Thanks to various tech partners across the globe, Southern Africa-based Nonprofits have access to donated and discounted software solutions to help boost their productivity. We have compiled the ultimate software toolkit to help your organisation be more productive:

Security

• Bitdefender – discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security is software that protects networked laptops, desktops, servers, and virtual machines from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, rootkits, and other threats. Network protection is managed through a central console.

Productivity Tools

• Microsoft on-premise – discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Microsoft has a wide variety of software products for nonprofit organisations and public libraries. Hundreds of professional and enterprise Microsoft products are available at discounted rates.

• Microsoft Cloud: Office 365 for Nonprofits – donated and discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Empower staff and volunteers to succeed with the dynamic set of tools included in Office 365 Nonprofit plans. Provide team members with free email and online document editing and storage. And with video conferencing, instant messaging, and your own Yammer site, you can bring teams together from around the world.

Streamline and manage your finances

• SAGE Accounting – donated and discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Sage Foundation is committed to ensuring as many eligible nonprofit organisations benefit from Sage Business Cloud donations as possible. They want to support charities, social enterprises and nonprofit organisations like they do any other business.

Marketing, marketing, marketing

• Google for Nonprofits – donated options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Google Ad Grants is a donation program that distributes free in-kind advertising to eligible nonprofit organisations. As of 2018, qualifying organisations are eligible to receive up to $10,000 per month in in-kind advertising within the AdWords search engine marketing platform.

Google Earth allows you to map the impact of your nonprofit organisation. Bring your nonprofit’s story to life with custom maps and global location data resources for nonprofits.

The YouTube for Nonprofit Program gives nonprofits access to unique YouTube features to help connect with supporters, volunteers, and donors. For many causes, video is a new but essential format for storytelling.

• MailChimp – discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

With MailChimp’s marketing automation tools, you can send the right message to the right people at the right time. It’s like having a second brain for your organisation. Make a powerful first impression. Show customers, students, or volunteers everything you have to offer by setting up an onboarding series. Let people know you’re thinking about them by creating an annual ‘Happy Birthday’ email. Or, simply extend a warm welcome to new contacts.

Collaboration

• Microsoft Teams – available for free with Office 365 for Nonprofits Subscriptions

Microsoft Teams is a platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. The service integrates with an Office 365 subscription office productivity suite, including Microsoft Office and Skype, and features extensions that can integrate with non-Microsoft products.

• Workplace by Facebook – donated options available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Workplace is a collaborative platform run by Facebook, Inc., started on October 10, 2016. It may be used to communicate via groups, to chat with colleagues and offers the social networks features in a corporate environment. Its testing started in the beginning of 2015. As opposed to Facebook’s website blue colour, it uses grey as its visual brand identity. As of May 2018, the core features of Workplace are available for free. A premium usage tier is offered for $3 per user per month, with a 90-day free trial; this adds customer support and enterprise features such as administrator controls and APIs. Discounts are available for organisations with over 5,000 users; the premium tier is offered free to registered non-profit organisations and educational institutions.

Cloud Storage

• Box.org – donated and discounted options available in selected countries to eligible organisations.

Box.org believes that those committed to doing good should have the best tools available to them. Box.org’s mission is to enable nonprofits to achieve their mission in a productive, competitive, and collaborative way. They provide nonprofits with simple and powerful content file management and collaboration solution for their most critical programme, development, and back-office initiatives.

• Google Drive (30GB storage space per user) and Microsoft OneDrive (1TB storage space per user) are also available to eligible organisations as a part of the Google for Nonprofits and Microsoft Office 365 for Nonprofits programmes respectively.

Graphic Design

• Canva – donated option available in selected countries to eligible organisations

As a way to give back to the community, Canva offers free Canva for Work access for up to 10 members to eligible nonprofit organisations. Eligible nonprofit organisations with proper documentation qualify to get free Canva for Work access.

• Pablo by Buffer – available for free

Creating compelling visuals for your social media could give your engagement a boost. And while most of us are probably not gifted designers, that shouldn’t stop us from creating great images to share! At Buffer, Pablo was created in order to provide everyone with a tool to create beautiful images they can share on social media. The tool is completely free – whether you’ve got a Buffer account or not!

Social Media Posting Scheduler

• Buffer – discounted option available in selected countries to eligible organisations

Buffer is a new and smarter way to share what you want to share on Social Media. Posts in your queue will be sent out automatically by Buffer, according to the posting schedule that you put in place. Select the social account you’d like to customize the posting schedule for, select the Settings tab at the top, and then select Posting Schedule. From here, you can choose which timezone is best for this account and customize the days and times your posts should go out. Select the days you’d like to include and add the individual times you’d like your content to be shared. It’s like your magic box you can use anytime to fill with great Tweets, Facebook stories or LinkedIn updates. Just drop them in and you don’t have to ever worry about when it will be posted, it’s all taken care of by Buffer for you.

If your organisation is based in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, or Zimbabwe, and you would like more information on any of the above options, please contact our support team on: techsoup@phambano.org.za