NON-PROFIT TECH RESOURCES & SUPPORT

We want to share a great list of tools and tips for any non-profit that is trying to get things started. We are gearing this guide towards animal non-profits such as farm sanctuaries and vegan organizations but this can apply to nearly any 501c3 that is working towards building a better world.

Email Providers & more

Google for Non-Profits: Google has one of the greatest tools for non-profits which gives a variety of tools for free. Sign up here first.

  • Google Apps/G-Suite: This is a corporate email solution which gives lifetime free gmail email (30GB storage/user) for your entire non-profit. That means unlimited email accounts and aliases plus all of the other great Google email tools. For-Profit companies have to pay $6/user/month, so this is really amazing

Microsoft non-Profit Office 365 – Includes online versions of office, email(Microsoft Entourage Server) plus 1TB of online cloud backup for you and 299 of your other employees! 2022 Update: Sadly Microsoft has seriously cut their non-profit program. You can still get a few free accounts, but it is limited to 10. After that they have discounted options for the rest of your staff. Visit Techsoup for current program details. Grandfathered accounts seem to still have the 299 limit for free emails and cloud drive. 

 

SMALL NON-PROFITS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR

HOSTING | EMAIL | SSL CERTIFICATES

 

Hosting

Kualo: For registered USA charities, Kualo is dedicated to supporting your valuable work by offering a free or heavily discounted web hosting plan. With over two decades of experience, Kualo has built a strong reputation for reliable web hosting services, exceptional support, top-notch security, and uninterrupted uptime. What sets Kualo apart is their commitment to sustainability, as they operate on 100% renewable energy. Their mission is to empower charities to establish an online presence without incurring unnecessary expenses. With Kualo, you can focus on making a difference while they take care of your web hosting needs.

Dreamhost: EASY, single domain/website. Dreamhost offers completely free web hosting for a single domain. You can learn more about their program here and  create an account here. Their support is great and quick.

windows-azure-loving-coopWindows Azure: ADVANCED SETUP, multiples domains for single non-profit. Up to $5000 $3500(MS Reduced the grant by $1500 in 2019) $2000( Mircrosoft has reduced the grant by another $1500 as of 2024) of retail costs in online servers. This used to be the coolest deal but now at $2000, it is not great. The windows server costs are very high and $2000 will not cover a small server so you may have to pay extra. In 2023-2024, the costs also increased so we had to discontinue use of our azure server 9 months into our final $3500 contract or we would have had to pay over $1000. A linux server is still a good deal and should be able to stick under the $2000 threshold. Loving Cooperative was forced to move 14 domains over to dreamhost and stop offering free hosting to small non-profits in 2024 because of these changes. This is by far the coolest program I have found to date. This is a very advanced setup so I would not recommend this for most non-profits unless they have a very tech savvy support.

AZURE UPDATE: AZURE has recently integrated Plesk installations ($15/month additional cost, not covered by the grant) into their collection of Linux and Windows server images. Plesk is a robust website installation and management system that effortlessly launches WordPress sites. This feature enables organizations to create Linux servers with significantly less expertise required. Unlike the lengthy process of setting up a Windows server (though it ideally shouldn’t take that long, I often find it does), Plesk Linux servers can be up and running in 1-2 hours or less, getting a site online quickly. While Plesk fees are added on top of server costs, it offers a convenient solution for those seeking a powerful yet user-friendly Linux server option.

Say No To Wix: While Wix does provide a free option with advertising for non-profits, we don’t recommend it due to its limitations. Instead, we suggest using WordPress with DreamHost or Kualo. Wix’s functionality is quite restricted, and migrating from it to other platforms, such as WordPress, can be challenging due to the lack of robust migration options. In my experience, I’ve assisted numerous organizations in transitioning from these constrained frameworks to WordPress when they reached a point where they could no longer expand effectively.

Webhosting Note: Because both Dreamhost, Kualo, and Windows Azure offer free hosting, most non-profits should not be paying a penny for web hosting, if you are, please write us so we can assist with a migration.

