If much of advancing your nonprofit's cause rests on your shoulders, you need a few tools that will help you lighten that load. If you are going to build a base of donors or sponsors, moreover, you are going to need to build an email list and track and communicate with the people on that list in a professional way. Here are my top ten nonprofit management apps for saving your sanity as a nonprofit leader and advancing your nonprofit's cause (and 5 out 10 are free or have free versions):

1. Akubo

Akubo is a web-based software product for managing your contacts, donors/sponsors, email newsletters, and events.  Akubo integrates contact information, donation history, email newsletter and event management functionality. I wasted a lot of time early on with separate applications for donor tracking (Exceed), email campaigns (Vertical Response) and Events (Eventbright). I had so many different lists of names to reconcile constantly that I thought I was going to lose my mind. Now, when a new contact signs up for an event on our Akubo event page, that contact information is added to Akubo automatically. Similarly, when I want to send a quarterly communication to major donors, I can easily cull them from my list, create the message and send it, all from Akubo. I recommend the Akubo pro license, which is $400 when billed annually, allows you to store up to 5,000 contacts and includes the event management module.  More information on this nonprofit management app is available here.

2. dropbox

If you are running or working in a small nonprofit, you are likely depending on volunteers to get some of the work done. So, the likelihood that you will need to share files with others is probably pretty high. There are many ways you could do this but I'm going to recommend one: Dropbox. My reasons for putting Dropbox at the head of the class include the fact that it is widely used, much more so, in fact, than a competitor: Google Drive. So, there is a likelihood that some of your volunteers already have it and know how to use it.

Another reason I like Dropbox has to do with its ease of use and cross-platform availability. There is one feature that I use a lot that is unique to Dropbox: File request. This feature allows you to set up a folder and send anyone a link that will allow them to upload material to that folder, regardless of whether they use Dropbox. Importantly, people with the link cannot see items in the folder. This is great for collecting resumes and job applications or receiving large files, e.g., a lot of pictures. Finally, while using Dropbox shouldn't be your sole means of backing up your hard drive, it is a great insurance policy against losing everything when the inevitable meltdown occurs. Add Dropbox to your folder structure, as shown below, and every folder below the Dropbox folder syncs to the web and to every device where you've installed Dropbox. I recommend the Plus account for individuals, which allows 1 TB of storage and costs $99, billed annually, or $9.99 billed monthly.

3. evernote

I've written a lot about Evernote and I'll write a lot more, God willing and the creek don't rise. I love the program. But the point I want to make here is that you if you are going to be a good leader and take your organization to the next level, you need to be organized. You need to be able to easily capture and file receipts for expenses and purchases, make notes from meetings and telephone conversations, clip important email threads and webpages and be able to easily find and share all of the foregoing.  Evernote can help us do all of those things.

Another plus is that the application works on almost any platform that exists. It can also be used in teams, so as your nonprofit grows, your use of Evernote can expand across your organization. I cover Evernote in more detail in my the free e-book, The Choose to Improve Guide to Better Management of Your digital Information, available here. I discuss the various subscription levels here. While there is a free version available, I recommend getting at least a pro account ($34.99 annually) because at that level you have the ability to use the web clipper browser add on to clip email, something I have found to be invaluable. 

4. hootsuite

Hootsuite is a platform for managing social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). It allows you to create a digital dashboard where you can monitor your social media pages and the posts of others you are following. The obvious benefit of these dashboards is that it saves you from having to open each application separately to see the latest activity. An added benefit is that it comes with a browser add on, Hootlet, which allows you to post to multiple pages simultaneously and to time those posts. The benefit of this feature to a small nonprofit is that, with a little work a couple of times a week, you can automate your posts and have something fresh on your pages every day. This makes keeps your audiences satisfied and engaged with your cause. If you're monitoring 3 or fewer social profiles, Hootsuite is free. For 4 to 10 profiles, Hootsuite is $19 per month (the Professional Plan). A screenshot of my Hootesuite Dashboard, captured with Snagit (discussed below), is shown below. Get more information here.

5. keepass

KeePass is a free password management program. There are others out there, both free and paid, and PC Magazine recently reviewed some of them here. KeePass has been around for a while, and, although it's been criticized for having unnecessary bells and whistles, my experience with it has been great. My 80 year-old father can use it pretty well, too.

The reasons for using a password manager should go without saying; but let me underscore a few of them. First, you're running a corporation, which carries with it certain expectations that you will safeguard that entity's assets. Things like bank account and credit card numbers should not be left on sticky notes that hang from the side of someone's computer screen.

Second, you have enough headaches as a nonprofit leader already. Don't add losing or forgetting your online banking credentials, insurance policy details, or your federal employer identification number (EIN) to the list when, with a little bit of work, you can ensure that this information is secure and readily available to you.

Finally, the work you are doing now is the foundation for the organization you want to grow. Make that foundation a solid one by putting this best administrative practice in place. I'm showing below my KeePass folder structure for the nonprofit I run to give you a sense of how the program works. (Notice my use of the "blur" feature in Snagit to hide information in several of the columns included in the screen capture). Get more information about KeePass here.

