Doing good takes more than just goodwill, and nonprofits know this better than anybody. If you don’t have the right tools at your disposal, you can only do as good as your own resources allow, and for nonprofits that can be very limiting.
The good news is that you’re not alone in doing good. People might not be invested in your cause, specifically, but there’s still an understanding that nonprofits need their communities. To help build bridges to communities of all stakeholders, social media tools also try and do good by nonprofits.
In addition to social media tools that offer free trials, there's a range of apps out there which offer discounts for non-commercial organizations. These tools cover everything from curating social media content to finding donors, influencers, and volunteers. Whatever social media has to offer can be put to your good use - all it takes is picking the right tools for your needs.
Here, I’ve compiled a listing of social media tools which offer discounted rates for nonprofits. The tools are grouped according to basic social media management tasks for your easy navigation. Let’s see how with the right tools you can do even better.
Social media monitoring and listening
Every day, billions of conversations are happening on social media. Before you get to managing your online presence, it’s essential to research the environment:
- Get to know the community you’re operating in
- Manage your reputation
- Connect with volunteers and donors
- Secure influencer and media support
- Keep track of what’s new in your field.
Below are my best picks for social media listening.
1. Awario
Awario is a social media monitoring and listening tool which tracks every mention of your brand or cause on all of the major social media platforms and the broader web. Thanks to the baked-in analytics, the mentions are then transformed into data insights such as sentiment, reach, major topics, locations & languages, platforms, etc.
Best for: Tracking your reputation, finding opinion leaders and donors, researching causes and communities.
Pricing: $29/mo for the Starter plan, $89/mo for Pro, and $299/mo for Enterprise. Saves 2 months with a yearly plan.
Non-profit discount: 50% off Pro and Enterprise.
2. Mention
As the name suggests, Mention is a social media management and monitoring tool which scans social media for all the conversations around any chosen keyword. Along with these mentions, you get crucial metrics such as sentiment, influence score, volume, etc. In addition to this, Mention offers social media management features.
Best for: Identifying trends, interacting with the media and influencers, developing engaging content.
Pricing: Solo is $29/mo, Pro is $99/mo, and Enterprise is $450+/mo. All yearly plans save you 2 months.
Non-profit discount: 20% off yearly subscriptions.
3. Keyhole
Keyhole is an AI-powered social media monitoring tool. It offers non-stop brand and campaign monitoring, advanced performance predictions, and machine learning-based content suggestions. Similar to other social listening tools, Keyhole keeps you updated on any buzz around your topic, as well as key figures and trends.
Best for: Brand optimization, campaign monitoring, crafting high-performing content.
Pricing: Professionals is $199/mo, Corporations is $599/mo, and Agencies & Enterprise is $999+/mo. Annual plans save you up to 50%.
Non-profit discount: 10% off real-time data subscriptions (no historical data).
4. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a social media management and listening app which enables you to combine all of your social profiles under one inbox and automate their management. Assign roles and tasks to your team members, schedule and publish content, all the while researching trends, opinion leaders, and the sentiment your audience displays.
Best for: Managing social media as a team, tracking hashtags and trends, identifying influencers.
Pricing: Medium is €99/mo, Large is €199/mo, X-Large is €299/mo, and Enterprise is €499/mo. Save up to 20% with yearly plans.
Non-profit discount: 25% off monthly and 15% off annual subscriptions.
Content curation
Once you’ve researched your niche and audience, it’s time to populate your social media profiles with content.
With social listening underway, half the job is done. The rest is left to content curation tools:
- Sourcing content with high engagement potential
- Generating original content ideas
- Sharing content from opinion leaders and other publishers
- Growing your audience
Here are the best tools for content curation.
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a research and monitoring tool which can keep you updated on any cause you choose to follow. Discover trends, browse popular questions, and check topical stories from key media and influencers. Apart from media monitoring, BuzzSumo boasts backlink audit features and lets you keep track of your current backlinks and build new ones.
Best for: Researching content, finding influencers and mass media, building links.
Pricing: Pro is $99/mo, Plus is $179/mo, Large is $299/mo, and Enterprise is $499+/mo. Save 20% on all yearly plans.
Non-profit discount: 40% off all plans.
6. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media marketing and management dashboard which enables you to schedule posts across all your profiles, manage content in a team, as well as measure your social media efforts. Hootsuite also boasts social media monitoring features that empower you to follow and engage with the topics that matter to you.
Best for: Creating and promoting content for multiple social accounts.
Pricing: Professional is $19/mo, Team is $99/mo, Business is $599/mo, and Enterprise is custom and available upon request.
Non-profit discount: 50% off Professional and Team plans.
