Free CRM for Nonprofits, 7 Tools NGOs Can Actually Use

If your NGO has next to no budget, you still need somewhere to keep donor and supporter records that is not a spreadsheet. We tested the genuinely free, self-serve plans again in 2026 and shortlisted seven tools that handle contacts, donations and follow-ups without overwhelming your staff.

The short answer. If you fundraise in Australia and want a donor database and donation pages at no cost, start with Zeffy, which charges your organisation nothing and funds itself through optional donor tips. If you care more about supporter communications than gift processing, use the free HubSpot CRM. If you have technical help in-house, CiviCRM or SuiteCRM give you a full nonprofit CRM with no licence fee, paid for in hosting and staff time instead. Salesforce offers ten free licences through its Power of Us programme, but most small teams still need a paid partner to configure and run it.

Every tool below has a permanent free tier, not a trial. We note where each one stops being free, because that is usually the detail that decides it.

Last reviewed and pricing checked against vendor websites on 21 September 2026. Free-plan limits change often, so confirm current details before you commit.

How we evaluated these tools

We checked each tool against the same six criteria, using the free tier itself rather than a sales demo. The genuine, current contact or record limit, confirmed against the vendor's own pricing page, not the headline claim. Whether it tracks giving history, communication preferences and consent the way a nonprofit relationship actually needs, not just a sales pipeline. Whether non-technical staff can be productive within a day, without formal training. Whether you can read giving trends inside the tool without exporting to a spreadsheet first. Whether you can get your data back out in a usable format if you switch tools later. And what triggers the first paid tier, and roughly what that costs, so there are no surprises once you outgrow the free plan.

The four tools that hold up as CRM software in their own right sit under Dedicated CRM Platforms below. The three that are strong on cost and ease of use but weaker on donor tracking sit under Free DIY Alternatives, genuinely useful, just not built for CRM as their primary job. Blackbaud, DonorPerfect and Bloomerang do not appear here because none offers a genuinely free tier past a trial. Givebutter is often recommended in this category, but it processes in US dollars for United States organisations, so it is not a fit for an Australian charity banking in AUD. Zoho CRM has a free plan, but it is built for sales pipelines rather than donor tracking, so it did not clear our donor-management criterion.

The seven, at a glance

If you are ready to look beyond the free tier, see our guide to choosing a CRM by organisation size or the full comparison of paid CRM platforms.

Zeffy, free for eligible charities

Best for Australian nonprofits that need donation pages and a donor record in the same place. Zeffy is available to registered charities and not-for-profits in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and the United States, and it charges your organisation no platform fee and no subscription. Donation forms, ticketing, recurring giving, memberships and a donor database are all included, and the business is funded by an optional tip donors can add at checkout. The trade-off is that your donors see that tip prompt, and the tools are shaped around fundraising rather than deep segmentation or complex reporting. Confirm eligibility and the current fee model on Zeffy's own site before you launch a campaign on it.

HubSpot CRM, free forever plan

Best for medium-sized NGOs with growing teams. The free plan gives you 1,000 contacts, 2 users, email templates and tracking, deal pipelines, a mobile app and basic reporting, genuinely enterprise-grade features without the price tag. The catch is the cap itself, and bulk email and workflow automation sit behind paid tiers. HubSpot does not process donations, so pair it with a donation platform and keep the two reconciled.

SuiteCRM, community edition

Best for technically capable teams or NGOs with IT support. It is a full-featured, open-source CRM with custom modules, campaign and opportunity tracking, workflow automation and no licence fees, if you can host it yourself. Installation, updates and backups are your responsibility, so budget staff time instead of licence fees.

CiviCRM, open source

Best for membership bodies, advocacy groups and NGOs with a volunteer or partner developer. CiviCRM is free to download and has nonprofit work built into its core, with contribution records, memberships, events, mailings and case management rather than a sales pipeline you have to bend into shape. The software costs nothing, the running of it does not. You are paying for hosting, upgrades, and either your own technical time or a partner's day rate, so treat the first year as an implementation project and get a quote before you commit.

