5 Supah-Cool Free Online Tools For Nonprofits

This is a guest post by Joe Yeoman, who is obsessively addicted to new web technologies and discussing them. He is the Media Coordinator at BigMarker.com, and he rides his bike to work almost every day.

Non-profits are the kids at the lunch table that pay for every item with exact change. They know their budgets and hopefully never have to stray from them.  I love fiscal responsibility, and the Internet has opened up free avenues to ensure that non-profits never exceed their budget without taking away from their mission.

Here are five free services that aren’t built specifically for non-profits, but they may have well been:

1. BigMarker.com

From the BigMarker website:

BigMarker is a free web conferencing community. Through our platform, you can reconnect with your family in Rio; manage your employees in Madagascar; organize your non-profit’s resources to Ottawa; teach a virtual class from Tulsa to students all over Thailand; foster a support group for cancer survivors from France to the Falkland Islands. With unlimited access to live events, there are endless opportunities for you, your community, organization, business, classroom, and social network to grow.

BigMarker uses a browser-based system so that almost any computer can use the platform. The conferencing side of the site allows you to have in-house meetings. Managers can collaborate from anywhere—making it double budget friendly, cutting down on plane flights and Amtrak tickets. You can create webinars to educate the public on your cause. You could also chat with potential donors, creating a real connection.

Unlike other web conferencing services, they offer a community to connect with. For non-profits, you can create a club that allows your supporters to be part of the group. You can share documents, host club-only events, create a virtual bulletin board and even manage online donations. It’s like smushing the clubhouse with the bake-sale into one amazing web s’more.

2. WorkFlowy.com

Jason Fitzpatrick from Lifehacker mused that “WorkFlowy is a one-list-to-rule-them-all organization tool.”

WorkFlowy is literally the best list you have ever made in your entire life. No more sticky notes that are ready to collapse your desk. Instead, you can create thousands, if not millions, of items and manage them quickly. Personally, my daily planner is about to explode with tiny scribblings that I can neither read nor remember what they were for.

My favorite part of WorkFlowy is the real-time collaboration, as outlined by the website:

You can take anything in your WorkFlowy account and share it as its own separate document or collaborate with others on it. Each shared sublist gets its own URL for you to distribute. Anyone can view or edit (as you choose) without needing to create a WorkFlowy account.

What’s cool about WorkFlowy sharing? First, you can turn any portion of your notes or to-dos into its own document with its own URL. The conversion from “private notes” to “web page” takes only a couple clicks. Even better, any updates you make within your own WorkFlowy account to the shared sublist will be reflected in near-real-time to viewers of the shared document. It’s real-time publishing, with all the power of WorkFlowy.

They also have a mobile application as well. For non-profits, WorkFlowy has to be the mother of all web tools. You can keep track of donors, notes, meetings, events, fundraising ideas, the location new bakery you want order bagels, and anything else a bulky, mostly terrible email trail can accomplish.

3. TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is desktop, iPhone, Android, and Google Chrome application that lets you manage your social media outlets. It’s your social media dashboard on steroids covered in human growth hormones. You can manage Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Buzz, Myspace (do people actually use Myspace?) and most importantly, Twitter posts in one screen.

If you’re posting updates through Twitter.com or the Twitter app, then you aren’t tweeting.

For non-profits, it’s a perfect way to track who mentions your organization or cause in easy to track columns. The only warning is that the application can become quite addictive, especially when you want to know what everyone is saying about everything.

The iPhone app, which I use regularly on the subway, is a malleable resource at any event. You can post pictures, follow the event’s #hashtag, or Tweet out your booth’s location. Everything about this app allows you to stay connected with your supporters.

4. Causecast.org

According to the About page:

Causecast offers nonprofits free distributable fundraising tools, donation processing, an extensive resource library and access to the campaigns and CSR programs of its corporate clients. The result is higher supporter activation, enhanced fundraising capabilities and increased awareness of their message.

They supply non-profits with promotion, fundraising tools, and an extensive resource library. That pretty much takes care of the gamut of a non-profit’s purpose, well besides helping people. Out of the 1,589 Non-profits they serve, I am the most smitten by the 9 Queens, who are dedicated to empowerment through chess.

I find the tracking of donations to be the most useful feature, because it allows organizers to worry about accomplishing the mission, compared to counting the nickels and dimes after a bake-sale.

5. Present.ly

From a New York Times review:

Security and privacy – those are the top selling points for Presently. There are other Twitter-for-work products, but I like Presently because it has the feel of a product designed by people who’ve suffered through big-company IT battles.

Presently is a live collaboration stream or “micro-blogging” platform (similar to Yammer, which my last company used). According to the website,

Unlike Twitter, Presently provides a secure and private way to share updates among members of a company, without them being visible to the outside world.

Basically, you can use Presently to collaborate and chat with other coworkers in real-time, while creating a constant feed (which can be read at a later time). For long-distance management, the Dallas office can keep in contact with the Des Moines branch. They also have a mobile app so for fundraising galas you can keep up with what is happening at a separate event across town.

For inner office engagements, I love it as a tool to just feel connected. I send messages when donuts are hanging out in the lobby of our building. For organizations, it is tool to create camaraderie amongst your employees or volunteers.

What cool free online collaboration tools are you using?