Top Free and Easy-to-Use Tools to Promote and Organize a Fundraiser

Organizing and promoting fundraising events can be a headache. Getting people to RSVP, putting together restaurant fundraising events, reaching possible donors, and creating attractive images for people to sign up for your fundraiser, are all very time-consuming and difficult to get right. 

Budgets for nonprofits tend to be small, and sometimes it’s easy to overlook the importance of marketing and effective organization in pursuit of getting more volunteers, donors or attendees to your event. 

But there are many free online tools to organize and promote a fundraiser that are going to make your team’s lives easier, help you raise more money, and ultimately save more money as well.

We’ve created a list of tools and resources that are free, super easy to use for beginners and that can be accessed from the comfort of your home. 

Also, we’ve added some advanced options in case you want to learn more about how to use marketing to take your fundraisers to the next level. 

How To Organize A Fundraiser With Free Online Tools?

Getting your team to organize every single detail of a fundraiser can be stressful. Many things can go wrong, and it’s usually difficult to keep track of every small thing that needs to be considered. This is why we’ve gathered a list of organization fundraising ideas and tools you can use online:

Notion

It is a project management and note-taking software. Notion helps teams transform into their most productive and efficient version with tools to coordinate deadlines, goals, and tasks. The free version includes a collaborative workspace in which you can invite up to 10 guests.  

Photo by Filip Baotić on Unsplash.

Google Workspace For Nonprofits

Google offers an advanced and free version of Google Workspace for eligible nonprofits, which includes professional email addresses at your nonprofit’s domain, 100 participant video meetings, and more. 

If your nonprofit is not eligible, you can still use the standard Google features that are super helpful when organizing a fundraiser: Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and much more. 

GroupRaise

If you’re looking to create fundraising events, GroupRaise is the platform for you. With GroupRaise, nonprofits, church groups, PTAs, college students, and charity volunteers can book a meal at a restaurant that is willing to give back to their cause. It is super easy to use – you can request your fundraiser at local restaurants in less than a minute! 

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash.

After picking a restaurant, date, and time, and creating your GroupRaise account, you’ll have to wait up to seven days for the restaurant to either reject or accept your request.

It’s important to clarify that most events have a minimum of 20 RSVPs required and that each restaurant has a specific percentage they’ll give back to the fundraiser group. 

After sharing your event via social media and/or other platforms and getting people to RSVP, your restaurant fundraiser event will be ready to start. You’ll enjoy an amazing group meal, and the restaurant will donate a percentage of the event’s sales to your cause. 

Within four to six weeks, a check will be emailed to your group’s address for the stated percentage of the total sales. 

Google Forms

This tool is going to be your best friend when organizing an event’s RSVP. With Google Forms, you can forget about receiving 50 confirmation emails. You can send the RSVPs requests via Google Forms and check all responses in one place: Google Sheets. 

You can also allow people to change their answers if they’ve changed plans. You can read a more detailed guide on how to use Google Forms for RSVPs here. 

Monday.com

This is a platform that allows organizations and companies to create their own applications and project management software. With Monday.com, you can:

• Centralize all donor data for easy management and donor engagement
• Manage your grant pipeline from beginning to end and easily generate reports
• Capture, connect, and manage all volunteer data in one place. 

For eligible nonprofits, Monday.com offers a free version that includes up to 10 boards (these are projects, clients, or processes), time tracking, enterprise-scale automation and integrations, and more.

How To Promote A Fundraiser With Free Online Tools?

Once you’ve organized your fundraiser, you want everyone to know about it, about your group’s mission, and get the most people to volunteer, donate or attend your event. The most obvious question you might be asking yourself at this point is, where can I promote my fundraiser online? 

Fortunately, the Internet offers a wide range of options and tools to promote your cause and reach people wherever they’re at. We’ve selected the best of them for you:

Social Media: 

This is the most obvious option because we use this tool in our everyday lives. And it is also one of the most effective ones because almost everyone is on social media these days, so you’ll most likely reach more people through this channel. 

• Facebook is great for creating events to feature all the information regarding your fundraiser and share registration links. A great tip is to update the event information periodically before it begins. 
• Twitter is amazing for hashtags. Create unique and concise hashtags that are specific to your event, so people that are interested in it can follow and track all tweets related to it, and also create their own tweets with your hashtag. After the event has ended, you can use Twitter to share testimonials of people who attended your fundraiser.
• Instagram is great for visually attracting people to your fundraiser. But don’t use only the Posts or Stories features, as Reels are a great way to provide a lot of information in one short video. Here is a guide on how to use Instagram Reels.
• Don’t limit yourself to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, use your imagination and go beyond with these ideas:
  • Create and share videos of past events on Youtube to get people interested in your next fundraisers. Adobe Express offers a free tool to create and edit Youtube videos. 
  • Use Tik Tok! It’s a free and super easy-to-use tool with which your videos can easily go viral. Tell a story about your organization, about the people that were affected positively by past fundraisers, and you can get a solid amount of new followers and why not, donors, volunteers or attendees. 

Photo by dole777 on Unsplash.

Google Ads

Google offers an advanced and free version of Google Ads for eligible nonprofits. Google Ad Grants offer nonprofit organizations $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising monthly for text ads. You’ll also access tools to build campaigns that show up on Google Search when people look for information that is related to your organization. 

When writing text ads, there are some tips to make them as efficient as possible: make them concise, and very clear. For a more advanced ads option, you’ll also want to use popular search keywords. 

Google Ads has a tool called Keyword Planner, in which you can discover which are those keywords that people use to search online about nonprofits or organizations like yours. You’ll want to include these keywords in your copy to make it more likely for people to find your organization online. Here you’ll find a guide on how to use the Keyword Planner.

Canva 

This is a free tool to make show-stopping and incredibly attractive images to promote your fundraiser. Canva offers thousands of templates to create different types of images and documents: brochures, social media images, presentations, and much more. 

Distributing professional-looking images, with clean designs, is crucial for the success of your event promotion. Humans are visual creatures, so you’ll want to make a great first impression. 

MailChimp

This is the best email marketing service provider out there. With MailChimp, you can schedule and automate all of your emails, and customize them according to your brand image and colors. The free version includes email automation, up to 500 contacts, signup forms, a marketing calendar, surveys, and more. 

GroupRaise

We’ve included GroupRaise once more because it offers many great tools to promote your fundraiser: one of them is its GroupRaise Meal Promotion Page, where RSVPs are logged, and it is created specifically for a group’s event. It’s a tool for promotion that can be shared easily via email or social media. It also includes email reminders that are sent to supporters on the day of the event.

GroupRaise wants your fundraiser to succeed, this is why its marketing team has put together many other tools that will help you promote your fundraiser in different stages of your campaign:

• As soon as the restaurant accepts your event, you can use the already mentioned Meal Promotion Page.
• 3 weeks before the event you can use the Facebook Event Image and Description Template.
• 2 weeks before you can use the Promo Schedule, Printable Flyer, & Text Message Template.
• 10 days before you can use the Email template.
• 1 week before you can use the Social Media Video & Caption Template.
• 1 day before you can use the Digital Flyer & Text Message Template.
• On the event day you can use the Social Media Story Video.

What Are You Waiting For? Create Your Fundraiser Now!

These tools are easy to use and free: you have no more excuses! No budget limits can stop you from organizing and promoting the best fundraiser ever. You can send emails to your potential attendees, create amazing videos to get people to sign up, make beautiful brochures, and RSVP in the easiest way possible without spending one single dollar. 

Nothing can stop you now, go for it!