Managing churches and religious organizations take the same tools and skills as managing a small business. At their core, they function much like small businesses: they need to manage people and resources, maintain processes and infrastructure, hold events and gather donations, meaning they need software to automate these processes. But the problem is that most of the existing church management software is either expensive or clunky.
Churches and religious nonprofit organizations are usually interested in affordable software that could automate routine tasks and cover special needs be it event broadcasting or social media marketing. In this article, we picked the best software for different church management needs that is available for free or with great discounts for nonprofit organizations – save this list to come back to it later.
Timekeeping and Work Management Software
actiTIME
- Time tracking
- Time & cost budgets
- Workflow statuses
- Kanban view
- Custom fields
- Analytics & reports
- Mobile apps
Price: starting at $5 per user per month (get your 50% discount)
Online timesheet interface in actiTIME where every user can select task parameters
they want to see in their timesheets
actiTIME is time tracking and project management software for nonprofits that offers the following benefits:
- Time tracking for increased funding and grant eligibility. Share time reports with your donors to illustrate how their funds are being used and prove your grant eligibility to government agencies.
- Accurate accounting and budgeting. Calculate labor costs in a few clicks and prepare more balanced budgets in the future.
- Improved performance. Identify unproductive time investments, adapt and get more done in less time.
For non-profit organizations, we provide a 50% discount on actiTIME online subscription, free setup and data import assistance, free product updates and technical support services. All you need is to start a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) and email us at support@actitime.com to let us know about the non-profit status of your organization.
Accounting, Donation and Fundraising Platforms
Donorbox
Pricing: 1.5% month’s donations fee
Key features:
- Recurring Donations
- Fundraising Page
- Fundraising Thermometer
Donorbox is a fundraising software that allows nonprofit organizations to receive donations online. It offers website plugins for the most popular content management systems, accepts donations in multiple currencies (USD, EUR, CAD, GBP, AUD, plus more) and accepts ApplePay and Google Pay as payment options.
Donorbox only charges a fee of 1.5% for the month’s donations and asks for no additional payments or subscriptions.
Xero
Pricing: Starting at $11 per month (get a 25% discount)
Key features:
- Recurring Donations
- Fundraising Thermometer
- Financial Reporting
Xero is accounting software that provides automatic bank feeds, invoicing, accounts payable, expense claims, fixed asset depreciation, purchase orders, bank reconciliations, and standard business and management reporting.
Xero offers non-profit organizations a 25% discount.
Membership Management Software
RockRMS
Pricing: free
Key features:
- Attendance Tracking
- Member Portal
- Volunteer Management
- Event Management
Rock RMS (Relationship Management System) is a community-supported church management software for managing church staff, members and volunteers. With Rock, you can track attendance, giving history, family dynamics and more.
RockRMS is open-source, meaning that it’s free to use.
ChurchTrac
Pricing: free, paid plans start at $5 per month
Key features:
- Membership Management
- Attendance Tracking
- Donation Tracking
- Event Management
ChurchTrac is church management software that keeps track of people groups and attendance, calendar and finances within the church. It also helps to create online event registrations, track important dates and send reminders to members, manage contributions and pledges.
ChurchTrac offers a limited free plan with core software features and paid plans starting at $5 per month. For new churches that cannot afford the subscription fee, ChurchTrac offers a customized quote to fit your ministry needs and budget.
Social Media Management Software
Buffer
Pricing: Free (or get 50% off on paid plans)
Key features:
- Content Scheduling
- Analytics & Reports
- Engagement Tracking
- Content Calendar
Buffer is a social media management software solution that allows you to automate social media posting. With Buffer, you can schedule your content across multiple media channels and measure its performance using an analytics dashboard.
Buffer offers a free version with 3 social media accounts, the number of scheduled posts limited to 10 per social media channel, per week. If you need more social channels, scheduled posts and advanced features, Buffer offers a 50% discount to registered nonprofit organizations for paid plans.
Hootsuite
Pricing: Starting at $19 per month (request your up to 50% discount)
Key features:
- Content Scheduling
- Analytics & Reports
- App integrations
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that allows scheduling posts, finding prospects, reporting on various metrics and more. Connect several social media accounts, schedule your posts and the tool will do the rest!
Hootsuite offers an up to 50% discount for nonprofit organizations.
