CONTENT Digital offers opportunities for organisations of all shapes and sizes, whether that’s reaching more people, raising more funds or just doing your work better. Social media is a very competitive landscape, but also a fine opportunity for non-profits to tell their story, engage their supporters, and drive donations. The number of low-cost or free apps and online tools available to non-profits is growing all the time so we prepared you a collection of free tools that are most used by NGOs today.
1.Website and Blogs
2.Social media Tools
3.Multimedia tools
Website and Blogs Google Analytics - You can look through your visitors and see what pages they looked at, how long they stayed on your site, and which content engaged them or not, from your site. There are so many things you can do to track and improve your activity: -How many people are hearing and reacting to your message? -How many people are visiting your site when you post something on Facebook, and what do they do on your site? -How much information do they read? -Do people respond better when they come to your site from various social media, or from email campaigns? Which campaigns work better? -Are you increasing attendance and participation at your events, fundraisers, participation and number of people served by your organization, or the number of volunteers?
Tumblr Is a microblogging and social networking service that allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, which is often called a "tumblelog". The purpose of Tumblr is to have a way to put all your blogs, pictures, anything you want to share with other people in one single location. This is useful for personal interests, such as putting writing compositions together or photography compositions together butalso for educational reasons. By connecting your organisation's Facebook and Twitter accounts to your tumblelog, a link will be posted to each account with every new post, which can help you gain followers and readers and get your blog noticed by the Tumblr community. Bitly allows for simple link shortening in a very quick and intuitive way and can track how many clicks it gets. It has a lot more features than Google URL Shortner and you don't need to have a payed account to modify your Shortened links. Of course you have to pay if you want a speciďŹ c domain to be shortened, but with the free tools you can do a lot. Discover.ly is a Chrome extension that allows you to see the social media info (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) information of any of your contacts in Gmail. It may be confusing at the beginning, but it helps you to ďŹ nd e-mails in a fast way.
Social media Tools Facebook When using Facebook: -As an organization, you should have a page not a profile. Profiles are for individuals. -Update your Facebook page as often as you can, with the latest news and issues that you would like to share with your community. -Keep Facebook posts rather short and conversational, and if possible include an image. -Encourage the dialogue and discussion through wall posts, status updates and news feeds. -Post stories about issues that concern you. -Share photos, videos, links that could be interesting to your community. -Create Facebook events to advertise meetings, events, campaigns that you are organising, invite as many friends as possible.
Facebook cross posting is a way to use videos across multiple pages. You can establish a crossposting relationship with another page and choose which videos that page can crosspost. With this option you can allow other pages to post videos that have beenposted to your page, but they will appear as native videos on the page that’s crossposting.The benefits build if you are an organisation that has multiple Facebook pageswho often upload the same content to more than one page. Like this the video appears that it came from your page and not as a shared post.
Instagram What makes Instagram different from social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter is the way people use it. Instagrammers frequently check the site, often several times a day, and engage with posts at a much higher rate than with other social networks. If you use Instagram for your organization and not for your personal use, you need to sign up for an Instagram for Business account. It is free, and it provides you with several useful tools that you do not get with the personal account, including analytics and a Contact button. If you have an Instagram for Business account, you can automatically pull your contact information from your Facebook Business Page, and link the two pages.Have a specific goal for the photos and videos you share on Instagram. The most successful Instagram accounts are not a little bit of everything. They focus on a particular visual style of content and the audience they want to reach.
Social media Tools Youtube Although YouTube specializes in video and streaming, it helps to think of it like your other social channels. You post content that interests and delights your audience. And by linking to your website and donation pages, you turn engagement into action. The first step is to create content that speaks to your audience and is relevant to your mission. Youtube Nonprofit Program For many causes, video is a new but essential format for storytelling. The YouTube for Nonprofit Program gives nonprofits access to unique YouTube features to help connect with supporters, volunteers, and donors.
Twitter is a great free tool that can transform your approach to fundraising. At its most basic level, Twitter is called "microblogging." You get 140 characters to get your message across.From a fundraising perspective, Twitter is an amazing way to engage donors and potential donors. -You get to meet people all over the world that might be interested in your cause. -You get to hear what people are really thinking about a wide variety of issues. -You can follow other fundraisers and get great real-time advice.
TweetDeck Created by Twitter, with TweekDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts. You can schedule and post tweets right from Tweetdeck for free.
Multimedia Tools Communication & Presentation tools Mailchimp: Known as a Marketing Platform for Small Businesses, Mailchimp will help you to add content and design emails that fit your brand.You’ve probably got a staff, donors, volunteers, a board of directors and they all need to hear from you. Sometimes you’ll want to send everyone the same message, but sometimesyou’ll want to specialize your email campaigns like sending an internal newsletter to staff only, budget reports to the board only, or a personalized update to your organization's entire mailing list. You can also share your email campaigns easily through Facebook or Twitter and allow your subscribers to do the same.
Grammarly: Online grammar check tools are also useful for those who just want to write error-free emails, reports, presentations or even social media posts. Grammarly helps you write mistake-free on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and nearly anywhere else you write on the web. You just need to add it as an extension to Chrome. When you click on a grammar error in your writing, the grammar checker presents an explanation of the problem. All you have to do is click on the arrow to find out more. It identifies possible solutions and explanations for your mistake. Survey Monkey is a very easy to use survey tool. You’ll be able to create your online survey in a matter of minutes. It also gives you access to the survey tools you need to easily launch and analyse your survey. There are also lots of non-profit survey templates that make it easy to gain insights about your donors, volunteers, partners and recipients. Issuu is a digital discovery and publishing platform that allows you to convert and publish all your PDF files online. It allows you to access a variety of powerful tools perfect for any blog or magazine, even on the Basic plan. One of the greatest features that it offers is allowing you to make sure your posts are visible on Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email. Smallpdf - the platform that makes it super easy to convert and edit all your PDF files without having to download and install an actual PDF software in your system
Multimedia Tools Communication & Presentation tools Prezi is a multimedia application to create dynamic and original presentations. This tool allows you to use images, videos, objects or simple text, and animate them using a wide range of effects.The finished presentations can also be shared directly from Prezi on all major social networks. Prezi comes both as a free and paid service, but even the free version has all the options you need.