7. Buffer
Buffer is your go-to social media solution for managing multiple social media profiles in a team. The tool offers a one-dashboard approach to content planning and coordination, with all your social accounts brought together. You get to plan, draft, schedule, and review content for all of your social media, as well as use Buffer’s analytics to measure your performance.
Best for: Publishing content to multiple social profiles, handling messages, and analyzing your social media performance.
Pricing: Pro is $15/mo, Premium is $65/mo, and Business is $99/mo. All yearly plans save you up to 20%.
Non-profit discount: 50% off all plans.
8. Later
Later is a social media content management tool that has you covered on everything from content curation to in-depth analytics. Later enables you to find user-generated content and schedule posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, including Stories. You then get advanced performance statistics to know the reach and engagement of your every post.
Best for: Finding and scheduling content, driving traffic, and increasing user engagement.
Pricing: the Free plan is forever free, Plus is $7.5/mo, Premium is $16/mo, Starter is $24/mo, and Brand is $41/mo. Save 17% with yearly billing.
Non-profit discount: 50% off annual and monthly subscriptions.
9. SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue is an all-in-one social media publishing tool. It lets you sort content by types, recycle evergreen posts, get unlimited content suggestions, and even analyze and learn from top-performing social media profiles. SmarterQueue boasts an advanced visual social media calendar to help you plan way ahead and manage your content effortlessly.
Best for: Thorough content curation, smart recycling of evergreen content, social history analysis.
Pricing: Custom and Solo are $19.99/mo, Business is $39.99/mo, and Agency is $79.99/mo. All annual plans save you 15%.
Non-profit discount: 50% off all plans.
10. MavSocial
MavSocial is a social media management tool. It offers content publishing, social media listening, one-inbox message management, and real-time performance monitoring.
With MavSocial, you can also track your engagement history, perfect team collaboration workflow, and fine-tune your publishing even further.
Best for: Discovering user-generated content, and promoting outreach.
Pricing: Advanced is $19/mo, Pro is $78/mo, Business is $199/mo, and Enterprise is $499/mo. Save 2 months by going for annual billing.
Non-profit discount: up to 50% off Advanced, Pro, and Business.
Visuals and video
Nothing compliments your carefully curated social media content like appealing and professional visuals. Make sure you amplify the reach of your posts by using visuals and video content. The good news is that both can be created quicker and easier than ever before.
11. Canva
Canva is an all-time favorite graphic design tool. It empowers anybody to create eye-catching and thumb-stopping visuals with minimum time and effort. Browse Canva’s templates library or create from scratch - either way, you’re guaranteed to get professional-looking visuals for every social platform.
Best for: Creating effortless and stunning visuals.
Pricing: the Free plan is forever free, Pro is $9.95/mo, and Enterprise is $30/mo.
Non-profit discount: free subscription to Canva Pro.
12. Typito
Typito is Canva for videos. It also relies on drag-and-dropping functionality to let you create professional looking videos for all of your social media. The same as in Canva, you can customize templates with your brand colors, fonts, and logo.
Best for: Creating branded image slideshows and videos.
Pricing: Starter is $29/mo, Professional is $66/mo, and Premium is $149/mo. All annual plans save you 2 months.
Non-profit discount: 50% discount on annual subscriptions.
Publishing and automation
Now that you've got your content sorted out, you can go ahead and automate content publishing to perfection.
Whether you’re managing a large team or posting all by yourself, a beautifully automated content publishing process or a virtual assistant can be of massive help:
- Fine-tune your content approval workflow
- Schedule content and plan ahead
- Automate posting to multiple social profiles
- Minimize the time it takes to publish.
Below are the tools to help you automate your publishing workflow.
13. SocialPilot
SocialPilot is a social media marketing tool that focuses on scheduling and analytics. SocialPilot offers a single dashboard for up to 100 social profiles for easy management of content and messages. The tool’s content calendar and collaboration features enable you to organize your publishing and content approval by creating a virtual team.
Best for: Fine-tuning content publishing workflow, managing comments and messages in real-time.
Pricing: Professional is $30/mo, Small Team is $50/mo, Agency is $100/mo, and Enterprise is custom. Save 20% with yearly billing.
Non-profit discount: Available upon request.
14. Planable
Planable is a social media content creation tool. It offers a content calendar for easy planning, shared team space for smooth collaboration, and separate workspaces for effortless management of multiple campaigns. Planable is also great for feedback management, as it lets you assign user comments to team members, adding notes and collaborating in real-time.
Best for: Creating and approving content, engaging with the audience as a team.
Pricing: Starter is $39/mo, Premium is $99/mo, Enterprise is custom. All yearly plans save you 2 months.
