Running your nonprofit effectively means mastering many moving parts. From organizing board meetings to managing volunteers to hosting events to safely acquiring donations, there are many boxes that must be checked (again and again) for your nonprofit to operate smoothly.

Keeping all of these plates spinning can be nearly impossible for nonprofit organizations of all sizes, especially if they are still relying on manual methods for completing their tasks.

If you run a nonprofit, using software solutions geared toward simplifying every aspect of your nonprofit management can help you save time, stay organized, and keep all of your many balls in the air. This way, you can automate and streamline many of the tasks you need to complete and dedicate your time to what matters most- making an impact.

Here are seven different software solutions that can transform the way you run your nonprofit:

1. Grant Management - Instrumentl

Every nonprofit organization can benefit from additional funding through grants. With funding for grants, nonprofits can launch more projects and campaigns, tackle more issues, and make a more significant difference.

However, winning grants is often easier said than done.

• How do you know which grants to apply for? 
• How do you write grant proposals that get results? 
• How do you keep track of which grants you’ve applied for and which ones you still need to complete? 
• How do you highlight your success with grants to increase the likelihood that you’ll win more grants or solicit more donations in the future?

Instrumentl can help you address all of these issues and more, allowing you to improve your nonprofit’s financial situation and expand its opportunities for meaningful change.

Instrumentl is grant management software that has tools to help your nonprofit identify and track appropriate grants, measure grant impact, and create grant reports. 

With Instrumentl’s matching program, you can see which grant opportunities will be the best fit for your nonprofit, which will be especially useful if you have specific projects which need funding. This tool will also help you sort through critical information for appropriate grant opportunities like eligibility criteria, deadlines, and information about past grantees. This way, you will have everything you need in one convenient location.

When you use Instrumentl, you’ll also gain access to resources to help you sort your grant deadlines, ensuring you don’t miss out on grant opportunities due to disorganized clusters of spreadsheets or other complications.

After you win grants, you can use Instrumentl to create custom reports that you can share with existing and potential donors, foundations, and your nonprofit’s board of directors.

Winning grants will significantly enhance your nonprofit’s outreach and impact. See if Instrumentl is a good fit for your nonprofit when you visit their website.

2. Annual and Impact Reports - Yearly

Your nonprofit’s annual report is the best way to showcase the accomplishments your nonprofit has made throughout the year. When you highlight your volunteer impact, grant opportunities, community impact, and critical financial data, you increase the likelihood of winning grants in the future, securing funding for donors, encouraging volunteers to help your nonprofit, and otherwise supporting your beneficiaries.

Creating a report that will make an impact takes time, energy, and money. If you don’t have accurate ways to track your volunteer hours or the tangible impact of your donations and grants, it will be hard for you to put together a strong report. 

Even if you have the data you need, it can be challenging to present this information in an engaging and effective way.

Yearly helps address this pain point through their online storytelling, donor engagement, and report creation tools. Yearly understands that a report is more than just numbers- it is a chance to showcase your nonprofit’s story, engage with key stakeholders, and set your nonprofit up for another successful year in the future.

You can highlight  your nonprofit’s impact and story with Yearly’s customizable annual reports with features like integrated videos and audio, eye-catching quotes and charts, interactive photo galleries, donation tools to actively solicit donations, and more. 

With this software solution, your nonprofit can make real-time updates to your annual report and send real-time thank yous to donors.

Learn more about how Yearly’s nonprofit software can help you send the perfect annual report when you visit their website. 

3. Board Management and Governance - Boardable

We’ve all experienced terrible meetings: meetings that could have been emails, meetings where people seem to talk about everything but the agenda, meetings where too much time was wasted trying to help everyone find the necessary documents and materials they need for the meeting.

While it might seem like a huge deal for a meeting to get off track, all of the time and energy wasted by poorly managed board meetings adds up.

You can prevent this from happening and help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your nonprofit’s board meetings by using Boardable.

Boardable is a tool that helps nonprofit board members collaborate, communicate, and connect with one another without any hassle.

With Boardable, every step of the meeting life cycle is covered. They have features to help make sure all meeting attendees are prepared before, during, and after meetings.

Their interactive agenda builder helps keep meetings organized and reminds members what topics they need to discuss when the meeting begins. Board packets consolidate all of the information and materials that attendees need so that everyone has the resources they need to contribute to the meeting. Boardable’s Smart Meetings and Discussions ensure meetings run smoothly when attendees are on-the-go.

During meetings, board members can take advantage of the intuitive Minutes Maker which helps attendees keep track of what was discussed in the meeting and allows board members to delegate and manage tasks.

When the meeting is finished, there are features for polling attendees, gathering e-signatures, managing tasks, and sending out reports.

With Boardable, you can step up the efficiency of your board meetings and make sure they are as effective as possible, allowing you to maximize your time and effectiveness.

See how you can optimize your nonprofit’s board meetings using Boardable when you visit their website.

4. Customizable Digital Giving - Custom Donations

Many nonprofit organizations struggle to find the best way to solicit donations on their websites. They want to have a clear call-to-action encouraging people to donate and collect key information about donors without bogging prospective donors down with too much information.

