6 Tech Tools That Will Turn Your Organization Into A Lean MACHINE

The industry growth in nonprofit technology is incredible, but also comes with an overwhelming number of new products. In an effort to save you some research, we’ve developed a list of the best technology for startups and nonprofits in the areas of marketing, fundraising and design. Enjoy!

Mailchimp is a leading email marketing service with everything you need to get started. You can easily design, send, and track HTML email campaigns with their collection of simple tools at a price that works for your organization.

It’s for you if:

• Your marketing budget is slim.
• You’re a new organization looking to spread the word.
• You’re looking for email marketing software to integrate with your CRM.
• You don’t have a designer on staff and need a smokin’ email template.
• There’s a big announcement or event that you need to send to a list of people ASAP.
• You’re new to email marketing, and need some guidance in getting started.

Another great piece of technology for startups is Google Apps. With Google Apps, you can create a more collaborative environment among your team and with volunteers. Make sure your team can access their work from anywhere, and never worry about your server crashing. Google Apps is for every kind of organization: big, small, centralized, national or global.

A few key features include:

• A custom email address ([email protected])
• Google Drive (cloud storage and real-time computing)
• A shared calendar system

Join the Google for Nonprofits Program to explore a slew of grants.

Buffer is a social media tool that lets you load up posts to social channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and share them later throughout the day. Social media is an important part of marketing, but it can be tough to prioritize when juggling so many other “must-do” responsibilities. Buffer can help.

With Buffer, you can:

• pre-load social media updates to the most popular channels
• create custom schedules for your posts
• add permissions for team members to post on the organization’s behalf
• view analytics that measure the likes and shares your posts have received

Razoo is a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits and charities that allows individuals, organizations, corporations, and foundations to set up campaigns.  You can easily and securely integrate giving across your website, Facebook page, the Razoo iPhone app, and the Razoo site itself.

Razoo is great if:

• You want to try crowdfunding for your next campaign
• Your development budget is slim
• You want to run a one-time, specific campaign
• You need a cheap, stand-alone donation processing service
• Your organization is any size – big, small or in-between

IFTTT is a web service that lets you create useful connections between the services you use every day. Using simple “If This, Then That” logic, IFTTT lets you automate actions to save you time and energy. We could all benefit from a little bit of that.

Here are some ways that IFTTT can help:

• Dropbox + Email = send me an email every time a file is uploaded to Dropbox (link)
• Twitter + Email = every time someone mentions us on Twitter, send an email to our social media team (link)
• Facebook + Twitter = every time you post a status update to Facebook, also post it to Twitter (link)
• Twitter + SMS = text me whenever a donor tweets about us (link)