What is project management software for nonprofits? Nonprofit project management software is software specifically designed for dealing with projects or programs that are used in nonprofit organizations or charities. Project management software helps to plan, execute, track and report projects within any organization.

A nonprofit organization focuses on managing projects that further promote the cause of the charity or non-profit organization. These tools can be used to monitor donor relations and improve sales to keep the cause going. They should allow monitoring tasks and manage the progress of a project from start to end, as well as help track cash flow and budgets to avoid poor financial practices.

Project managers were using software to support six different types of project-management functions. This article walks you through those functions one by one and the tools that specialize in each function.

1. Planning Projects:

For many professional project managers, no software can rightly call itself a project-management tool if it doesn’t allow you to map out a project’s tasks and visually display how they interconnect. This type of project plan provides a powerful way to define the project schedule, understand the critical path for a project, and assess and allocate staff resources. It generally includes::

• A detailed breakdown of tasks to be completed.
• Task assignments, identifying who is responsible for which aspects of the project.
• A time estimate for each task.
• Links between dependent tasks — for instance, an indication that one task must be

For those who prefer to manage projects this way, there are a number of tools that can help. Microsoft Project (available for qualifying organizations through TechSoup) is a large, powerful, and widely used package that offers a ton of planning functionality. Some find it over-complicated; at a minimum, it will require a substantial learning curve. Many also sing the praises of OmniPlan, a similar, albeit smaller, project-planning package for Macs. Note that both of these tools are desktop applications that assume that there’s a central project manager who’s in charge of creating and updating the plan.

Formal, mapped-out project plans are not for everyone, however. Some project managers we spoke with found these detailed plans time-consuming and inflexible, and often so complicated that they discourage updates. These respondents also felt that the Gantt chart visuals typically used by these tools were too complex to walk through with their team members, let alone those outside the core team.

These project managers typically created less formal project schedules or process flows with Excel (available for qualifying organizations through TechSoup), or using diagramming tools like Microsoft Visio (available for qualifying organizations through TechSoup), OmniGraffe, or Gliffy. If you use Excel, you can find a number of free add-on templates for making Gantt charts or other project schedules at office.microsoft.com.

2. Managing Tasks:

Task management — the ability to define a task, assign it to someone, create a deadline, and know when it’s complete — is generally the most desired and ubiquitous feature in project-management software.

Microsoft Project provides sophisticated, complex functionality for a project manager to define, assign, and set deadlines, as well as to estimate hours for tasks, all while keeping a careful watch on the overall impact those decisions will have on the project schedule and on individual team members’ workloads. If you use a server-based version of Project, team members can then see their task list, note the time they spend on each task, and mark tasks as complete.

There is also an entire class of web-based collaboration and project-management software that offers solid task-management support. Basecamp is the best known tool in this area, with solid support for task creation, due dates, and assignments. Central Desktop provides a task-management feature set in the same vein as Basecamp, but with somewhat more sophisticated deadline and time-allocation functionality. Other web-based collaboration and project-management software offering task-management support include GoPlan, Project Desk, Zoho, and DotProject. Keep in mind that with most of these tools you’ll face a trade-off:the tools that are easiest to use for less tech-savvy team members, like your decision makers, are likely to also offer less robust functionality.

Don’t overlook standalone tools, either. Manymoon, Remember The Milk, and checkvist.com, for instance, provide easy-to-use features for creating, organizing, and sharing task lists.

3. Sharing and Collaborating on Documents:

Every project team has documents, and you can substantially increase productivity by providing a central location to store and work together on them. This is especially true for geographically remote teams, for whom collaborating and sharing documents can easily turn into a nightmare of email attachments and mixed up revisions. (Keep in mind, however, that it can be difficult to get all stakeholders in a project to use a tool other than email).

Not surprisingly, collaboration functionalities make up the cornerstone of a number of the web-based collaboration and project-management tools. Basecamp and Central Desktop both offer strong, easy-to-use features for uploading and storing documents, collaborating on documents in real time, and creating wiki-like libraries of documentation. In fact, document-sharing and collaboration features are nearly ubiquitous among the web-based project-management tools: they are offered by DreamTeam, Central Desktop, GoPlan, ProjectDesk, and DotProject. Microsoft SharePoint and LiveOffice also offer some of these features.