If prospective donors have to jump through several hoops to donate to your organization, they may give up and make charitable donations elsewhere. However, creating the perfect donation form that collects the information you need without distracting donors is a difficult line to balance.

Custom Donations helps address this issue by creating fully-customizable donation forms that catch the eye and make the donation process seamless.

With Custom Donations, you can use high-quality templates that include features like automatic donor thank yous, pictures, and multiple payment options. You can integrate these donor forms on your website, making it easy for people who are interested in your organization to donate. 

Custom Donations provides fraud protection, donation options for multiple giving platforms and currencies, and even options for donors to cover their donation fees, making it easy for donors to give generously without hesitation.

See how Custom Donations can revolutionize your donation process when you visit their website.

5. Digital Auctions - Z Give

Auctions are a great way to fundraise for nonprofit. When you give away items or experiences, especially ones that were donated to your organization as auction prizes, you can significantly improve your funding while also giving people an incentive to give.

However, holding auctions comes with challenges. Sometimes, while people mean well, they agree to donate funds, but then pull their donations at the last minute. Other times, folks feel uncomfortable participating in online auctions because they are wary of credit card fraud and cyber security.

Z Give is a smart auction platform that simplifies the auction process and helps online auctions run smoothly.

With Z Give, both nonprofits and auction participants can enjoy a risk-free, mutually beneficial auction experience. 

In addition to making it easy for people to bid on items, Z Give also helps nonprofits by collecting important donor analytics like demographics, donor interests, and donor giving capacity. This helps nonprofits know which donors to target for additional donations in the future.

Learn more about Z Give and how this tool can help you host an online auction when you visit their website.

6. Give Now, Pay Later Giving - Givzey

As the cost-of-living continues to rise, many people are finding that there is less wiggle room in their budgets to make charitable donations.

You may have noticed donations slowing down recently, or you may have noticed that some of your donors have canceled recurring donations.

While you can’t fault these donors for reconsidering how much they are able to give during a time of relative economic uncertainty, the ramifications of depleted donations will negatively affect your nonprofit’s impact and reach, especially heading into a new year. 

Givzey helps combat this issue with their Give Now, Pay Later nonprofit software platform. 

Through Givzey, donors can give money to the nonprofit organizations that are important to them now, and pay for those donations in interest-free installments later.

This helps nonprofit organizations receive the funding they need to keep their doors open and serve their communities, while allowing donors to give charitably without breaking the bank.

With their flexible giving options and 100% transparency, Givzey provides a risk-free solution for nonprofit organizations who are seeing a decline in their monthly donations.

Learn more about Givzey and how they can help your nonprofit receive immediate funding when you visit their website.

7. Volunteer Management + Engagement - Civic Champs

Nonprofits can’t survive without volunteers. However, for organizations of all sizes with limited resources, it is often challenging to manage dozens or even hundreds of volunteers in a way that will maximize the impact of their volunteer programs.

Scheduling volunteers, especially when they need to make last minute changes, is a hassle. Communicating with volunteers and making sure everyone is on the same page can prove even more difficult.

Many nonprofit organizations spend countless hours trying to reach out to volunteers, schedule them for events, track volunteer hours, and collect and store volunteer information including waivers and emergency contact information. 

While traditional pen and paper methods may work for nonprofits with fewer than three volunteers, nonprofits of all sizes benefit from volunteer management software.

Civic Champs volunteer management software is the best tool for nonprofit organizations because it includes intuitive, mobile-friendly features that optimize the volunteer management process for both volunteer coordinators and volunteers. 

Civic Champs includes automated hour tracking and simplified check-in and check-out processes for volunteers. Admins can take advantage of beautiful web-based calendars, mobile scheduling tools and kiosk mode for in-person volunteer events. 

Nonprofits can keep track of training forms, questionnaires, waivers, and other important information with detailed volunteer profiles. Civic Champs is one of the only volunteer management softwares on the market that solicits and collects feedback from volunteers on their experience following an event, enabling coordinators to improve their programs and events over time. Plus, Civic Champs is newly integrated with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT enabling rich volunteer data to automatically flow and sync on customizable NXT tiles.

When nonprofits use Civic Champs volunteer management software, they gain access to cutting edge scheduling, hour tracking, and engagement tools helping coordinators boost volunteer satisfaction and retention. 

Learn more about Civic Champs and how our software can help your nonprofit make the most of your volunteer force when you visit our website.

Bonus! - LifeLegacy

LifeLegacy makes legacy giving easy and accessible for everyone. Through their online will planner and custom marketing solutions, nonprofits can supercharge their planned giving programs.

Bonus! - Grapevine

Grapevine is the only platform dedicated to Giving Circles - where people come together, pool their donations and amplify their impact.

Bonus! - Red Arc

Red Arc builds beautiful apps that extend NXT to help you work easier and smarter. Organisations like The Salvation Army, Amnesty International and Habitat for Humanity use Red Arc tools to help them do more good.

As CEO of Civic Champs, I lead our team of passionate change leaders to create technology solutions to create a seamless and rewarding volunteering experience for both volunteers and service organizations.