Email Management Platform
Mailchimp
Price: free for users with up to 2,000 contacts
Key features:
- Marketing CRM
- Website Builder
- Mailchimp Domain
- Forms & Landing Pages
Mailchimp is a marketing management platform designed to create and automate email campaigns, manage mailing lists, segment your audience, create email templates and review email performance with analytics tools. More than that, Mailchimp allows you to create email-based sales funnels to personalize and target your emails more accurately.
Mailchimp offers a free plan for all users with up to 2,000 contacts that allows you to use marketing CRM, website builder, Mailchimp domain, forms and landing pages. If you are interested in custom branding, send time optimization and other advanced features, as a nonprofit organization, you can request a 15% discount on paid pricing plans.
Collaboration Software
Slack
Price: free (for up to 250 users)
Key features:
- Messaging
- File Sharing
- Voice & Video Calls
- Mobile App
Slack is one of the best-known collaboration tools that allow creating separate channels for different topics, projects and audiences. More than that, you can make voice and video calls, share your screen, create conversation threads, share files and more. Choose from thousands of apps and integrations to make your collaboration environment more productive and efficient.
Slack is free-to-use for teams of up to 250 users. But if you want access to advanced features like unlimited apps and messages, data exports and more, you can apply for the Slack for Nonprofits 85% discount.
Google Workspace
Price: free
Key features:
- File Management
- Video Conferencing
- Instant Messaging
Google Workspace is a collection of Google collaboration tools that include Gmail, Drive, Meet, Calendar, Docs, Slides, Forms and more. For example, in Google Calendar, you can share the same calendar across your organization or use Google Docs to document important guidelines and send these files to the users of your choice – do this and more for free!
Most of these tools are individually available for free, but if you need a custom domain or more cloud storage space, Google has a special offer for nonprofits: a free workspace that includes email addresses at your nonprofit’s domain, 100 participant video meetings, 30 GB cloud storage per user and more.
Microsoft Teams
Price: free for up to 300 users
Key features:
- Instant Messaging
- Audio & Video Calls
- File Sharing
Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool that offers instant messaging, calls and video conferencing. You can also share your screen while on the call and exchange files, manage attendees and remove anonymous guests.
As a nonprofit, you can request a free Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan that also includes Microsoft Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams.
Content Management Software
Canva
Price: free (request Canva Pro for free)
Key features:
- Image Editing
- Photo Effects
- Design Grids
Canva is a design tool where you can create social media posts, presentations, infographics, websites, reports, posters, flyers and more right in your browser.
Canva offers a free Pro version for nonprofit organizations, meaning you can access the following premium features for free:
- 420,000+ templates
- 75 million+ images
- 3.5+ million graphic elements
- 3000+ fonts
- unlimited folders and 100GB storage for all your designs
- and more!
File Management Systems
Google Drive
Price: free
Key features:
- File Storage
- File Sharing
- Document Collaboration
Google Drive is a storage environment where you can store and collaborate in Microsoft Office files without the need to convert file formats, and edit and store over 100 additional file types, including PDFs, images, and more.
By default, every free Google account receives 15GB of Google Drive storage space. If your organization needs more cloud storage space, apply for Google for Nonprofits program where Google gives away premium services for non-profit organizations at no cost.
Website Hosting Platforms
Dreamhost
Pricing: Free
Key features:
- Website Hosting
- Email Hosting
DreamHost offers a FREE shared hosting plan (including email hosting) to non-profit, charitable organizations registered in the United States. This discount applies to a single shared hosting plan per non-profit, hosted within only one account, for US-based 501(c)(3) organizations. This discount remains active for the lifetime of the DreamHost account.
InterServer
Pricing: Free
Key features:
- Website Hosting
- Email Hosting
InterServer provides its standard web hosting package for free to non-profit organizations meaning the following:
- unlimited SSD storage
- unlimited email accounts
- 450+ cloud apps
- free website migration
- SitePad website builder
- free SSL certificate
- and more!
However, if you don’t own any domain, you need to register it yourself or pay InterServer for assistance.
Church Management Software Doesn’t Have to be Expensive
Complex church management software is rather expensive and provides limited functionality to religious organizations. Churches and businesses have much in common: they need to grow and support their community, hold events and communicate with their audience. As long as every organization has different needs, in this article, we’ve compiled a list of software that is available for free or at a very low discount for churches and religious nonprofit organizations.