Legend It’s an iPhone app that turns your text into movies and animated GIFs
EWC Presenter Easy WebContent Presenter is a free, web-based application that allows you to create stunning presentations using user friendly drag-and-drop options. You can create presentations, animations, banners, infographics, product demos, banner ads and a lot more. It renders files in HTML5 and supports all major mobile and desktop devices, which means you can access your presentations anywhere on any device. Zoho Show is a cloud-based application that helps to create presentations anywhere, using several devices, regardless of the operating system. You can edit slides independently or invite your colleagues to work together wherever they are. Zoho Show also gives you the option to publish your presentations in a variety of formats including HTML, PDF, and PowerPoint.
Multimedia Tools
Video editing tools
Filmora Is a free video editor that has the essential tools, and is easy for anyone to learn, even if they’ve never edited video before. Lightworks Lightworks is an incredible tool that's published free with the aim of making professional quality video editing software available to everyone. It can be an excellent option to get started in the world of video editing. VSDC Free Video Editor With VSDC Free Video Editor you can create video projects from a combination of video clips, still images and audio files, with a resolution of up to 1,980 x 1,080 (full HD). It has a built-in screen capture tool for recording video and taking still images from your desktop – ideal for software reviews and tutorials.
DaVinci Resolve Resolve is an amazing program for color correcting footage and the best part is the basic software is free. iMovie provides Apple-based video editing software: you can start editing on an iPhone or iPad and then finish on your Mac. Windows Movie Maker Is a very simple free video editing tool for windows. As it’s built for Windows 7, if you are looking for some free video editing software for Windows 8 or Windows 10, then you should skip Windows Movie Maker. Videopad An intuitive and easy to learn video editing tool that supports 360-degree camera editing.
Multimedia Tools
Free Stock Music,Photo editing and design apps
Free Stock Music Incompetech www.incompetech.com Moby Gratis: free music by a well-known artist www.mobygratis.com Free Soundtrack Music: free tracks to use in films www.freesoundtrackmusic.com Public Domain 4U: old music with copyright never renewed www.publicdomain4u.com
Photo editing and design apps PhotoScape PhotoScape is a fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos. The interface is a bit different than to the other photo editing programs and might take a while to get used to it, but it has so many tools to choose from for a free tool. GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most powerful free photo editor around and gives you most of the features of Adobe Photoshop. Paint.NET It’s an easy-to-use image editor that offers features like those that you’ll find in Adobe Photoshop and GIMP.
Multimedia Tools
Photo editing and design apps
Snapseed It’s a great photo editing app for mobile devices. It may seem to be a bit complicated for the casual user, but for serious photographers who want to edit an image while on the go, is perfect. Fotor is an online photo editor and collage maker that has the option to be downloaded also as desktop application for RAW photo editing. Canva It’s a simply to use design tool that can be great if you need to make beautiful posters, invitations, cards, website graphics, or even multiple-page presentations.
Stock Photography & Graphic Design resources StockSnap has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high-resolution images. In addition, the site tracks views and downloads so you can find the most popular photos available. www.stocksnap.io Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos www.pexels.com Unsplash offers a large collection of free high-resolution photos and has become one of the best sources for stock images. www.unsplash.com
Multimedia Tools
Stock Photography & Graphic Design resources
Pixabay is a large collection of free stock photos, vectors and art illustrations. www.pixabay.com Pixeden Has plenty of graphic design and web design templates, icons and vectors. www.pixeden.com FindGuidelin.es Provides helpful links to some of the world's biggest brand identities. www.findguidelin.es 365PSD A collection of free vector images, logo designs and PSD www.365psd.com http://www.365psd.com
Flaticon One of the largest databases of free vector icons. www.flaticon.com The Stocks - free images and design resources www.thestocks.im The Noun Project Gathers symbols that are created and uploaded by graphic designers around the world. https://thenounproject.com Giphy is an online database for animated GIF files. www.giphy.com
Multimedia Tools Collaborating, Organizing, Document management Meetup is a network that makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one that is already meeting up face-to-face Join.me Is a tool for free screen sharing, online meetings and team collaboration. Dropbox An easy and secure way to upload and share any type of file with anyone. GoogleDrive Helps to create and share your Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Surveys, and many other files with anyone, anywhere. Trello Trello is an interactive online app, used to manage work collaboratively, whether they're business projects or personal chores. Is quite easy to use and adapts to your project, team, and workflow.
Slack workspace It’s a great communication tool that you can use within your team, especially when you must work with multiple teams. Drawful2 Is a multiplayer party/meetings game, which challenges players to draw weird, funny and often ridiculous prompts on their smartphones and tablets. Kahoot! Is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject by creating quizzes. It’s great to create fun quizzes and challenge friends or use it in the meetings.
FREE DOWNLOAD FbDown Download Facebook videos and save them directly from Facebook to your computer or mobile for free. www.fbdown.net Converter Mp3 Convert any YouTube Video to mp3. www.ytmp3.cc 1001FreeFonts allows you to download and use lots of font created by different designers for free. www.1001freefonts.com