Our Recommended Partners
We’re often asked what services and tools we recommend, so we’re publishing a roundup of some of our favorite resources for nonprofits. Whether you’re looking for recommendations for resources to help build your strategy or just need the right tech tool, we’ve compiled a quick list of trusted partners in the space.
The list is far from exhaustive – please comment to add your own!
Strategy, Consultation, & Resources
While we may not be able to offer direct consultation on your social media or marketing strategy, the good news is there are already fantastic existing resources that do this well.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
buffer
Buffer is a popular and widely used social media marketing tool. Due to its simplicity and efficiency, Nonprofits love using this tool. It offers amazing analytical features to track the performance of all your social media posts.
Features:
- For nonprofits that are just starting up, buffer offers a free account.
- Based on the followers’ activity, it suggests perfect moments to post on social media accounts.
- You can also create and schedule your content with the buffer’s image creator and shorten your links.
DIGITAL STRATEGY & SOCIAL MEDIA consultation
Whole Whale
Whole Whale takes a holistic approach and tailors its services to help nonprofits reach their goals and build capacity within their teams. They’re a social impact digital agency that leverages data and tech with a human approach, whether that’s data analysis, digital strategy, web development, or training. They work to help you make the best use of your website, analytics, digital content, advertising, social media, email, and more.
FUNDRAISING CONSULTATION, STRATEGY, & COACHING
Clairification School
There are a lot of freely available and templated resources out there regarding fundraising strategy. And those are a great starting point, but can leave your nonprofit’s messaging sounding just like everyone else’s. We’ve long been fans of Claire Axelrad’s expert and thoughtful approach through her many years in the field. Clairification School’s resources are not your run-of-the-mill copycat playbooks, and offer accessible, ‘one-stop’ education to keep leaders fresh, focused and forward-thinking. It’s the equivalent of an ongoing mini ‘fundraising school’ – suitable for beginner, intermediate and advanced fundraisers.
Westfall Gold
Major donors can prove to be your greatest fundraising opportunity—and biggest challenge. Westfall Gold seeks to unlock your major donor fundraising potential with a breakthrough program that moves donors from transactional to transformational giving, imparting fundraising strategies to cultivate speed and effectiveness in your efforts. Their “Major Donor Experience”—a three-and-a-half day vision-casting weekend, boasts a 5:1 ROI and 74% conversion rate.
BRANd & DESIGN
Rootid
If you’re wondering how to be more strategic about leveraging your existing website, social media, and other content, you may benefit from engaging with a branding and marketing consultant. Rootid provides a wide range of services within that realm— from branding strategy to campaign collateral, to website design, to custom CMS development— they serve as a revitalizing team when considering a holistic approach to your brand.
CONTENT CREATION & CONTENT STRATEGY
Fiverr
Sometimes you’ll have gaps on your team you’ll need to fill in for on-the-fly projects. Whether you’re looking for nonprofit grant writers, website creators, social media managers, business consultants, mission statement writers, or brand consultants— Fiverr makes it easy to connect with skilled professionals. Fiverr is a popular freelance marketplace built specifically so you can quickly find freelancers to match your budget.
Skyword
Skyword offers a one-stop-shop for building a scalable content strategy, managing talent, and delivering high-quality localized content that leaves an impact. In their Content Strategy Session, they’ll build a custom value-driven content program to help you better reach, connect with, and convert your ideal donors. They’ll recruit vetted and seasoned professionals that match your vision from their talent network of writers, photographers, designers, and videographers to create the content you want. And their content marketing platform makes it easy to track content assignments and manage internal and external contributors in one place.
GRANT FINDING
Instrumentl
Looking and applying for grants is a daunting process. That’s why we love Instrumentl’s easy-to-use platform to help you discover, filter, and research grant opportunities in one place. From private and corporate grants to federal and state funding opportunities, you can search for grants by field or location. You can track deadlines, plan, share reports, and figure out if funding opportunities are a high ROI for you quickly.
Software, platforms, & tools
There’s no shortage of tech tools out there these days! That can easily lead to “analysis paralysis” and make it hard to feel confident in making the right decision. There are many considerations when adopting a new software into your systems (and we’ve written about that, too). But if you just want a recommendation to get you started in the right direction, we’re sharing what we consider the best solutions in the space below.