There are also a number of tools meant to facilitate document collaboration specifically. Google Docs and Zoho both offer real-time and asynchronous editing, as well as storing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. If your needs are not very complex, creating a set of shared Google documents (project specs, task-lists, spreadsheets) can be an easy document-sharing method that both technical and non-technical audiences can adapt to easily.

4. Sharing Calendars and Contact Lists:

Well-managed calendars and contact lists can be important to project productivity. If you need to schedule a meeting with several different team members, having access to each of their calendars can save a huge amount of time. If your team is already using Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange, you probably have everything you need in terms of shared calendaring and contact-list functionality. And truthfully, a shared spreadsheet of contact information is likely to work fine for most projects. For calendaring, all of the web-based project-management tools listed above offer ways to create a shared calendar — though it may be hard to get your team members to keep it up-to-date enough to be useful for scheduling meetings unless it’s the only calendar they’re maintaining. Some of the online project management tools like Basecamp offer tools to integrate calendaring into Google Calendar or Outlook — making it more likely to be used.

If sharing calendars is a key concern, you could certainly also use Google Calendar, which provides strong and very user-friendly functionality for free to keep your own calendar and project calendars, share them with others, and schedule meetings. Google Calendar is part of Google Apps, which allows organizations to integrate team calendaring with team email and document sharing — and is free for 501(c)(3) nonprofits with up to 3,000 users.

5. Managing Issues or Bugs:

While a task is typically just a phrase with an owner, a status, and a deadline, many projects require a tool that will also track comments and conversations for line items, rate priorities or difficulties, email updates or other subscriptions to an issue, or attach additional documentation (such as a screenshot of a problem). For technical projects, this functionality is often used to track bugs — technical problems that require resolution — and store lengthy descriptions, comments, and resolutions for each. For other projects, this feature can also be useful as an issue manager — to store open questions or issues that require resolution, as well as what was done about them.

The project managers we spoke to were almost all using issue-tracking applications that were separate from the applications they used for other project-management functionalities. A number simply used Excel; other tools mentioned were Jira, FogBugz, DoneDone, Unfuddle, and Kayako. These tools are typically available for a small fee, from $10-$25/year.
There are also some useful free and open-source bug-tracking software systems, including Mantis, Bugzilla, and Trac. You’ll need to install these systems on your own web server, and maintain those servers yourself — making it a better solution for more technical organizations.

When it came to issue-tracking features, most project managers reported a trade-off between functionality that was sophisticated enough to support the internal project team, but easy enough to use for people outside the team to log issues. Tools like DoneDone offer a simplified set of features, yet in a very modern, easy-to-use interface which make them more likely to be used by non-technical people involved in testing software.

6. Tracking Time:

If you are tracking consultant time, or creating a process that can be replicated in the future, you’ll need to understand how much time team members are devoting to each task. This is simple in concept, but hard to collect in a way that can be easily understood in the context of your tasks and plan. A number of project-management tools allow you to collect time in a way that more or less integrates with your task. Microsoft Project has powerful tools that allow you to request and receive timesheets via email that then flow directly into your plan. DreamTeam, Central Desktop, and Basecamp also provide some time-tracking functionality.

There are also a number of tools that have been specifically designed to just track time. Tools like Toggl, Harvest, OpenAir, ClickTime, SlimTimer, and Markosoft allow one or a number of people to collect the number of hours worked — but you’ll need to define a process to make sure the tasks that the time is tracked against will make sense for everyone across a project.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

CLICKUP

ClickUp is a project management software with features that help your team plan, organize, and collaborate. ClickUp’s platform includes recurring checklists and an agile board view that supports process, time, and task management efforts.

With ClickUp, your nonprofit can keep track of donations and corporate sponsorships and use that data to build custom reports for donors. You can also use their customizable forms feature to create volunteer applications or to explain different volunteer opportunities.

Your team can also create tasks, assign volunteers to them, and use calendar view to set a schedule. Additionally, ClickUp’s time tracking feature helps catalog what volunteers have worked on and how long it took them to complete the job. Lastly, ClickUp offers a discount for nonprofits who use their tool.

G-SUITE

Simple but powerful, G Suite is a great intro to project management. Use Gmail, Google’s email service, to create a custom email addresses for internal and external communication. Schedule meetings, events, and due dates using Google Calendar. Set reminders for yourself and others to keep track of what needs to get done. Shared calendar access lets you keep track of other team members’ schedules. Google Hangouts is a simple and easy video conferencing tool – to join a call, just share a link.
Google Drive is the place to create, store, and share documents and presentations. Upload files from your computer to give access to others. Create editable slides, spreadsheets, and documents that allow for real time collaboration. Document permissions can be set at the individual level, and you can download static copies of your work to share with external stakeholders. The G Suite products work together seamlessly, and this free solution may be enough to meet your organization’s’ needs.

