You like eating and breathing. So, if you care about the world and people living in it, you want to help those who need your support. As we speak, there are over 1.4 billion people living under the poverty line and they need your help. You can make a difference in their lives by implementing nonprofit management software like free crm tools for nonprofits.
What kinds of CRM tools can let nonprofits track their contacts, manage fundraising, and perform other important tasks? Nonprofits looking for CRM software need to look no further than these free CRM tools for nonprofits.
Nutshell
Nutshell is all about building better relationships with people.
Priding itself as the most flexible CRM on the market, Nutshell’s contact management and pipeline automation tools are built for sales organizations but can easily be adapted for the needs of non-profits.
Using Nutshell, you can log communications from your computer, or from your phone if you’re at an event. You can even scan a donor’s business card, and they’ll be added into the CRM as a new contact instantly. That way, you’ll never lose track of a potential donor again.
Like any modern CRM, Nutshell allows you to store all your contact details, call notes, and email conversations in one place—from your first interactions with a potential donor to the confirmation of their first payment—so that everyone in your organization can quickly access them whenever they need to.
What really sets Nutshell apart are its automations, which take the grunt-work out of nurturing donors. Notably, the full-featured Nutshell Pro tier allows your team to build and deploy email sequences that roll out to a potential donor until they respond, and the sales automation suite ensures that your team always gives their leads (potential donors, in this case) the right attention at the right time.
Salesforce
Salesforce has built a Nonprofit Cloud specifically to cater to non-profits. It provides non-profits a complete, 360-degree view of every part of their organization’s work.
Using the Nonprofit Cloud, organizations can create personalized engagement plans to track donor movements and improve their volunteering and fundraising efforts. On top of that, non-profits can generate new groups of potential donors (for example, a group from a recent fundraiser) and target them with a custom market campaign.
And this gives non-profits a streamlined, organized way to nurture their new relationships. The results:
The Nonprofit Cloud also has tools dedicated to advancing donors. The platform allows organizations to manage memorial gifts and in-kind gifts to nurture donor relationships in a more meaningful way, without it being robotic.
It’s multilingual, too. Non-profits can use the CRM to communicate with the constituents in English, Spanish, German, and Japanese.
Price: For qualified customers, the first 10 users are free. Although your non-profit has to meet Salesforce’s eligibility guidelines, which you can check out here.
Kindful
Kindful is a CRM built specifically for non-profits in mind.
Once a donor is entered into the system, a non-profit will be able to track their online and offline donation history, event participation, past acknowledgements, and pledges within a single profile.
As Kindful is built to help with fundraising, donor tracking, and analyzing interactions, it makes sense that it’s geared towards non-profits who raise funds online. The software gives non-profits the tools to build and customize their donation pages to accept and store donations internally.
And what about all the data? Non-profits can generate reports to track and analyze the success of their events, fundraising efforts, and their total donor pool, which can then be automatically sent to developers, CEOs, and board members.
Price: Starts at $100 / month for 1,000 contacts
Fundly CRM
The team who created Fundly CRM have a background in non-profits, so every feature has been built with a purpose.
What’s unique about Fundly is the CRM has a real focus on management. To get the most out of a non-profit’s donor pool, Fundly gives organizations access to donor information, including giving history, campaign participation, event registration, and matching gifts. They can also track event registrations, customize event tickets, and assign sponsors.
Non-profits can also keep a closer eye on their data using Fundly. Because each donor has their own personal profile, staying up to date with their online (and offline efforts), their membership, and their funding takes nothing more than a couple of clicks.
Fundly also has a separate section in its dashboard so non-profits can monitor all of their grant applications. Each time a grant application is submitted, staff can then track the submission until it’s approved. And once it’s approved, the team can then keep an eye on what it’s being used for.
Price:Starts at $75 / month for their “easy launch” package that includes 1,000 contacts
Salsa
Salsa is a CRM that’s not only geared towards non-profits, but it’s also integrated with some pretty handy marketing gear.
If your non-profit is looking for a CRM that lends itself to powerful email marketing, Salsa could be your answer. The CRM allows non-profits to design and style custom email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor, and then automate email sequences like triggered welcome series or follow up campaigns.
