Tools of the trade.

Coming from a tech & marketing background I have a very different take on the nonprofit world than many of the wonderful people I’ve met. The first few months I would often say I was fumbling around in the dark until I find what I need to move forward. However, having my background I can offer a much different approach; especially on the tech side of things. Here are some tools that I’ve found incredibly helpful in getting Heart Meter off the ground.

Namecheap
Namecheap is where it all begins. Really clean, simple domain registrar. As an added bonus they don’t try to upsell you 15 times mid checkout like GoDaddy.

Hostgator
Hostgator is a really affordable website hosting company. I’ve heard mixed reviews about their reliability in high traffic situations, but no problems for me so far. Knock on wood.

Stripe
Stripe is the payment processing software I use. Naturally this means it’s the most critical. If it goes down say, after I receive some press, then I can’t accept any donations. As far as integration goes, it’s relatively straight forward. It requires some minimal php knowledge, but nothing too difficult. Also, their customer support team is phenomenal.

Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a really fun, easy to use email manager. Again, this requires a little knowledge of html to format & place the contact forms, but very minimal. The best is no code is necessary for making beautiful email templates. Their system is all drag and drop. This was really useful for my Giving Tuesday campaign and helped me nearly double my goal.

Google Analytics
While Stripe is the most critical tool I use, Analytics is probably the most useful. This is where you can monitor all of the traffic coming in, where it’s coming from, what pages they’re visiting, etc. This exceptionally fun if you have a big press release or email blast go out. There’s no shame in sitting in the Real Time tracking page watching all the new users come in. Like Mailchimp, some very minimal html is necessary to place the tracking code on all your pages.

I hope this was helpful to someone. I’ve had so many amazing people in the Charlotte Nonprofit world really take me under their wing and this is my attempt to give back.