Free and (nearly free) Resources for Small Nonprofits
Living in a mostly rural state that also happens to have the highest per capita concentration of nonprofits in the United States, I get a lot of questions from small nonprofits about what resources exist that they can actually afford. It's not an easy question to answer . . . . so much of the capacity-building and funding infrastructure for nonprofits is not set up for organizations with budgets well under $1M and 0-3 paid staff.
And, yet, here’s the kicker, among 501c(3)s in the U.S., almost 90% have annual budgets under $500k. More than half of all nonprofits that file 990s with the IRS have annual revenues below $50-100k. Yet, as of 2019, the paid staff for small nonprofits make up only around 2% of all paid nonprofit staff. Funding also disproportionately flows to medium and large nonprofits, with small nonprofits receiving about 1.4% of individual donations and 4.3% of foundation grant dollars. Additionally, almost all brand new nonprofits fall within the “very small” category, and most capacity-building grants require that applicant orgs have been operating for 3+ years.
If you’re following the math, this leads to the conclusion we probably all assumed . . . small nonprofits are plentiful, under-staffed, and disproportionately under-resourced.
But small nonprofits, like their bigger counterparts, need training for their board and staff, consulting services, capacity-building, coaching, and all the rest.
As I laid out in this post, providing pro bono resources simply isn’t a sustainable way to support small nonprofits, neither for the orgs nor the providers. Paid services (especially when they are iterative and deepen over time with the same provider) provide much better results for a number of reasons. Small nonprofits need more equitable access to capacity-building funding (like for-profit startups), and more service providers need to provide options that are affordable now, without an extra fundraising scramble. Until, then, though, the search for free and low-cost options is a big part of the reality for the vast majority of nonprofits in the United States.
Below, I list free or nearly-free resources under different categories. Some of these you might (or probably?) already know about, but since it’s difficult to find these collected into one place, I’m thinking this will be a helpful catalog. As you’re checking out these resources, remember that, if your tax-exempt designation is not 501c(3), you might need to filter out what isn’t relevant to you.
General (Go Here First)
Check out your state’s nonprofit association. They will likely have articles and templates on their website, financial aid for conferences, someone who can help answer questions, webinars, etc. Consider joining as a member — then you’ll likely get discounts from their catalog of consultants and freelancers, discounted and free conference registrations, etc.; and they probably have discounted membership rates for small nonprofits.
Check out your state and local community foundations. They may have capacity-building grants (even for new nonprofits), free or discounted professional development and training, free group coaching cohorts, etc.
For Contractor/Freelance/Consultant Projects
Catchafire matches consultants and freelancers willing to donate their time/skills with nonprofits. To join as a nonprofit and list projects, you usually need a sponsor. Check with your local community foundation (see above) whether they will sponsor you. If that’s not an option, you can apply directly to Catchafire — they will also let you know if there’s already a local sponsor with whom you could connect. Once you’re in, results can be varied — sometimes, you get a great match who’s responsive and gets you exactly what you need — sometimes you don’t. But you’re not paying for it and the time investment on your end is fairly low, so it’s always worth checking it out.
Now that Idealist has merged with Volunteer Match, nonprofits can also advertise requests for pro bono work on idealist.org for free. This might also be a place to search for pro bono legal advice or advertise open board positions.
Nonprofit Learning Lab also has a directory of consultants offering pro bono services. I have not used it, so I can’t speak to how easy it is to find someone and work with them, but it’s worth checking out.
Note that I will never suggest directly approaching an individual (or small firm) consultant or freelancer and asking them for free help (see my take on asking for free labor here). What’s good about the above options is that consultants, contractors, and freelancers know that there’s some vetting involved in the orgs listing their projects (trust goes both ways — we also have to trust the org); and they can use those sites to decide for themselves, on their own time, whether, how much, when, and to whom to provide pro bono professional support, based on their personal financial and time resources.
Training, Templates, Guides, etc.
NonprofitReady.org: free, self-paced courses, guides, etc.
Nonprofit Learning Lab: free training materials, guides, and consultant directory
Candid: free fundraising and other training via webinars and articles
Blue Avocado: all things nonprofit leadership and management; webinars, articles, and more; all free; more forward-leaning than some other resources
BoardSource: all things board governance, including lots of templates; some, but not all of it is free; sometimes Board Source isn’t as innovative or outside-the-box as some other resources, but it’s solid and trusted.
