Free Fundraising Software: Best Options in 2024

Houdini Project

Houdini Project is one of the best free fundraising software available on the market, offering you an incredibly wide range of features. Most of the advanced features found in this software are usually found in other paid subscription software.

This software can cover a lot of areas, and simplify the process of managing your charity no matter how big it is, or how many donations you receive monthly.

You can process donations, create fundraising campaigns, set schedules for custom professional events, and also manage the database of donors, all from one user-friendly dashboard.

Using this software allows you yo easily build and share donation forms, and is perfectly suitable for individual nonprofits, but is also suitable for fully built crowdfunding sites and startups.

Because of it’s open source nature, this software is costantly upgraded and improved by users across the globe. This gives Houdini Project a great advantage compared to the other software options presented in this article.

Here are some of the best features found in Houdini Project:

• Can process payments – automatic disbursals with reports (CSV), SSL 256-bit encryption
• Can create event pages and print out tickets – tickets can be fully customized to fit your charity
• Allows you to easily keep an eye on the amount of money raised in events, and the number of attendees
• Gives you the power to observe the history of transactions from one dashboard – also offers powerful filtering and search options
• Supported database management – unlimited number of records, detailed filtering, can send bulk email with filters, great set of email templates and drafts, etc.
• Donation processing
• Dashboard that encompasses recurring donations, analytics, and payouts

If you want to see a full list of features found in Houdini Project, you can visit the official website.

Try Houdini Project

CiviCRM

CiviCRM is another great free fundraising software that can help you manage all aspects of your charity from the comfort of one comprehensive dashboard. You can use this app to manage the registration process, create content, and manage all aspects of membership.

This software was designed specifically in order to help you run your charity and gather donations, keep track of donors, and communicate easily with them.

CiviCRM perfectly integrates the the front-end fundraising elements with the data collection part, making it one of the best software options on the market.

The tool can be set up to allow both individual and teams of donors to activate in peer fundraising, you can set a fundraising goal, create your own webpage, and send invitations to donate, all from one simple dashboard.

Here are some of the best features found in CiviCrm:

• Contact management – stores entire range of contact data in one secure location
• Configurable and customizable – you can hire a programmer and customize the installation to your needs
• Membership management – users can sign up and pay online with automatic membership renewal reminders
• Compatible with all accounting software
• Case management – can create, manage and keep track of your workflows
• Event management – everything you need to set up and manage all aspects of your event
• Email marketing – can create and send bulk emails to lists with A/B testing and statistical analysis
• Can track contributions and create professional reports

CiviCRM’s wide range of features can be increased even more by installing one or more of the wide range of available options. You can see a full list of extensions here, and a tutorial on how to install extensions here.

Download CiviCRM

ProcessDonation

This software is a great online donation management software that offers you both a free and paid version.

The free version of this software has a great set of features that will surely get you started on your fundraising journey.

It bolsters a custom donation page, allows you to manage the fundraising event, gives you easy sharing options, and also allows for peer-to-peer fundraising.

The free version of ProcessDonation includes almost all the features found in the paid version, but is limited to only one campaign at a time, and with the capability to set just one administrator.

This shouldn’t be an issue for newly started fundraising charities, and once your charity grows, you can always invest in a paid version if needed.

Here are some of the features of the free version of ProcessDonation:

• Great user-friendly dashboard that offers you an overview of all information in the software
• Can manage all aspects of causes and edit details
• Can produce professional looking email campaigns – this allows you to promote your campaign with ease
• Auto-notifications and receipts
• Allows you to start social media campaigns
• 1 standard donation page – with an option of buying a ‘custom’ donation page separetely

The paid versions of the software add a few other useful features:

• Can manage crowdfunding campaigns
• Allows you to manage every aspect of your donor database
• Allows mobile fundraising
• Ticket sales

If you want to see a full list of features for every version of ProcessDonation, you can visit the official features webpage.If you have any questions, you can visit the official FAQ page.

Try ProcessDonation

Donor Box

DonorBox is another great software option to use if you need a free fundraising software.

This app offers a great range of features, and it is mostly focused on getting new donors, the processing of donations, and also helps you to keep your donor databases up to date.

You can create custom donation pages, allows multi-currency, and can also easily export reports to MailChimp or SalesForce.

DonorBox is a great software option, and can be used freely for charities that do not exceed the amount of $1000/month donations.

If you exceed that amount, you will need to pay a fee of 1.5% of your donations, to continue to get access to DonorBox dashboard and features.

Here are some of the best features found in the free version of DonorBox:

• Beautiful customizable forms that can be modified to be compatible with any website by using CSS
• WalletAsk – has the option to set up the campaign so that donators pay the fees, allowing you to save money
• Great integration with Zapier, Salesforce, and Mailchimp
• Allows your patrons to donate weekly, monthly, or annualy – allows you to secure regular funds
• Donors can donate by debit card, credit card, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.

Try DonorBox

Conclusion

In this article, we explored some of the best software options on the market that allow you to easily manage all aspects of your fundraising, CRM, and also payments and event planning.

We would love to know what software option you chose and why. Use the comment section below.