The benefits of technology are unquestionable, but when organizations are limited by shrinking budgets, large expenditures on technology are often out of the question. While larger agencies are able to invest in software and technology infrastructure to meet their specific needs, smaller organizations find the cost associated with large software packages to be prohibitive.

But fear not--the growing landscape of web-based applications has made enterprise-like tools available to organizations that would otherwise be unable to afford the costs associated with licensing, hosting, and maintaining them.

In the past year, I have presented at various park and recreation conferences and highlighted many free or low-cost tools that can benefit small- to medium-sized park and recreation organizations, even those on a shoe-string budget. This first in a series of articles will focus on getting started with tools specific to fundraising and donor communication.

The following tools are a great starting point for nonprofits seeking to raise money, communicate with donors, and measure campaign effectiveness. If you are seeking specific platforms to run campaigns, you should check out http://mashable.com/2011/03/14/social-good-fundraising-tools/.

1. PayPal

The standard bearer in collecting online donations is PayPal. PayPal provides account options for organizations of all sizes and donation volume. Many times, other online tools will integrate with PayPal for the donation process. Additionally, donate buttons can be easily added to most websites.
http://paypal.com

2. Donor Tools

Donor Tools is an online database application to track donors, donations, funds, and correspondence. The platform integrates with PayPal for collecting donations and with MailChimp for mass emails. Donor Tools also automates many of the steps in your donation processing, such as sending automated "thank you" emails and providing formatted letters to print and send to larger donors. Finally, the Donor Tools platform provides full-scale reporting and auditing tools without breaking the bank.

Accounts range from $19/month to $79/month, depending on the number of donors and funds required.
http://donortools.com

3. MailChimp

Communication with potential donors is essential. One of the lowest-cost ways to communicate is with email. By sending out regular news updates via email, you drive more traffic to your site (and hopefully you've added a PayPal donate button). Also, you keep prospective donors interested in what you are doing and engaged in your cause, making them more likely to give. 
MailChimp is free to use until your email list grows past 2,000 subscribers, or your email volume is higher than 12,000 emails per month. The interface makes it easy to design and deploy an email message to your subscribers.  For tips on writing an effective message to prospective donors, read this article.
http://mailchimp.com

4. Google Analytics

Measuring the results of your online fundraising efforts is essential. By evaluating your different techniques, you can see what is working and what needs to be changed to increase effectiveness. Google Analytics can help you do just that.
Google Analytics is an online evaluation tool for your website. By installing a small piece of code on your website, you can log and track all visits to your site. Just log in to the Google Analytics website to review statistics generated by traffic to your website, such as visits, visitors, time on site, pages visited, traffic sources, and much more.  For example, you can see how visitors reach your website, whether by email links, links from other sites, social networks, or by directly typing in your URL. You can also set up a goal, such as one for donations, and then track how often it is achieved based on your various marketing efforts.
By doing proper evaluations with Google Analytics and making adjustments based on the provided statistics, you can save time and increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. And the best part? Google Analytics is free to use.
http://google.com/analytics/

While this is not an all-inclusive list, it does provide the bare essentials for online fundraising. So what are you waiting for? Get started!

The Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands provides website development and consulting to parks and public lands agencies and their friends and partners. For more information, please contact mtwolf@indiana.edu.