Paid Hosting Options: If setting up Azure seems too complex, there are alternative hosting options available at lower costs. We offer web hosting services and provide discounts specifically tailored for small non-profit organizations. You can find more details on our hosting page. Additionally, we highly recommend A2 hosting, which includes free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates and operates on SSD hard drive servers. We suggest their Turbo shared server plan, which typically offers sufficient power for most small organizations. Moreover, they provide an option to upgrade to 3GB of RAM and double the CPU cores for a reasonable fee. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions; we’re passionate about assisting with these matters! For first-time clients, A2 Hosting offers excellent promotions, such as three years of hosting on a high-speed server for approximately $400.

Budget WordPress Themes/Editor

We use DIVI or Extra by Elegant Themes on all of our wordpress builds. We chose this framework because it has some of the best support we have found. The company releases updates and upgrades almost daily and this has been the regular way they do business since we started using them in 2015. 

Software (Free & Discounted)

Tech Soup: Tech soup is a wonderful online resource with severely discounted tech software. Tech soup’s pricing has changed and so the figures we have here may not be updated. They were written in 2019.

  • Free Office 365 – Includes online versions of office plus 1TB of online cloud backup!!!
  • Windows Azure – Up to $2000 towards Azure server costs per year. This budget allows does not allow for much power, but it could be a good deal if you are already interested in Azure.
  • Quickbooks – $50 for a single license or $125/3 licenses of Quickbooks for non-profits. They also have Quickbooks online for $50/5 users/year.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud – $30/month/2 computers for all of Adobe’s software: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Premiere Pro plus many more. This is a great savings over the normal $50/month.
  • Adobe Acrobat – Are you needing acrobat to edit acrobat files? Adobe offers it for $55 instead of hundreds through Tech Soup. They began adding expiration dates for this software which I think is in 2026.
  • Windows for Pirated/Illegal Installations – Microsoft wants to help non-profits who may have had someone “install” a copy of windows but now they are saying they do not have a legal copy installed. For only $25/computer you can upgrade to a legal copy.
  • Microsoft Office – April 2022 update: Their program has gone to office 365 installs only. The previous program was Office Standard for $29 and professional plus is only $40. One other thing they do not mention is that you get 50 seats/installs.
  • Microsoft’s other software. – You can browse their large catalog of free and donated software.
  • Netsuite – If you are looking for an ERP for a larger non-profit organization, Netsuite is one of the best options. This software normally costs $12k/year plus $99/user but through Tech Soup it only costs $300/year for 5 users. This should really help build and keep your non-profit organized.

SSL Certificates

We get questions about SSL Certificates a lot and we recommend Let’s Encrypt. We use it for all of our sites without any issues.

Free SSL Certificates: Let’s Encrypt is a non-profit arm of the Linux Foundation. They are a Certificate Authority which provides free encryption certficates for websites to help keep our world wide web safe. Dreamhost has Let’s Encrypt included. They have a premium SSL certificate you can purchase, but we do not feel it is necessary for most customers. I recommend Really Simple SSL, a wordpress plugin if you are using wordpress for your site. If you are on a windows server you may use this new tool Cerify, which we have used since 2016. 

Domain Registers

Although domain registers are not free, it is an important topic to cover. I have found many vegan and animal organizations registered with Godaddy. Godaddy’s founder was a fan of killing exotic animals and their adverising practices have been sexist since their inception. We have also had clients who have had exorbinant charges when there was an error on their account. This is why we do not recommend them.  I have helped dozens of organizations transfer out of Godaddy over the years. I would say any register is probably better than Godaddy. At one point I had 30 domains registered at Godaddy. Never again!

Namecheap is my favorite domain register. Namecheap provides great support when you need it and their rates are about 10-30% lower than Godaddy. For one of my clients, they were charged $40/annually for a .dog domain and with Namecheap it was only $28. .org registration is $2/year less at Namecheap.

Google Domains is an another registrar option. They are very competitive with Namecheap’s rates and have a very powerful dashboard.  In 2024 Google sold their Google Domains to Squarespace and all accounts were migrated. 🙁 

 

Advertising

google-grants-for-non-profits-loving-coopGoogle Ad Grants: Google gives away up to $10,000 in ad spend monthly to any 501c3 non-profit. It is very challenging to spend the entire amount so I recommend not making that your goal, instead just focus on creating a clean and meaningful campaign. This really helps small non-profits grow. They do have some limitations on how you can spend the $10,000, but it is a great service. That should help the organization stay competitive with other for profit organizations.