EVERNOTE

Evernote Business is a project management tool and collaboration platform that improves teams’ visibility on projects, workflows, and deadlines.

With Evernote, your team can create, share, and store important documents all in one place. Teammates can access and make edits to documents from any device, even if they’re offline—a helpful feature for keeping volunteers up to date, no matter where they are.

From chore charts and project trackers to business plans, Evernote comes with a library of templates that give your team a head start. Evernote’s “spaces” feature acts as a virtual conference room—it even includes a digital bulletin board. You can create spaces for different projects so that volunteers know where to look for updates and assignments.

BRIGHTPOD

Brightpod is a great cloud-based project management software for nonprofit remote teams, as well as for in-house teams to manage projects, tasks, and plan activities seamlessly. It has many features and tools to make nonprofit project management simple, including tracking projects, time, and working with many other teams by using its collaboration features.

• Turn repeating projects into templates, including onboarding or deploying projects – and save a ton of time
• Great time tracking features for productivity management
• Comes with calendars for better project planning
• Daily digest of one’s activities
• Great views for workload management, activity logs, and more.

SLACK

Slack is a communication tool that organizes your conversations into designated channels. Set up channels however they work best for you – for a team, project, or anything else you want. At Whole Whale, we use our Travel Channel to share awesome pics from Whaler trips (Exhibit A, the Galapagos sea turtle above). Slack also lets you create private channels for sharing sensitive information. Use the direct messaging functionality for one-on-one or small group communication. Easily drag and drop to upload files and create editable posts to share ideas within a channel. Slack has other cool functionalities like voice and video calls, reminders, and your very own personal assistant – Slackbot. Slack has integrations with tons of other apps like Google Drive, Asana, Twitter, and Dropbox.

SAMEPAGE

Samepage is an all-in-one collaboration platform that provides teams with tools that help them manage ongoing projects. It is also a communication platform as much as a project management tool; its instant messaging, notifications, and video chat functionalities help keep your team and volunteers aware of up-to-date information.

Samepage’s file sharing feature allows you to securely share documents with groups inside or outside of your nonprofit organization, and their permissions functionality helps control who can view or edit each file.

Plus, task management is simple with Samepage thanks to their task board, change tracking, and visual diagram features. Lastly, Samepage offers a 37% discount for nonprofits that use their tool.

JIRA

Jira is an issue tracking and work management tool built to offer teams a comprehensive set of features that help them collaborate and deliver on projects. In addition to Jira’s project management and reporting features, the tool is highly configurable, so your nonprofit can customize the platform to be just what you need.

Jira’s automation function allows you to create if-then rules so that when one action occurs, your team will be automatically prompted to take a followup action. For example, if a new donation is captured by the system, you can develop a rule so that the tool automatically creates a task to send a thank you email to the donor.

With Jira, your team can visualize their to-do list in the way that works best for them: the platform can present projects via Kanban board, calendar, timeline, or list view. Additionally, Jira comes with over 25 project templates including ones for event planning, budget creation, campaign planning, and task tracking.

KEELA

Keela is one of the best project management software for nonprofit remote teams not just because it’s built from the ground up as a tool for nonprofits, but its all-in-one CRM comes with great features for managing tasks. Apart from helping nonprofits manage donors, Keela is great for creating donation pages, helping with online giving, email campaign management, reports, and analytics for better decision making. Great features of Keela include:

• Ability to create and manage a centralized contact database
• Set communication priorities and store conversations
• Create and send donation receipts
• Create and send thank you notes to donors
• Integrations with Quickbooks, PayPal, Eventbrite, and more tools that nonprofits are using.
• Assignment and work tracking for teams

If you’re in the market for a nonprofit project management software built as an all-in-one tool, is user friendly, comes with seamless data transfer capabilities, and streamlined communications, Keela is one of the best choices out there.

Conclusion: Tracking task completion and project progress will enhance accountability and productivity for your team. Nonprofits have some of the hardest working and dedicated teams we know. Use the data to assess your work, motivate your team, and increase your impact.