10 Top Apps for Fundraisers
You have a great cause – you are saving the world or a part of it. You have so much to do but little money. And because of these reasons you have no time to research apps that would make your life easier. We hear you!
So we’ve flexed our fingers and trawled the internet to find the top apps to make a fundraiser’s life that little bit easier. From rostering your teams, managing projects, collaborating with the group, reducing paper or tracking your email campaigns, these apps will help you stay on top of it all. We know it to be true because our team uses them in the daily operation of our business.
- Evernote– Free, Plus $29.99 pa, Premium $56.99 pa, Business $13/user/month
If you are not using Evernote you should be. Record notes with a pen on your favourite notebook and take photos and tag with smart tags – searchable handwritten notes. Type the notes into Evernote on your phone and there they are on your desktop. All synced in the cloud. You can add text, pics or audio to Evernote. The search function means you don’t need any fancy organising system. Organise by notebook or tags or both. Separate subjects demand their own notebooks. Keep some private and some for business. Share notes or just links.
- Trello– Free, Gold, Business, Enterprise
Trello is like a whiteboard with columns and sticky notes except it’s digital. You can keep on track using the reminder function, share your boards or just a card, add checklists and photos. Trello makes organising projects a breeze. Great visual impact and the whole team can join for free. We really love this one…
- Scannable– a free app that goes with Evernote and, using your camera, scans pics to PDF.
Great business card scanner too, as it saves the card to Evernote and your contacts and asks if you want to share your contact with the business card owner. Neat.
- NationBuilder– $29/month – $499/month
Not so much an app as a microsite for engagement on specific projects or events. NationBuilder is great for annual events or ongoing fundraising. You can register for free and there are also paid options. You can fundraise from the get-go and it pulls in data from Facebook and Twitter, so every time you get a follower the information is pulled into your database. Super easy-to-use and you can go live in less than a day for simple sites.
- Deputy– Free for up to 10 employees, $4/month per employee
Rostering made easy. If you have lots of volunteers or just a dozen casuals, Deputy makes it easy to see timesheets, what people are working on and where they are located. Volunteers log in via a smartphone app and the timesheets can be exported to your payroll software if you need to pay for time or expenses.
- Sidekick– Free, Power User $10/month
Who is opening your emails? When do they open them? Get Sidekick and you won’t be guessing. In the meantime, download Sidekick Chrome extension and get great business intelligence on the fly for free.
- Google Apps– $5/user/month or $10/user/month unlimited storage
Who knew that a couple of geeks would change the world? Google Apps is taking off throughout the business world and there’s a reason for that – they are great: business email, calendar, Google Drive, Google Hangouts and Google Plus. Collaborate, share, sync across devices – excellent for teams. Use Hangouts for instant messaging, Drive for storage and collaboration.
- Facebook– Free, reasonably-priced advertising from $7
Mark Zuckerberg has a lot to answer for – he’s changed the way we communicate. Whether you love or hate Facebook, no fundraiser can be without an up-to-date Facebook page. Create new pages for events or campaigns, get more traffic in a day than you would in a week on your stand-alone website. Engage with your community or build one. Everything to do with connecting people in a virtual world is possible with Facebook.
- Canva– Free, Canva at Work (pricing to be released)
As a fundraiser you are probably responsible for updating up to a dozen social media sites. Are you a designer? Probably not but that doesn’t mean you don’t get to design your Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest posts, right? Canva will save your life! It’s a design tool for non-designers. Suddenly, you will be looking like a pro – on and offline. It automatically provides the right size images for Facebook, Twitter, blog posts, presentations and posters.
- CoSchedule– $15/month, $30/month, $60/month
Your marketing calendar just got easier. Schedule blogs and social media, add users and share with your team. Use CoSchedule’s handy Headline Analyzer to make sure your headers zing! Use as a stand-alone or as a plug-in on your WordPress site.