The First Step to Becoming a Tech-Savvy Nonprofit

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By Ted Kriwiel
January 24, 2025

Nonprofit leaders feel a common frustration about software: there's too much and it never works the way we expect. 

This pains me! Software is one of the most powerful innovations of the last century. Nonprofits are doing good in the world, and they deserve to use the best tools.

In many cases, that's not happening. Something is missing.

As someone who loves tech and has spent the past decade building software for nonprofits, I know it has the potential to be a transformative tool. I felt so strongly about this that I created The Tech Savvy Nonprofit – a cohort designed to help nonprofits level up on tech in just five weeks. (For my friends in Kansas, registration for the Spring 2025 cohort opens today.)  

Your Nonprofit Tech Stack 

I presented my first information session on this cohort to a room of 30 nonprofit leaders and organizations in July of last year. During the session, we walked through the software used by an example nonprofit. If you ran a nonprofit that received $500,000 in revenue per year and had seven employees, how much software do you think you’d need to function? More than you would think.

  • Workspace: To start, you need workspace software like Microsoft 365 or GSuite for your email, documents, calendar, and other essentials.
  • Website: You also need a website so people know you exist and believe you’re a credible organization. You might use Squarespace, WordPress, or Webflow.
  • Fundraising: To take donations through your website, you need software like Stripe to process payments. You also collect donations in person, so you’ll need a Point of Sale system like Square.
  • Events: You also host in-person events and need a way to register people, so you’ll have to use something simple like Google Forms or something more robust like Eventbrite.
  • Project Management: Fundraising, hosting events, and running the nonprofit take a lot of hands on deck, so you might use project management software like Asana or Trello.
  • Accounting: Since you’re a serious organization and have to keep your books in order, we can’t forget about accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero.
  • Payroll: You have seven employees, so you need payroll software like Gusto.
  • Timekeeping: If you’re grant-funded, you must track your people’s time, so you’ll need software like Clockify or Toggl.
  • CRM: And the crown jewel of software – the customer relationship management (CRM) system – is necessary to manage all your customers, donors, and initiatives.

On top of the tools above, you'll need Canva (for graphic design), MailChimp (for email marketing), Slack (for internal communications), Zoom (for virtual meetings and webinars), and so many more. This is a staggering amount of software for your seven-person nonprofit to manage.

Start with a Software Inventory

The first step in becoming a tech-savvy nonprofit is to inventory your software.

  • List all the software your nonprofit uses (this is your tech stack)
  • Identify what each software does
  • Determine who is responsible for managing each tool

This exercise will help you understand your nonprofit’s tech stack and identify areas for improvement. 

When we see the entire landscape, we see a clearer path forward.

If you do this exercise, let me know how it goes. Were you surprised by how many tools you were using?

Supercharge your
non-profit

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