For Small and Mid-Size Nonprofits
Donor software for small nonprofits, and what "free" actually covers
Free donor software usually means one of three things: free up to a record limit, free but charging for the integration that makes it work, or a trial with a countdown. This page explains the difference, what a CRM does that an intelligence layer does not, and what you need in place before either is worth your time.
Gratefully is donor intelligence software with a free forever plan, so we have an interest here and you should read this with that in mind. We have tried to make it useful anyway, mostly by being specific about where our own free plan stops.
On this page
What counts as a small nonprofit?
There is no official definition, which is part of why advice written for "small nonprofits" so often assumes a team you do not have.
A usable line comes from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which builds its benchmark panel from US nonprofits reporting under $25 million in total fundraising and breaks results into bands including $100,000 to $250,000 and $250,000 to $1 million. In practice, the dividing line that matters is not revenue at all. It is whether anyone's job description includes donor relationships.
If fundraising is something three people do on top of their actual roles, you are the audience for this page, whatever the budget says.
Is there free donor management software for small nonprofits?
Yes, and several kinds of it. The word is doing a lot of work, so it is worth knowing which kind you are being offered before you move your donor file into it.
Free up to a record limit. The most common shape. The plan is genuinely free until your donor file crosses a threshold, at which point the price arrives at the least convenient moment, when your data is already inside.
Free, but the integration costs. The software is free and the connection to the system holding your gift history is not. For a small team this is the expensive one, because manual export and import is exactly the work you were trying to avoid.
Free as a trial. A countdown rather than a plan. Useful for evaluating, not for operating.
Free permanently, with a feature ceiling. The plan does not expire and your data stays. Something you would eventually want sits behind the paid tier.
The last is the honest shape, and it is the one we use. What matters is which feature sits behind the wall and whether you will reach it in week one.
Do you need a CRM, or a layer on top of one?
These are sold under the same words and they are not the same product.
A CRM or donor database is your system of record. It holds the people, the gifts, the addresses and the contact history. It is where the data lives. If you do not have one, this is what you need first, and nothing else on this page substitutes for it.
A donor intelligence layer reads that record and tells you what to do about it. It holds no master copy and replaces nothing.
Gratefully is the second kind. It is not a CRM and will not work as one. If you are searching for a free nonprofit CRM, we are not the answer to that question, and we would rather say so here than after you have signed up.
If you are choosing a system of record, we keep a comparison of what 16 fundraising tools cost, with every price read from the vendor's own page.
What is free in Gratefully, and what is not
Free permanently, not a trial. Every account starts with 14 days of our top plan. When those days end the account moves to Free and keeps running. Nothing locks and nothing is deleted.
| On the Free plan | Not on the Free plan |
|---|---|
| Your full donor file, with no record limit on any plan | More than one seat |
| Every integration included, with real time syncing | More than 10 AI answers a month |
| Data clean up and downloads | Downloading your donor segments |
| Every donor sorted into a segment, viewable | Ten suggested actions a day |
| Five suggested actions each week | |
| 10 AI answers a month | |
| No credit card |
The 10 AI answers a month is the limit you will meet first. If you want to sit and interrogate your donor file for an afternoon, you will run out. That is the constraint that moves people onto a paid plan, and it is better known now than discovered in week one.
Paid starts at $79 a month billed annually for one person. Full detail is on our pricing page.
Which CRMs does Gratefully work with?
Direct connections to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP, Bloomerang, Little Green Light and Mailchimp, plus CSV import with field mapping that reads exports from any system.
Every integration is included on every plan, including Free. You are not charged for connecting a system or for how often it syncs. Setup is usually under an hour because nothing is migrated: your records stay where they are.
What do you need before donor software helps at all?
Worth stating plainly, because the honest answer rules some organizations out.
You need gift history in something readable. A connected CRM, or a CSV with dates and amounts. Two or three years is where patterns start to mean anything.
You need someone who can act on a list. The output is people to contact. If nobody has time to contact them, the list changes nothing.
If your records are spread across a shoebox, three spreadsheets and a former employee's inbox, the first job is building a donor file. That is real work and no software shortcuts it.
Which donors should a small nonprofit focus on?
The strongest predictor of whether someone gives again is not how much they gave but how often, and the gap is not close. We have set those numbers out in our guide to fundraising metrics and benchmarks rather than repeat them here.
What is worth adding is where the sector's donors actually sit. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q1 2026 report splits them by their relationship with the organization:
| Donor type | Share of donors | Change on last year |
|---|---|---|
| New | 28.2% | -5.2% |
| New, retained | 9.9% | -6.8% |
| Repeat, retained | 50.3% | +3.2% |
| Recaptured | 11.6% | -1.1% |
Repeat retained donors are over half of all donors and the only group growing. New donors, first time donors who came back, and recaptured donors all declined.
