JILLYN: Hi, I’m Jillyn, Founder and Executive Director of Technology Aloha, and I’m here today with our Content Manager, Kelli to talk about three free tools for your nonprofit. Our podcast today will be broken into 3 sections —
- Analyzing and understanding your online presence
- Email Marketing
- Project Management
Let’s get started.
In the spirit of full disclosure, this post contains affiliate links, which means that Technology Aloha may receive a commission of some kind if you decide to purchase through the links provided. However, our product recommendations are unbiased and are not impacted by any compensation we may receive. We only recommend products and systems that we use or have used and love, so we know you’ll be in good hands. We also strive to provide links that give you the best discount available, because we know that as a small business you have limited resources and every dollar counts!
Analyzing and understanding your online presence
KELLI: Thank you for the introduction Jillyn. I’d like to start off with something all nonprofits are probably interested in: How can a nonprofit get to know their online audience?
JILLYN: Excellence question, Kelli! No one likes to waste time or money. That’s especially true for nonprofits, so they need to figure out the most efficient way to reach their audience. The good news is, they can start this process for free using Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides organizations with valuable insights about the behavior of their website visitors. It can tell you about the number of visitors to your website and what they do while they’re there — like the number of pages they view.
KELLI: Knowing how visitors treat your website lets you set it up for success. It also allows you to see which content resonates best with your audience — which may be different than what you thought. Basically, you get to learn about your audience and potential donors, allowing you to provide more of what they’re looking for.
JILLYN: Exactly. Providing more of what your audience wants to see will keep them coming back and make them more likely to support your organization by volunteering or donating. Another helpful hint — make it easy for them to volunteer and donate from your site. It’s also a good idea to give visitors a way to stay informed about your organization.
Email Marketing
KELLI: Yes, absolutely. An excellent way to start would be email marketing through a tool like MailChimp or Moosend — both offer a limited free account.
Newsletter tools like this allow nonprofits to send personalized email campaigns to keep volunteers and donors informed and engaged.
They help nonprofits manage their email outreach by segmenting or organizing their contacts, sending targeted updates to contacts, and providing the contact with information they may be interested in. Most newsletter tools will also have modules that help with creating professional-looking newsletters and campaigns.
JILLYN: And they also help ensure that your emails include all the legally required information to keep your nonprofit out of trouble. Information on how to unsubscribe and other required information is always included in your emails, whether you remember to add it or not, protecting your nonprofit from inadvertently incurring hefty fines.
KELLI: A free tool that can help prevent an unnecessary expense is perfect for a nonprofit!
Project Management
JILLYN: Speaking of unnecessary expenses, everyone that works or volunteers at a nonprofit provides a lot of value. And there’s a free tool out there to prevent duplicate work and help keep everyone on track.
KELLI: Ah, yes. One of my favorite tools.
JILLYN: Mine too! It’s called Trello, and it’s a free project management tool that organizes your organization’s tasks.
One way nonprofits can use Trello is by having a shared board where everyone on the team can upload what they’re working on so the whole team knows what needs to be done and when. Each task even allows for communication and collaboration within the task.
We use this method for some of our biggest projects to help ensure that everyone working on the project knows what needs to be done, who is responsible, and when it’s due. Another really handy feature is the calendar integration — by subscribing to the Trello board’s calendar, I can see all the tasks on my calendar with their current status.
KELLI: I use my own private Trello Board to keep track of assignments and due dates so everything I have to do gets done on time. And it helps me keep track of every step of each assignment, so I can do bits and pieces if I don’t have the time to complete everything in a single task.
JILLYN: It’s also helpful for leadership. They can keep an eye on where employees and volunteers are on their work, and see potential problems. Then tasks can be moved around or reassigned as needed — nothing falls through the cracks, and no one feels micromanaged!
KELLI: Very true Jillyn!
Ending
JILLYN: Well it looks like that’s all the time we have for today.
We’ve included links in the description to several of our blog posts that cover the topic we discussed today as well as the tools we mentioned. The tool links are affiliate links, so if you find the tools useful, please use them — it helps us keep creating useful content like this to share with you!
I’m Jillyn.
KELLI: And I’m Kelli. If you have questions about tools for your nonprofit or have other topics you want to hear on our podcast, please reach out on social media or contact us at TechnologyAloha.com.
JILLYN: Thank you for listening to Into the Inbound with Technology Aloha. We hope we’ve added a little Aloha to your day.
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Into the Inbound with Technology Aloha