6. netvibes

If you're striving toward inbox 0 and struggling to keep up with various email newsletters, blogs and RSS feeds, you're going to love Netvibes. For those who remember iGoogle, and were as devasted as me upon its demise, take heart. Netvibes is iGoogle on steroids and it's free.

To give you a sense of how it works, I'll outline how I use it. At its highest level, Netvibes is organized into pages, which you navigate through tabs. Each page has a variety of different apps, which you add. On my first page, I have a a gmail app, a google calendar app, several custom links to various Google spreadsheets and forms, a couple of weather apps and some fun apps like "Word of the Day," as shown below:

My subsequent pages are organized according to the major topics on which I work. Let's look at the page for the nonprofit I run, NeighborSpace of Baltimore County. It contains one app for each of the blogs/feeds that I follow:

This, in and of itself, is great, because with little effort I can see a lot of new news and click on a topic to read more and publish to social media with Hootsuite. But Netvibes goes one step further and allows you to see this same page in what is called "reader" mode:

Now every article in every feed on the page is listed in chronological order and in greater detail, making it even easier to scroll through your topics. In as little as half an hour per day, I can scroll through my feeds to stay on top of relevant news and also post appropriate content to social media. Get more information here.

7. nitro pro pdf

There is a lot of PDF software out there and much of it is free. So why am I recommending that you spend scarce resources to purchase a PDF program? The simple answer has to do with being efficient and looking professional. Let me explain with a couple of examples.

• Board Agenda Attachments Run Amuck: How many times have you struggled to put an agenda together for your board meeting because Item 1 is a Word document, Item 2 is an Excel spreadsheet, Item 3 is a PowerPoint presentation, Item 4 is a PDF, Item 5 is another Word Document, etc. The email you send is a document soup, making it difficult for members to organize the documents to prepare for the meeting. For those who are married to printed material, moreover, the likelihood that they will take the time to print a half-dozen attachments is slim. Nitro solves this problem by allowing you to combine multiple files and file types into a single PDF. You can then email the entire agenda packet as a single PDF. If the resulting file is very large, you can simply send a Dropbox link.
• Too Much Time and Too Many Steps to Sign & Return Documents Sent to You by Email: You're running a business and, because of that, there are going to be many things that you will be asked to sign and return to others by email. Examples include your IRS 990, contracts with vendors, grant applications, etc. Instead of printing these things out, manually signing, and then scanning the document so that you can email it back to the sender, you can simply insert your signature from within Nitro PDF, save the document and email it.

Nitro has other laudable features, like the ability to edit and add text to PDFs, OCR documents (i.e., convert PDFs to editable text), and convert PDFs to other file formats like Word, Excel and JPG. If you use Evernote, there is also a free add-on that allows you to send documents to Evernote. The software costs $159.99 for a license covering up to 10 users and is worth every penny in my humble opinion. Learn more here.

8. nozbe

Nozbe is a task and project manager all-in-one. For those working in small nonprofits, one person typically has enough on his or her plate to choke a horse. You have to have some way to track and prioritize all that you need to do. And that tool needs to be something that integrates with other digital tools. That's why I've chosen Nozbe as my task and project management software. It integrates with gmail, making it easy for me to convert emails to tasks. It integrates with Dropbox, making it easy for me to attach documents to tasks and projects. And it also integrates beautifully with Evernote, making it simple for me to add notes to my projects.

Nozbe works cross-platform, so I can add and review tasks as easily from my phone as I can from my desktop. Nozbe has both free and paid versions. I've written more about Nozbe in my free guide, The Choose to Improve Guide to Better Management of Your Digital Information. You can get the free guide here. To get a sense of the user interface, I've include a screenshot (also made with Snagit), below. For more information, click here.

9. snagit

Snagit is a screen capture software program that allows you to save and edit what's on your screen either as a photo or a video. You may be thinking, "Isn't there a free product that comes with Windows that does the same thing?" And the answer is, "yes." But that product is far inferior to Snagit. The additional benefits of Snagit include its many advanced editorial features, e.g., the ability to blur out things that you don't want people to see, eliminate an image's background, add shapes and text, and add borders, etc. If you are a small nonprofit creating your own fact sheets and other publications, Snagit is a tool that is going to make that work a lot easier and make your publications both more effective and more attractive.

The foregoing features alone are enough to justify Snagit's $49.95 price, in my opinion, but the software does more. You can also capture what's on your screen as a video. This feature is particularly helpful if you are trying to show someone how to do something. But video is increasingly becoming the way we market our organizations, so gaining familiarity with it sooner rather than later is an excellent idea. In fact, I now send a video update to my members on a quarterly basis. Learn more here.

10. triplog

If you are doing it all yourself, or even with the help of a few staff or volunteers, you probably don't have a company car. That makes tracking the miles you drive on behalf of the organization important, whether the organization is reimbursing you for them or you are deducting them on your tax return. The TripLog App, which is available for iOS and Android is the most feature -rich automated mileage log tracker available. Once it's set up on your phone, it works automatically. All you need to do is login once a month to review and edit the entries it has made and then download a spreadsheet for reimbursement or tax purposes. At $3 per month, or $30 billed annually, TripLog is a bargain. Learn more here.