For a team of one that is close to a strategy on its own. Acquisition is the expensive route and it is the one currently shrinking across the sector. The people already in your file are the cheap route, and the only one growing.
That is also where work to re-engage lapsed donors begins.
How much of a small nonprofit's money comes from its largest donors?
More than most boards assume, and it is easy to miss because the concentration runs opposite to the donor count.
From the same Q1 2026 report:
| Donor size | Share of donors | Share of dollars |
|---|---|---|
| Micro, $1 to $100 | 57.0% | 2.4% |
| Small, $101 to $500 | 28.9% | 6.1% |
| Midsize, $501 to $5,000 | 11.8% | 17.1% |
| Major, $5,000 to $50,000 | 2.0% | 27.5% |
| Supersize, $50,000 and above | 0.3% | 46.9% |
Major and supersize donors together are 2.3% of donors and 74.4% of all dollars.
Micro donors are 57% of everyone and bring 2.4% of the money. It is tempting to read that as a reason to ignore them. The more useful reading is that they are the base the other categories are eventually drawn from, and they were the only segment whose donor count shrank this year, down 2.5%.
By organization size the pattern is sharper. Only organizations with donor bases of 5,000 or more saw the typical organization gain donors. In every smaller band the median organization lost them. The $250,000 to $1 million band grew dollars fastest, at a median of +6.5%, while the $100,000 to $250,000 band lost donors fastest, at -1.6%.
Smaller organizations are raising more money from fewer people, faster than anyone else is.
If you take one number from this page, take your own: what share of last year's income came from your largest handful of donors. That is a dependency rather than a pipeline, and it is better said to your board by you than by a bad year.
What Gratefully does not do
These get bundled together under "donor software", so they are worth separating.
- Not a CRM. It reads yours and leaves your records where they are.
- Not wealth screening. We do not estimate net worth, property or assets.
- Not capacity ratings. No donor is given an estimated ability to give.
- Not prospect research. We do not append information about donors from outside sources.
- Not a donation amount prediction. Segments describe the pattern in someone's giving so far, not what a particular person will give next.
- Not grant writing.
If you need wealth screening or prospect research, those are a different category and you would need one alongside this.
About this data
Figures are from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's 2026 Q1 report, a joint project of GivingTuesday and the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy. Free, no registration. Read at publications.fepereports.org on 5 October 2026. The panel covered 15,700 organizations, 3.2 million donors and $3.5 billion, all reporting under $25 million.
Two caveats. FEP's figures are year over year and year to date, comparing January to March across two years, so they are not annual rates. And this is transaction data rather than a survey: FEP state that "the organizations in the data are not a random sample of the sector", and that weighting by cause area "does not make the panel fully representative."
The next report, covering Q2 2026, is published on 30 October 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is considered a small nonprofit?
There is no official definition. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project builds its panel from US nonprofits reporting under $25 million, and breaks results into bands including $100,000 to $250,000 and $250,000 to $1 million. The more practical test is whether anyone's job includes donor relationships.
Is Gratefully a free nonprofit CRM?
No. Gratefully is not a CRM and does not replace one. It reads the gift history in your existing system and adds a layer on top. If you do not yet have a system of record, that is what you need first.
Is there a donor limit on the free plan?
No. There is no record, contact or data volume limit on any plan, including Free. You are not charged for data coming in.
What is the catch with the free plan?
Two things. Free is a single seat, so if several people need logins it will not work. And it includes 10 AI answers a month, which is the ceiling most people reach first.
What does free donor management software usually mean?
Usually one of four things: free up to a record limit, free with paid integrations, a trial with a countdown, or a permanent plan with a feature ceiling. The question worth asking is which feature sits behind the wall, and how quickly you will reach it.
Which CRMs does Gratefully connect to?
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP, Bloomerang, Little Green Light and Mailchimp, plus CSV import with field mapping that reads exports from any system. Every integration is included on every plan, including Free.
Which group of donors is actually growing?
Repeat retained donors. In the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q1 2026 data they were 50.3% of all donors and grew 3.2%, the only group to grow. New donors fell 5.2%, first time donors who returned fell 6.8%, and recaptured donors fell 1.1%.
How much of a nonprofit's income comes from its biggest donors?
In the same data, donors giving $5,000 or more were 2.3% of all donors and accounted for 74.4% of all dollars. Donors giving $100 or less were 57.0% of donors and 2.4% of dollars.
How much donor history do we need before the free plan is worth setting up?
Two or three years is where patterns start to mean something. A CSV export with dates and amounts going back that far is enough. A file with a few months of history has little to work with.
Start with the donors you already have
Every account starts with 14 days of our top plan, then moves to the Free plan and keeps working. No credit card, no record limit, every integration included.