The other great feature of Salsa’s CRM is its powerful segmentation tools. Inside the CRM dashboard, non-profits can:
- Use pre-built segmentation to organize new subscribers, major donors, and petition signees
- Create custom segments based on behavior like supporter interaction, gift size, or event attendance
- Build donor segments to help create customized email marketing campaigns based on a donors frequency and monetary contribution capabilities
Last but not least, Salsa helps non-profits stay social.
From the dashboard, non-profit teams are able to link up and share content to channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Salsa can also find your current donors and supporters on social media through their email address, which can help your non-profit build up its word-of-mouth marketing by encouraging interactions.
Price: Contact required for price quote
CiviCRM
Did someone say…a free non-profit CRM?
That’s right. CiviCRM is an open-source CRM, so it’s free. It has powerful contact management features so non-profits can automatically store the data of every donor in one place, and customize/update their profile whenever they need to.
What also makes CiviCRM a worthwhile mention is their focus on advocacy campaigns. Non-profits can build advocacy campaigns in the CRM by tying together and tracking the progress of a campaign’s events, mailings, activities, and contributions.
The software’s reporting features aren’t bad either. Non-profits can choose between 40 pre-set reports, or build custom reports based on whatever facts and figures they need to extract from the database.
Price: Since it’s open-source, it’s free to download.
Related: Can your sales team be fully effective with a free online CRM?
Bitrix24
Following on with the freebie trend, Bitrix24 offers a free CRM for non-profits, up to 12 users.
The software can be used as a Cloud-based system or on-premise, and claims to have a setup time of 30 seconds. Once installed, non-profits can use the software to power their:
- Contact management
- Lead management
- Product catalog
- Quotes and invoices
- Email marketing
- Workflow automation
The software has an activity stream to help organize volunteers. It integrates with social networks, along with allowing users to discuss projects in group chats and instant messenger.
When volunteers are trying to organize an event, they can use Bitrix24 to share files with each other, and every piece of communication is kept in a communication stream, so everyone can stay in the loop.
Price: Bitrix24 offers a free version with limited online storage for 12 users. Paid accounts start at $46.92 per month.
Neon CRM
NeonCRM is a cloud-based nonprofit software suite built to support the good work of nonprofit organizations. Regardless of size or industry, NeonCRM helps over 5,000 nonprofit clients and 35,000 organizations engage with donors, manage memberships, track volunteers, and more. Their database and website solutions support nonprofits in all stages of development, and their flexible packages and pricing were developed with nonprofits in mind.
The NeonOne platform extends Neon’s nonprofit solutions beyond a CRM. The platform includes options for peer-to-peer fundraising, event organization, case and program management, and payment processing. In addition to offering a Quickbooks integration, their software also supports your online store.
Top features:
| Fundraising & Donor Management | Membership & Association Management |
| Events | Marketing & Communications |
| Web Integration | Social Fundraising |
| E-commerce | Quickbooks |
| Reports & Querying | Volunteer Management |
| API & Customization | Mobile Apps |
Pricing:
- $49/month for Essentials Light package
- $99/month for Essentials package
- $149/month for Impact package
- $299/month for Empower package
- Look here for more Neon CRM pricing info
Bloomerang
Bloomerang’s simple donor database solution is built around best practices to help nonprofits decrease donor attrition and increase revenue. Bloomerang pools the knowledge of leaders in the nonprofit world, including Adrian Sargeant for fundraising, Tom Ahern for communications, Kivi Leroux Miller for digital marketing, and Jay Love for nonprofit technology. The platform focuses on the core functionality your organization needs to achieve results, without the distraction of additional bells and whistles. With Bloomerang, you’ll know how your donors feel about you, find more major gift prospects, and be able to report on the metrics that matter.
