FFC partners with three audiences — charities, volunteers, and the FFC operations team — and each one needs a different slice of the broader nonprofit toolkit. This page is the operations-team reference: which tools FFC requires, which it recommends, which it tolerates, and which have been retired or replaced since the original guide was published.
The charity-facing curated list lives at freeforcharity.org/free-for-charitys-tools-for-success/. This page adds the FFC stance (required / recommended / optional / deprecated) plus modern notes so a volunteer admin onboarding a charity knows what to push for, what to tolerate, and what to skip.
How to read the stance column
- Required — FFC will not complete service delivery without this in place at the charity.
- Recommended — FFC actively suggests this; deviation needs a reason.
- Optional — Fine if the charity wants it, fine if they do not.
- Deprecated — Was on the legacy list; we no longer recommend it.
General tools for everyone
Personal-productivity tools FFC recommends to anyone working with a charity.
LastPass (recommended)
Cost: Free + Premium
Password vault for credential storage. Legacy FFC standard for secrets sharing across volunteers.
Modern notes: Modern FFC is migrating to Bitwarden / 1Password Teams. Still acceptable but evaluate at next renewal.
Mint (optional)
Cost: Free, ad-supported
Personal financial tracking — earning and spending patterns over time.
Modern notes: Intuit retired Mint in early 2024. Replacements: Credit Karma (same vendor), Monarch, YNAB.
Credit Karma (optional)
Cost: Free, ad-supported
Credit score and report monitoring.
Modern notes: Still active; the Mint replacement for budgeting features.
RescueTime (optional)
Cost: Free + Premium
Personal productivity tracking — surfaces work-habit patterns.
Modern notes: Workplace IT may block installation. Use only on personal machines.
LinkedIn (recommended)
Cost: Free + Premium
Professional networking; functions as the durable contact record for FFC volunteers.
Modern notes: Required for proving-ground board cross-references.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking (optional)
Cost: ~$200
Speech-to-text for accessibility — particularly useful for volunteers with dyslexia.
Modern notes: macOS and Windows now ship comparable built-in dictation. Evaluate built-in tools first.
Nonprofit-specific tools
Tools FFC routes partner charities to as part of standard onboarding.
Candid (GuideStar) (required)
Cost: Free + paid
Canonical US nonprofit directory; FFC requires at minimum the Gold seal.
Modern notes: See wordpress-guidestar-guide for the seal-progression runbook.
TechSoup (required)
Cost: Free + admin fees
Validated-charity gateway to discounted software (Adobe, Microsoft, QuickBooks).
Modern notes: Charity must complete TechSoup validation before FFC routes them through the discount pipeline.
VolunteerMatch (recommended)
Cost: Free basic + paid upgrades
Volunteer recruitment + LinkedIn integration.
Modern notes: Used in charity-validation to confirm the charity engages volunteers — even a dormant profile counts.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise for Nonprofits (required)
Cost: Free + premium tiers
Mailbox, calendar, Teams, OneDrive, and the Office suite — FFC default productivity stack.
Modern notes: M365 admin is one of the two FFC Global Admin training tracks. See /training-plan.
Google Workspace for Nonprofits (optional)
Cost: Free + paid plans
Gmail, Drive, AdWords grant.
Modern notes: FFC default is M365; Google Workspace remains acceptable if the charity is already deeply embedded. Don't migrate them just for parity.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (recommended)
Cost: Free up to 10 seats annually
CRM for donor + program management.
Modern notes: Available through the Salesforce Foundation. Substantial overhead — only deploy if the charity has staff capacity to operate it.
QuickBooks Online (Nonprofit) (recommended)
Cost: $75/year (5 users)
Industry-standard accounting software, available at nonprofit pricing via TechSoup.
Modern notes: Wave Accounting (below) is the free alternative for very small charities.
GrantStation (optional)
Cost: ~$199/year
Grant research and writing tooling.
Modern notes: Only worth the cost if the charity has a dedicated grant writer.
MailChimp (optional)
Cost: Tiered + 15% nonprofit discount
Marketing automation and email broadcasts.
Modern notes: Many charities migrate to ConvertKit / Brevo as MailChimp pricing climbs.
Small-business tools
Useful when the charity has earned-revenue or consulting income alongside donations.
Wave Accounting (optional)
Cost: Free, ad-supported
Basic accounting for very small charities or earned-revenue arms.
Modern notes: Migrate to QuickBooks once the charity has more than one income stream.
Shoeboxed (optional)
Cost: Free + premium
Receipt scanning + OCR for charity expense tracking.
Modern notes: M365 + OneDrive + Power Automate covers most of this need now for FFC-managed charities.
Fiverr (optional)
Cost: $5+/task
Outsourced micro-tasks.
Modern notes: Use sparingly — charity-relevant tasks usually need a long-term relationship.
Upwork (optional)
Cost: Per-project
Outsourced larger freelance work.
Modern notes: Vet vendors carefully — FFC volunteers are the first line for charity work.
Cross-references
- wordpress-online-impacts-onboarding — the external-validation account checklist.
- wordpress-guidestar-guide — Candid is the most-required tool on this list.
- /training-plan — the FFC volunteer-side toolkit alignment.