Marketing

The Best Social Media Tools for Nonprofits in 2024

Author: Terry Ibele

September 15, 2023

Contents

🕑 6 min read

Social media offers endless opportunities for nonprofits to spread awareness and fundraise. This can be both exciting and challenging for nonprofit marketers. After all, thousands of social media management and scheduling tools are available, so it can be hard to know which ones are right for your nonprofit’s social media strategy.

To help you choose, we’ve created this guide to the top solutions on the market. Not only do these solutions help create content, but they also contribute to an organization’s overall marketing strategy with KPI reporting and other intuitive tools. Let’s explore the different social media management tools and their unique features so you can streamline your strategy.

Features to Look For in Social Media Management Tools

It’s crucial to choose a social media tool that aligns with your nonprofit’s needs and budget. That being said, a social media management tool should be able to:

Manage multiple accounts in one dashboard
Schedule posts
Reply to comments and posts
Monitor conversations with hashtags
Measure and track results
Be used without an IT background or extensive training

Ultimately, while social media is a great marketing idea for nonprofits, it can feel overwhelming to get started. Your chosen social media management program should make the posting process easier, not make it more complicated, so pick an option that matches your skill level.

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Top Social Media Tools for Nonprofits

Best Tool for Experienced Nonprofit Social Media Marketers: Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular and widely-used social media management tools, due to its user-friendliness, accessible pricing, and variety of features.

Key Features

Multi-platform management: Oversee your accounts on major social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube from one dashboard.
Integrations: Hootsuite integrates with many other powerful digital tools, such as Shopify, Canva, Hubspot, G Suite and MailChimp. Plus, they also integrate with CRMs so you can track donor interactions and other leads from social media.
Post scheduling: Hootsuite allows you to schedule up to 350 social media posts at once so you can easily stick to your nonprofit marketing plan.
AI content generation: OwlyWriter AI is Hootsuite’s foray into the AI space, allowing you to instantly generate post ideas, captions and more for your social media content. The program also offers a repurpose feature that analyzes your top-performing posts and applies the same structure to future posts so you can achieve the same engagement.
Affordability: Hootsuite is free for one individual user and 3 social profiles. Other paid plans are available if you need to add more team members or profiles. Hootsuite offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits.

Hootsuite’s robust interface is perfect for more experienced nonprofit marketers who are focused on leveling up their social media presence and organic engagement with their supporters.

Best Tool for Beginner Nonprofit Social Media Marketers: Buffer

Buffer is ideal for nonprofit marketers looking to simplify their scheduling process and add structure to their social media strategy. It breaks its offerings into three different apps, including:

Publish, which helps you create posts and schedule them in a central location
Reply, which allows you to respond to social conversations in one inbox
Analyze, which presents data in a digestible form and helps you work smarter, not harder to reach your target audience

Additionally, Buffer is free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan. Paid plans are available if you need to add more team members or profiles and Buffer offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits. Buffer’s affordable pricing and streamlined interface make it a great choice for newcomers to social media.

Best Tool for Nonprofit Instagram Marketers: Later

According to Fifty & Fifty’s guide to digital marketing, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for audiences between the ages of 18 and 39. If you want to engage this younger demographic or are a frequent Instagram user yourself, then Later is for you.

Its comprehensive set of features for nonprofit Instagram users includes:

Visual calendar view for post scheduling
Stories and Reels scheduling
AI caption writer
Best time to post suggestions
Auto-publish
Hashtag suggestions
Desktop accessibility

Later is free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan with a limit of 30 Instagram posts per month. Through the Later for Nonprofits Program, they offer a 50% discount on an annual subscription for our Premium plan to qualified nonprofit organizations.

Use this platform if you’d like to focus on improving your Instagram presence effortlessly.

Best Tool for Nonprofit Twitter Marketers: SocialOomph

SocialOomph is known for its affordability and ease of use for the non-techie, a huge plus for many nonprofit social media managers.

If you primarily use Twitter for your nonprofit, SocialOomph has many features that can maximize your productivity and engagement, including:

Scheduling unlimited tweets
Keyword tracking
Saving and reusing drafts of posts
Checking DMs on multiple accounts

All Twitter features can be used on their free plan. To sync more social media accounts, you need to sign up for their Professional plan, which is $25 per month. Despite not having a nonprofit discount, this affordable solution is a good choice for newbies to Twitter advertising.

Best Tool for Tracking Nonprofit Social Media Analytics: Crowdfire

With over 19 million users, Crowdfire is one of the most popular social media management platforms and is useful for understanding your audience’s perspective of your organization.

It has several unique features that set them apart from other platforms, such as:

Account parsing. This allows you to automatically unfollow inactive accounts to keep your feed relevant and clean.
RSS feed integration. With this paid plan feature, you can get updates when your favorite blogs post new content without manually visiting their websites.
Mentions monitoring. This paid feature allows you to monitor all mentions of your social accounts in a central dashboard, helping you improve your response time to followers, social brands and others in your same online space.
Web listening. This unique paid feature informs you about how many users mentioned your nonprofit on social media within a certain time frame. This is a valuable asset to gauge the overall buzz your nonprofit is generating and which platforms are most popular with your supporters.

Crowdfire’s free plan lets you connect one account per social network with up to 10 scheduled posts per account per month. With their 50% discount for nonprofits paid plans start at $9.99 per month, providing powerful assets at affordable rates.

Best Collaborative Social Media Platform for Nonprofits: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is one of the most trusted social media management tools. In fact, Team Sprout maintains official partnerships with powerhouses like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.

Some of Sprout Social’s unique capabilities include:

Unified Social Inbox. Sprout Social offers one central hub to manage all the direct messages that your brand receives across social media platforms, allowing you to respond to supporters faster.
Collaboration tools. Sprout Social supports multiple users per account, so you and your team can all have access to the same dashboard. Plus, you can streamline your workflows by assigning tasks to your team members.
Reporting capabilities. Not only can you generate analytics reports with Sprout Social but you can make presentation-ready reports that are highly digestible to people unfamiliar with the content.

With an entry-level price of $249 for a standard plan with one user Sprout Social is more expensive than the other platforms mentioned earlier. However, with its collaborative interface and multi-channel messaging management, it can be a worthwhile investment for nonprofits with a robust social media team or who are collaborating on a comprehensive marketing strategy with an agency.

Wrapping Up: Picking the Ideal Tool

Now that you know more about the leading software solutions, it’s time to pick the winning option! Each tool on this list has its own advantages and drawbacks that might appeal to different organizations. Consider factors such as your budget, experience with social media, and platforms used to choose the optimal solution for you. Before you know it, you’ll be reaching new heights, strengthening connections with supporters, and spreading awareness of your mission-critical initiatives to the world.