Top features:
| Constituent Timeline (visual representation of all interaction with each individual and highlights of the most important interactions) | Interactive Dashboard (review donor retention rate and opportunities for improvement, incoming donations by time period, check campaign success, create to-do lists, and access recent reports) |
| Giving Summary & Engagement Level | Smart reports |
| Email Design & Distribution (email templates and rich performance analytics) | Letters & Mailings (letters, gift acknowledgements, and more available for design and print) |
| Nightly Deceased Suppression | Nightly updates from the National Change of Address (NCOA) database |
| Website integration (track individual’s website browsing activity, create and customize online giving forms and email sign-ups) | Social Media Monitoring |
| Donor Engagement Surveys | Social Listening |
Pricing:
- $99/month for 0 – 1,000 records
- $199/month for 1,001 – 5,000 records
- $299/month for 5,001 – 15,000 records
- $399/month for 15,001 – 25,000 records
- $499/month for 25,001 – 40,000 records
- Click here for complete Bloomerang pricing
Donor Perfect
Donor Perfect aligns staff around organizational goals by combining data in one place. One of its unique features is that it is accessible to an unlimited amount of users, based anywhere. A certain amount of customization is available for even the basic package, such as branded donation forms that have been shown to establish trust and increase donor conversions. The platform focuses on reporting, donor engagement, and event management.
Top features:
| Personalized marketing communications, including advanced filtering, targeting, and segmentation | Top-rated mobile app |
| Automated workflows and scheduled reporting | Check scanner integration |
| Automatic monthly giving | Ticketing integration |
| Crowdfunding campaigns and peer-to-peer fundraising | Text messaging integration |
| Grants Management | Donor research and address changes integration |
| Dashboard reporting, including campaign and fundraising analytics | Matching corporate gifts integration |
| Auction management | Advocacy integration |
Pricing:
Starts at $89/month for 1,000 contacts, and up to $799/month for 75,000 contacts and full feature access. Click here for complete Donor Perfect pricing information.
Wild Apricot
Wild Apricot is a complete membership management system that is designed to fit membership organization’s needs. Easily manage contacts, process payments, send out emails, register event attendees, and create a website. With a self-serve design and a user-friendly interface, you gain the freedom to customize every aspect of your membership management system. Help and best practices are available from their support team and community of experts.
Top features:
| Cloud-based member database | Alerts and Automated email reminders |
| Mobile event check-in | Mobile event payments |
| Automatic invoicing | Unlimited email marketing to members |
| Mobile app for members | Mobile app for admins with Access Controls/Permissions |
| Drag-and-drop workflow automation that syncs with over 950 online apps | Integrates with external calendars |
| Online store | Single sign-on for Member-only content |
Pricing:
- Prices range from $60/month for 250 members to $720/month for 50k contacts.
- Save 10-15% by paying annually/bi-annually
- More WildApricot pricing information here
Virtuous
Virtuous is a responsive fundraising platform (donor + marketing CRM) that helps organizations build better relationships with donors. Virtuous coined the term “responsive” to explain how their platform puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous offers integrated marketing automation and donor portals that provide donors with the kind of personalized, high-touch follow-up that creates loyalty and inspires bigger gifts. With Virtuous, your nonprofit can treat all its donors like major donors.
Top features:
| Donor Management Designed for Relationships | All-In-One Nonprofit Marketing Automation Software |
| Integrated Email Marketing | Integrates With Other Tools |
| Online Giving | Data Rich Contact Views |
| Track Giver Engagement Over Time | Donor Scoring & Social/Relational Data |
| Easy-To-Use Searching & Segmentation | Personas & Tagging |
| Flexible Donation Management | Project Impact & Tracking |
| Back Office Tools Built for Charities | Pre-build Workflow Templates |
| Robust Gift Tracking | Nonprofit Mobile Apps |
Pricing:
- Standard Plan from $199/month
- Pro Plan from $449/month
- Enterprise Plan from $849/month
- See here for more Virtuous pricing information
Conclusion
It’s no secret that the work of non-profit organizations is extremely important. But for many people, it can also be somewhat unclear how they are supposed to get started working with a non-profit organization. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the options out there. Who can you trust? What if the wrong choice of tools could end up hurting your cause? Thankfully, there are quite a few free CRM tools for nonprofits available today.