 Free Funding/Donations Tools

Amazon Smile Program: This program can provide a small, often very small stream of income for your organization. How it works is that your friends, family and fans can sign your non-profit as their smile organization and then when they shop on Amazon, Amazon will be giving .5% of their cart total for most of their items to you. It is pretty sweet 🙂 Sign Up here. Amazon decided to cancel the Amaon Smile Program in 2022.

Amazon Affiliate/Associates Program: This is actually a for-profit and non-profit tool . If you happen to have a blog or a place where you make recommendations for items of Amazon items then you can make pretty good money for those recommendations! Amazon affiliate pays between 4-12% of the cart total of items when people use your special affiliate links.   Sign Up Here. I have to thank Rich Roll for this tip! If you are wanting a life changing podcast, check Rich’s out!

Donation Payment Tools

So What options are there for non-profits when it comes to donations? Sadly there are almost none that do not take a significant percentage from the profits. I have thought about building a company for years to provide this service with little or no service fees. Transaction fees are required no matter what because credit card companies charge them. Currently there is only one real winner that offers both simple setup and low fees, that is Paypal. I know that the word paypal may conjure up many different emotions from people but this is our greatest tool currently for non-profits. They offer the very lowest rates and easy tools to get started. I do hope that someday there is an alternative so people have a choice.

Paypal– Easiest: Paypal offers simple tools and charges a base of 2.2% for non-profits to take donations. This is probably the best deal online for processing. You do have to confirm your non-profit status to get this rate.

Facebook Fundraising (Zero Fees): Facebook has built in a great toolset for non-profits to build fundraising campaigns directly inside of facebook. Each organization has to pass a set of criteria but once that is done you can create go fund me like campaigns directly on facebook. Facebook charges only 2.2% + $.30 per transaction which beats everyone else in the list. Facebook has changed this program to be completely free through a partnership with Network for Good.  100% of proceeds go to the non-profit, it takes about 45 days to receive funds.

Google Wallet: If you are looking for a semi easy solution to receive payments to your non-profit you can use Google Wallet. It requires using a bank account or Debit card and then you can send and receive funds without any costs. The catch is that it does require the other party to setup Google Wallet on their device. I like the layout and it works great!

Facebook Payments: Another easy and free option is sending and receiving payments on Facebook. This is not allowed for pages so you will have to use your personal account to do this. This is not the most professional option in the list but it does work very well. If you are receiving money you may add your company debit card to your personal page so the money will be deposited directly into your non-profits bank account. Just remember not to forget which card is connected in case you want to send/receive personal money from a friend or family. That is the original design for this system.

Mighty Cause: A company called Razoo has become Mighty Cause. They advertise only charging 2.2% per transaction and 29 cents per donation. This is lower than paypal and so it is worth checking out. They charge $99 for their whole monthly package but do offer a free service which includes unlimited campaigns.

Here are a couple of services with look interesting but i have not had time to fully study.

donorbox.org/pricing

liberapay.com/

Free Fund-Raising Platform

Generosity: Indiegogo has launched a new platform just like Indiegogo but it is designed for good causes instead of self interest and for profit projects. They still do charge the 3% transaction fee but there are no program fees! YES!!!

Give Lively:  Give Lively provides free unlimited fundraising pages, embeddable widgets, event ticketing and registration, peer-to-peer fundraising, text-to-donate with live display, video storytelling and more.  Their founders cover the cost of running the business, so they charge nonprofits for use of their services. 

Events & Tickets

The most economical system I have found so far is called Brown Paper Tickets. This company has removed the organization fees and solely charges the credit card processing fees instead. They obviously are making some money off of the credit card processing but this is definitely much cooler than the countless companies who charge 2.5% or more on top of credit card fees. You can see their fee structure here: Brown Paper Ticket Fee Structure. They also even offer free shipping of paper tickets if you want them for your event.

Give Lively:  Give Lively provides free event ticketing options.

Facebook/Eventbrite: If you have a free event which requires tickets, you can use facebook combined with Eventbrite. Eventbrite is one of the more expensive platforms for paid tickets but they are pretty handy for free events. Their system fully integrates into facebook events and also there is a donation option during checkout so you could receive a few donations. They take a hefty chunk out of the donations though.