INTEGRATED MULTI-TOOL FUNDRAISING
Flipcause Fundraising Suite
We’re only biased because we work hard to make Flipcause the best value for you possible. If the tools you’re using for donations and fundraising right now are not giving you access to your data and reporting, are making it hard to thank your donors and build relationships with them, or are simply taking up too much of your time to use, our bet is that Flipcause is for you. Not only does Flipcause provide you with a highly-customizable fundraising platform, but the subscription comes with unlimited human hours setting up those campaigns for you:
- Donations, Recurring Giving, Tribute Donations
- Peer-to-Peer, Crowdfunding, Teamraisers
- Events & Registrations
- Volunteer Positions & Shifts
- Item & Merchandise Sales
- Text-to-Give
- Sponsorship & Rewards Packages
- Integrated payment processing, contact database, mobile app with card reader
- Unlimited contact records
- Unlimited fundraising pages
- Unlimited human support & setting up your campaigns
- Starts at $125/month
WEBSITE HOSTING & MAINTENANCE
Flipcause Website Package
It’s unfortunate but not uncommon that a nonprofit’s website hasn’t been updated in years, because the website was built by someone who is no longer available to help maintain it. Creating a new website will often take months or years and frequently costs thousands of dollars, not to mention finding the right person to continue updates and maintenance for years to come. Flipcause offers a website service that will refresh your website within days–not months–and provides the infrastructure to make it easy to maintain for years to come – whether you want to do it in-house or use the Flipcause free human services to take care of for you. Either way, organizational turnover is no longer going to pose an issue for upkeep on your website.
- Free content transfer – redesign of your website on easy-to-use modern platform (powered by Weebly)
- Unlimited human support & website changes
- Free with Flipcause Fundraising Suite
CYBERSECURITY
LOCKWELL
In the digital era, cybersecurity is not just a necessity; it’s a cornerstone of success for any organization. For nonprofits, safeguarding sensitive data goes hand in hand with maintaining trust and integrity. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce Lockwell as our recommended cybersecurity partner for nonprofit leaders.
Lockwell offers comprehensive cybersecurity solutions designed specifically for the unique needs of nonprofit organizations. Their proactive approach ensures that your data, and the data of your beneficiaries, are protected against evolving cyber threats. Lockwell is committed to delivering top-tier cybersecurity services at a price point that respects your financial realities, ensuring security doesn’t come at the cost of your mission.
AUCTIONS PLATFORM
32Auctions
If you’re looking to enhance your silent auction with mobile giving, 32auctions offers a mobile & online silent auction platform. With their event-tailored platform, digital auctions are easy to set up. The platform stands out for its user-friendly interface, allowing users to create and manage auctions with ease. You can customize your auction to match your brand, showcase sponsors, and even handle payments through various methods, including credit cards and PayPal. What’s truly unique is how 32auctions supports a wide range of currencies and scales to accommodate different sizes of organizations.
STORE & ITEM FULFILLMENT PLATFORM
Shopify
Shopfiy has come out as an industry leader for e-commerce platforms and websites. Even Facebook uses them as their new “Shops” backbone. You can create a custom online storefront using Shopify or add a Buy button to your existing website or blog, and use the tool to create email marketing campaigns. You can even run Google Smart Shopping and Facebook ads to target shoppers. You can integrate fulfillment services like ShipHero, Ships-A-Lot, or ShipBob to scale and handle your entire shipping process.
MEMBERSHIP PLATFORM
Join It
Looking for a platform where you can zoom in on connecting with and managing memberships, and your supporters can manage their membership plans? Join It could be your solution. Their management platform offers an array of custom options. Setup basic or advanced membership types, create a membership database, send targeted member emails and surveys, sync email lists, and more. Dedicated portals enable members to easily join and stay up to date with your organization, create profiles, and enter personal details including a profile photo.
EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM
Mailchimp
You’ve probably heard of Mailchimp for their easy-to-use email builder that allows you to create beautifully branded, professional emails. Now with Mailchimp you can do so much more, like integrate all your audience data, marketing channels, and insights together. Manage your audience with their marketing CRM that allows you to organize and get insights on your supporters. You can promote your business across email, social, landing pages, shoppable landing pages, postcards, and more — all from their single platform.
mailerlite
We’ve long been fans of Mailchimp, who has for years been an industry leader in user-friendly and accessible email marketing. More recently, Mailchimp has expanded its offerings by positioning itself as a full-fledged marketing engine, with email campaigns as just one component. While this has been a welcome transition for some, those who are interested in just the email portion of it have been dismayed by the departure, and have been praising MailerLite for a more affordable and email-focused system.
CRM PLATFORM
Salesforce
Salesforce’s Nonprofit Success Pack is a full-fledged, out-of-the-box CRM solution for managing relationships, fundraising, and programs by delivering a 360-degree view of your constituents. The package offers marketing automation, email & social marketing, social listening, a campaign builder, customizable landing pages, grants management, program and service delivery, online communities, reporting & dashboards, and more. Salesforce boasts a +31% donor retention rate and +48% constituent conversion, as reported by average improvements of their customers in 2019.
ACCOUNTING
Bench
Too busy running your nonprofit to worry about bookkeeping? Bench is ready to take the tedious financial admin and bookkeeping stress off your plate. Bench gives you a dedicated bookkeeper supported by a team of in-house experts. They’ll keep your bookkeeping and financials up to date so you can get the statements and records you need for loan-winning applications, tax filing, and more handled efficiently.
Accessibility
USERWAY
If you’re looking for ways to ensure your website is ADA and WCAG compliant, UserWay provides an automated accessibility solution. UserWay provides plugins that make websites more accessible and supports all major site creation platforms such as Weebly, WordPress, Wix, and more.
