteer event or a special volunteer campaign etc the free account allows you to have i think up to five events or 50 signups in terms of actually finding volunteers one tool that you may probably be using for your life and other purposes but you might not have thought of as a great volunteer recruitment tool but that is linkedin there are lots of people out there who have checked a box on their linkedin profile saying specifically that they are looking for volunteer or board member opportunities and what's great about linkedin is you can see people's skill sets in their description so you know if they might be a good fit for your organization and the 13th and final free tool i'm going to talk about is another resource to help you find volunteers and that is a local volunteer center in your city there are volunteer center organizations around the world i know that the points of light global network has a map where you can see if there's a volunteer center near you but basically volunteer centers are non-profits that help other nonprofits recruit volunteers so they can be super super helpful and of course a lot of cities even if they don't have a designated volunteer center might have a volunteer database or referral or matching process that can help you identify volunteers who might be a good fit for your cause as well i'd love to hear from you now if you know of other free resources that i didn't mention here that have helped you with your process of starting or running an organization or helping a non-profit that you care about share in the comments below let's see uh what other resources we can identify to help out the folks in this awesome community speaking of resources i'm also going to share a link in the description to subscribe to my new newsletter that i'm doing that's all about providing some resources to change makers and non-profits around the world i will be showcasing in this newsletter some of the latest articles about social impact trends and opportunities and even grant opportunities that i find that might be appropriate for non-profits or social enterprise organizations so i'll leave the link to that in the description below if you're interested in joining in and getting that newsletter just subscribe there and you can unsubscribe anytime you want i also wanted to share in case you missed it in my last couple of videos that i have finally launched my first non-profit online training course idea to official that is all about helping folks just at the beginning of their process to start a non-profit with doing the market research to validate their non-profit idea planning an effective program and brand learning the steps to get 501c3 status in the united states and launch with a plan in place to cover your startup costs if that's something that might be of interest to you or helpful to you at the stage that you might be in if you are starting a non-profit check that out in the link in the description below as well i'd love to have you okay that's all i got i hope that you found this helpful as always don't forget to like and subscribe to my channel and ring the bell for alerts final thought if you are on facebook i have a wonderful group of fellow change makers from around the world called change the world or bust we are having some great conversations in there come join us come check it out and i hope to see you next time bye