Podcasts: There are a ton of these, and they’re a great option when you don’t have a lot of time to sit and take a course or read a bunch of articles. Examples (certainly not exhaustive):
Further Together (specifically for small nonprofits)
Nonprofit Build Up (insights from nonprofit and philanthropy leaders about assessing and building better organizational infrastructure, programmatic strategies, and challenging traditional sector approaches)
Making use of free training . . . .
While it may at first seem like there’s a plethora of free learning materials, guides, and templates out there, using them effectively takes a proactive, mindful approach. There are a lot of articles that end up thin on content, seem to list the obvious, or just sound great in theory but don’t work at a small nonprofit. And there’s just a lot of content. There’s so much to wade through that you can easily feel overwhelmed and more stuck than when you started sifting through it.
Therefore, if you want these free resources to work for your org, you have to get organized. Create a “Training Task Force” of at least 1 board member and 1 staff member to manage and run the training for the organization. Since your staff + board capacity is by definition small, the TTF members don’t need to be experts on any of the training topics — they need to be willing to choose topics and resources and facilitate a discussion. Goals from your training should be:
board + staff have some shared language around the topic and some shared understanding (even if differences remain) of how it specifically applies to your organization
the training doesn’t die with the end of the training: there are prioritized, deadlined next steps for implementing the training (even if the next step is prioritizing a bunch of ideas that came out of the training discussion)
Option 1: Book Club Style (but not everyone reads the same book)
The TTF can:
pick a different topic each month (or every other month or quarterly, whatever works best for your org)
select three resources relevant to the topic, using a combination of webinars, articles, podcasts, and guides
ask board and staff members to each chose one of the three resources to read/attend/listen to.
facilitate a 45-60 minute structured discussion with the whole board and staff (virtual or in person) — structure this how best works for your org — below is just an example:
5 min — TTF explains why this topic and why these articles, etc.
10 min (in pairs of people who picked different resources) — what struck you as an action we could and should take between now and 2 years from now?
5 min — pairs write their agreed action on the whiteboard/flipchart/google doc.
10 min (in pairs of people who picked the same resource) — how would you prioritize the actions the pairs wrote down, based on both importance and timing?
5 min — pairs add their prioritization to the white board/flipcharts/shared doc.
10-25 minutes — group discusses prioritization of actions, what further resources will be needed to take those actions, and who has lead on each
Option 2: Everyone Goes to Class Together
TTF chooses a topic and a webinar or self-paced course.
Everyone attends the same webinar or takes the same self-paced, online course.
TTF facilitates a discussion around the top takeaways and next steps. For example:
5 min — TTF explains why this topic and why this webinar/course)
10 min (whole group) — what were the top three takeaways when it comes to how the webinar/course specifically applies to this org?
10 min (in pairs) — what struck you as actions the org could and should take between now and 2 years from now?
5 min — pairs add their actions to the white board/flipcharts/shared doc
15-30 minutes — group discusses prioritization of actions, what further resources will be needed to take those actions, and who has lead on each
Software, Subscriptions, etc.
There are also free (and reduced price) versions of CRMs, communications software, accounting software, cloud storage, etc. The options are too numerous to list here, and there are are pros and cons with all of them, again making the topic too complex to cover here.
You can find them via a web search, and you can get a free DIY Tech Soup account to access discounts as well.
Qlik offers free resources for data and analytics.
For many of the free options, you’ll want to focus on whether the free version gives you all the features you need and whether it’s easy enough to use and maintain that you won’t end up having to pay for additional tech support.
Find out from your local community foundation (see above) whether they offer low cost or free subscriptions for various software and subscription needs to their nonprofit members/grantees as part of a group package deal.
Ask colleagues from other, small nonprofits what they have used and recommend.
And, of course, there’s a nonprofit Reddit for community support and suggestions.
The (Not So) Lonely Leader Substack is an Affordable Resource Too
The (Not So) Lonely Leader — has been created to be an affordable ($15/mo) resource for smaller and/or budget-restricted nonprofits. Each month, we cover a different nonprofit challenge in depth — via an article with recommendations and consulting advice, a pre-recorded micro-training video (10-25 min), access to group coaching (so that you can ask me questions about the topic and network with each other), short (5 min) podcast episodes, and more. It’s both time budget and $$ budget friendly.