Non-profit discount: Available upon request.
15. Gain
Gain is a content approval tool which enables you to minimize the trouble of multi-step content approval in big teams. By adding team members, and assigning their roles in content review, social media posts are automatically shared with all the stakeholders for approval. Once approved, posts are published automatically as scheduled.
Best for: Refining content approval workflow in large teams.
Pricing: $99/mo. Save 2 months by paying yearly.
Non-profit discount: 50% off.
16. Tailwind
Tailwind is a scheduling tool for Instagram and Pinterest. It makes managing the platforms smooth and efficient, as it lets you plan and schedule content, supplies you with hashtag ideas, and gives you endless suggestions on relevant content. Tailwind will also guide you on recycling evergreen content.
Best for: Getting content ideas for Instagram and Pinterest, growing your following and reach.
Pricing: Pinterest Plus and Instagram Plus are $14.99/mo each. Annual plans save you $60. Larger plans with advanced features are available upon request.
Non-profit discount: 50% off Large Business, Agency and Enterprise plans.
17. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a marketing suite that helps you organize your work. Its Social Organizer is a tool designed for social media management specifically - it lets you publish, monitor, and measure your performance across social networks. Depending on the plan, you can get advanced feature sets like real-time monitoring, social inbox, profile targeting, and priority social sending.
Best for: Integrated social campaigns management.
Pricing: Social Organizer’s Growth is $100/mo, Professional is $300/mo, Enterprise is custom and available upon request. Save 20% with annual plans.
Non-profit discount: 30% off the Growth, Professional, and Enterprise-level subscriptions.
18. MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is essentially a virtual social media assistant - it takes content scheduling to the next level, offering full posting automation. This means that Edgar can write your social media posts for you, pull content from your library, and continuously publish and reshare to up to 25 social profiles. You can minimize your content publishing involvement to one weekly email update from the tool.
Best for: Fully automating social media posting, growing reach.
Pricing: $29/mo for your first 4 months. After 4 month, the charge is $49.
Non-profit discount: $147 off yearly plans. The discounted monthly subscription is $37.
Reach and engagement
Ultimately, the goal of social media management is building communities. This is what you strive for every step of the way, planning and publishing content across social platforms. To boost user engagement even further, you have the help of a handful of brilliant tools for advanced social media management.
Here are some of my best picks.
19. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media monitoring tool with content publishing functionality. It brings real-time results of ongoing social media activities, as well as audience intel and topical updates. Sprout Social lets you easily collaborate on creating and publishing content that promises a substantial increase in traffic across platforms.
Best for: Growing awareness and social media reach, promoting team advocacy, measuring the efficiency of social media marketing.
Pricing: Standard is $99 per user/mo, Professional is $149 per user/mo, and Advanced is $249 per user/mo.
Non-profit discount: available upon request.
20. Sendible
Sendible is a social media management app which enables you to plan content for multiple platforms and engage with your audience from a single dashboard. The tool offers a built-in editor for you to craft messages for each social network. On top of social media, Sendible also offers publishing to blogs.
Best for: Advanced content planning and scheduling, community outreach and engagement.
Pricing: Starter is $29/mo, Traction is $99/mo, Growth is $199/mo, and Large is $299/mo. Save 15% by paying yearly.
Non-profit discount: 15% off monthly and 25% off annual plans.
21. eClincher
eClincher is a social media management tool which boasts advanced publishing, social inbox, analytics, and collaboration features. eClincher also lets you automate posting with Smart Queues and publish all new blog posts to social media instantly. The tool combines all your messages in one place to help you manage social interactions effortlessly.
Best for: Boosting traffic and engagement, engaging with followers, communities, and social audiences in real time.
Pricing: Basic is $59/mo, Premier is $119/mo, and Agency is $219/mo. Save 15% on all yearly subscriptions.
Non-profit discount: 15% off all plans.
22. NapoleonCat
NapoleonCat is a social media marketing assistant which guides you on boosting your online visibility, gives you the tools to manage all of your social profiles from one place, and lets you automate your interactions. NapoleonCat also supplies you with social media analytics for instant insights into the performance of your campaigns.
Best for: Growing online visibility, benchmarking your social media campaigns performance.
Pricing: starting at $27/mo for Standard and $55/mo for Pro; Enterprise is custom and available upon request. Yearly plans save you 2 months.
Non-profit discount: 50% off all plans.
Recap
In more ways than one, social media is huge, but as much as it can be a help in your good work, it can also be a massive bother. Luckily, there are tools that help you navigate the waters of social media and get the absolute most out of it. Make sure you try at least one social media tool from each category to see how much your performance can be amplified.