Are you a small to medium non-profit or charity that is needing to step up your game? Your DIY and base level solutions have worked but you now have the resources to automate more and elevate your processes.

CHECK OUT my UNDER $500 TOOLBOX system of COST FRIENDLY BUT POWERFUL SOLUTIONS for your donations, donor acknowledgements, website, accounting, email campaigns and automations. This complete set up fills all the holes in charity management so you can get back to changing the world.

DONATION PROCESSOR + MANAGEMENT

STRIPE

You need to be able to collect online payments. The cheapest way to do this IS PayPal. They offer 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction. You can also embed buttons on your website for shirt fundraisers or donation forms.

Now, if you have your 501(c)3 designation, I would like to point you to STRIPE. Stripe does advertise a larger amount of fee (2.9% + $.30 per transaction) however, non-profits who reach out are offered the same as PayPal AND their payment forms are embedded onto your site so your donors are not being redirected away from your page which is a gigantic NO-NO.

Both options are free to sign up, you will just need your non profit bank account, contact person and an email to use as admin access.

$ FREE $

DONORBOX

So one of my biggest of PET-PEEVES of new donor processors and management systems circa 2018-present (2022) is their ALL IN ONE selling points. I honestly do not see any benefit of allowing a donor management to also control your website. The reasons are plentiful and I will probably do a blog all about it soon (stay tuned for a new sassy soapbox people) but to make it simple and succinct … they have no business in web design. There are so many items, backend items, SEO that they will fail at and miserably. Where will you put your google analytics, pexel code? Sure, logging into one place for everything sounds dreamy but what are you sacrificing for it? The answer… your ranking on the web, donors, sponsors and legitimacy. BUT I DIGRESS… I am here to talk about the amazing DONORBOX!

One of the many reasons I love DONORBOX is because you can embed their donation forms to your website, so no-one has to leave your website which is a gigantic NO-NO in the web design world. OUTLINK = POOR FORM. They also allow you to thoughtfully nudge your donors to help you cover your credit card processing fees. You can set up memorial/honor acknowledgements to automatically send via email (no more snail mail confusion) and even donor gift acknowledgements via email as well.

The facts - Donorbox is free if you get less than $1k in donations in a month. There are no set up costs. If you reach $1k in a month, Donorbox charges a small platform fee of 1.5% for the month’s donations. Then you can add on any or all of these as needed. Nudging your donors to help with that fee helps bridge that gap.

They also offer a ton of a-la-carte options like recurring payments, Zapier, employer match, peer-to-peer etc. that yes, can add up. However, you don’t need to enable them all immediately. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s pretend to spend it all.. and break it down with a TRICKED OUT DONORBOX:

• MailChimp – Export donor and campaign data to your MailChimp account. The cost is $8 per month.

• Corporate Donation Matching – Enable companies to match donations made by their employees. The cost is $40 per month.

• API and Zapier Integration – For added support in advanced integration use cases. The cost is $17 per month.

• Salesforce Integration - Export donor and campaign data to Salesforce account. The cost is $50 per month.
  
  

$ 115/ mo $

WEBSITE + DOMAIN

SQUARESPACE

(*YOU KNOW I AM NOT GOING TO CHANGE THIS*)

Be billed in one place and manage it all in one place. You can purchase your domain/url from Squarespace. Most are just $20 a year. Then you are billed for your website hosting in the same place too. PLUS! HTTPS is included REMEMBER HOW WE TALKED ABOUT HOW IMPORTANT THAT IS?

One of my favorite features of Squarespace is how it quickly integrates to Google Drive, Stripe and Zapier. Remember all those tips above where we mentioned google docs? Stripe? Well all of those integrations are a simple + easy toggle on with Squarespace. Squarespace would literally be the hub of your charity and all of your management of donors, volunteers, donations, communications etc all come from this integrated and automated hub. Its just that awesome and SUPER easy to use.

Make sure to subscribe at the BUSINESS Level. This unlocks “Donations”, “domain” email which is super important for helping your trust factor + custom code injection which you will absolutely need.

$ 18/mo (annually)$

WANT TO SAVE EVEN MORE? Build a site with me and you can get 20% off with my Circle Membership

ACCOUNTING

QUICKBOOKS

Industry standard and MUST for managing your non-profit is a good accounting software. Quickbooks offers so many amazing integrations with the other programs we have listed that are FREE so its a no brainer that you need it. It’s important to pay into good software to make sure you are compliant and legally sound while running your charity.

Their base level is called “Plus” and is a fully online or cloud based program

$ 40/mo (3 months)$

EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

MAILCHIMP

Squarespace’s Email Campaigns has its limitations and connecting with Donorbox and getting all of your people onto one list easily.. THIS is where Mailchimp will excel.

Mailchimp will also make it easy to start volunteer nurture sequences, as well as newsletter automations that encourage interested visitors to engage by donating. Much like Squarespace Email Campaign. you can even set up automations for special event ticket purchases or donations. Freeing up more time so you can change the world. *The below monthly fee is based on a list size of 2500

$ 60/mo $

INTEGRATIONS

ZAPIER

Oh Zapier! I adore you. If you have not heard of Zapier, let me introduce you to your new best friend.

Zapier is your connector program. Its just like those conditional questions on the SAT, if this happens then do this. It works SEAMLESSLY with Squarespace, Donorbox, Gmail, Quickbooks, Mailchimp + Stripe. See what I did there? I set you up and ensured that they all work with Zapier, maximizing your time and automations.

So here’s how it works. Say you have a form on Squarespace that is collecting volunteer leads. You can set up this form to send to your email, collect/dump into a Google Drive Sheet for a fail safe, be added to your Mailchimp list specifically for volunteers (which you could automate a welcome sequence), AND send a Zap to ZAPIER to add an event on your Google Calendar to call them the next day. YOU will literally not lift a finger while the programs automate and integrate around you.

Zapier is FREE until you process 100 items through your zaps or you create more than 5. I estimate that with Donorbox, Mailchimp and all of the other integrations to run your NPO, you will need the base paid level with Zapier at this level. To keep costs down, you could link more than one action to each other in a single Zap which cuts down on how many you create. You can also make sure to use the programs internal integrations with Squarespace to not eat up your zap items.

$ 30/mo $

Let me do the math for you:

for UNDER $263 a month,
you can have a fully functioning, connected, automated DIGITAL MACHINE
that frees up more time so you can get back to changing the world.

OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE