Free / Low-Cost Resources for Nonprofits in NYC and Beyond
With every dollar dedicated to serving your community, nonprofits often face tight budgets. Fortunately, a wealth of resources can help you maximize your resources without breaking the bank. Here's a breakdown of valuable tools across different areas of your organization:
Finding Talent
You'll need a variety of support, from photographers to capture your work in the community to social media marketers and website designers to spread your message. Here's where to find them:
Volunteers
NYC Service: A great resource for finding volunteers in New York City.
Catchafire: Connects nonprofits with skilled professionals for pro bono projects. Nonprofit memberships are often covered by local funders. Here’s the application form to request membership.
WeMakeChange: A platform that matches volunteers with social impact organizations for various online and offline projects.
LinkedIn: While you can post a free job post and receive up to 50 applications, please be aware that you might receive many applications from individuals seeking paying work or those located outside the country for paying projects, or simply, scams. To attract the right candidates, make sure to include "volunteer role" in the job title and specify that the opportunity is in-person or hybrid to filter out unqualified candidates.
Colleges
CUNY Internship to Employment (12E) Partnership: Connects recent CUNY graduates with 12-week internship opportunities at no cost to employers.
University departments: Reach out to departments like marketing or nonprofit management at local universities. Professors often encourage students to take on such projects for course credit.
Managing Volunteers & Staff
Slack: A tool for keeping volunteers & staff connected, organized, and informed through dedicated channels.
Legal Help
Lawyers Alliance: Provides free legal services to nonprofits in New York City. New client applications have a fee ($475 as of April 2025).
Financial Management & HR
Wave: Accounting software that is significantly cheaper than Quickbooks, costing $16/month.
Gusto: Offers user-friendly and relatively affordable payroll for contractors at $49/month (+$6/month per person). Here’s an affiliate link to receive $100 when you run your payroll.
Technology
General Tech Requests
TechSoup: A platform that provides discounted software, hardware, and technology services to eligible nonprofits.
Project Management
Trello: A free and simple project management platform to keep track of tasks among your volunteers & staff members.
Monday.com: Project management platform that is more complex than Trello, offering a wider range of features.
Social Media Mangement
Metricool: Securely schedule and analyze social media content, and streamline team collaboration with features like a post-approval workflow. This ensures that all volunteer or staff posts are on-brand and aligned with your communication strategy, without the need for password sharing. Here’s an affiliate link.
Design Tools
Canva: An easy-to-use graphic design tool with a free version that offers a wide range of templates and design elements to create professional-looking social media visuals.
Figma: A powerful design tool that specializes in designing websites and user interfaces, offering advanced collaboration features. As a design tool, it is one step above Canva.
Website Builder
Squarespace: Squarespace offers a user-friendly platform with many templates to get you started. However, for a website that truly reflects your unique mission and maximizes your impact, a custom design is essential. We specialize in creating tailored web experiences that elevate your brand and drive results. Please contact us to discuss your project and discover how we can help you achieve your goals.