Airtable, free plan

Best for teams already comfortable in spreadsheets. You get 1,000 records per base, grid, calendar and kanban views of the same donor list, file attachments, real-time collaboration and ready-made nonprofit templates. It suits a team moving off Excel that wants more structure without a migration project, but the record and attachment limits arrive faster than most teams expect, so plan your base structure early.

Google Workspace for Nonprofits

Best for NGOs already living in Gmail and Drive. It is free or heavily discounted for most ACNC-registered charities, everyone on the team already knows how to use it, and Google Forms feeds donation and volunteer sign-ups straight into Sheets. It gets you running this week with no learning curve, but tracking stays manual and reporting stays basic, treat it as a starting point rather than a destination.

Notion, free plan

Best for small teams blending donor records with project work. Unlimited pages and databases, donor records linked directly to meeting notes, grants and projects, and simple views for staff who avoid spreadsheets. There is no built-in email tracking or automation, so you are building that process yourself.

What a free CRM actually costs

No donor CRM is free once money moves through it, and the sticker price is rarely the number that matters. Work out four costs before you choose.

Payment processing is the big one. Card processing sits in the region of 2 to 3 per cent of each gift plus a fixed amount per transaction, whoever you use, and that continues whether the software is free or not. On a platform funded by donor tips, your donors are asked to cover it, which is still a cost to your cause even when it never appears on your invoice.

Staff time is the second. A self-hosted CRM has no licence fee and a real maintenance bill in hours, and those hours come from someone who was hired to do something else.

The upgrade trigger is the third. Free tiers end at a contact count, a user count or a feature you will eventually need, usually bulk email or automation. Find that line before you import, then estimate when you will cross it.

Migration is the fourth. Getting data out of a free tool later is easy on some plans and painful on others, so test the export on day one, not in year three.

What to check before you commit, in Australia

Free tools still carry obligations. The Australian Privacy Principles apply to donor data even on a free plan, so know where each tool actually stores information and make sure your privacy policy reflects it. Set roles before you import anything, free tiers often give every user full access by default, which is the most common issue we find in small NGO systems. If you process donations through a payment provider, keep receipting and gift records reconciled with your CRM so ACNC reporting does not turn into a year-end scramble. Check that tax-deductible receipting matches your DGR status, since a template built for United States tax rules will not say what an Australian donor needs to see.

Free CRM for Humanitarian NGOs

Most CRM reviews assume one office, one country and reliable internet. Humanitarian teams rarely work that way. Field staff often go offline for hours, so plan for a paper or form-based fallback that syncs later, HubSpot and Airtable have usable mobile apps with limited offline behaviour, Notion caches recently opened pages, and a self-hosted SuiteCRM or CiviCRM depends entirely on your own hosting. If you fundraise in Australia and deliver overseas, decide early whether one base holds every country or each programme gets its own, Airtable's free record limit is per base, so splitting by country buys you room, while HubSpot keeps everyone in one portal. Record the original amount and currency in separate fields, since free tiers usually track a single currency and grant acquittals need a conversion you can audit later. Because rotations and short contracts mean access changes constantly, choose a tool where removing a user does not delete the records they created, and review the user list every quarter.

Keep Supporter Data Separate from Beneficiary Data

This is the single most common mistake we see when small NGOs adopt a free CRM. Donor records and programme participant records carry very different risk. Beneficiary data is often sensitive, sometimes about people in conflict or displacement settings, and a breach can put someone in danger rather than simply annoy them.

Keep beneficiary and case data out of the fundraising CRM entirely, in a separate system with its own access list. Store only what you need for the relationship you actually have, a donor needs contact details, giving history and consent, not a case note. Apply the Australian Privacy Principles as your floor, then check the rules of the country where the data was collected, since host-country law and donor requirements can be stricter. Write down who is allowed to approve an export, since free plans make it very easy for any user to download the whole contact list. Set a retention period and delete on schedule, consent from 2019 is not consent today.

A Two Week Migration Plan

You do not need a project team. In week one, export your current list, remove duplicates and dead addresses, agree a short field list (name, email, phone, supporter type, consent status, last gift), pick one tool and set up the roles before importing anything. In week two, import the cleaned list, add giving history for the last two years only, since older data rarely changes a decision, and enter one week of real activity by hand so the team feels the workflow before you judge it. Most CRM rollouts fail on habit, not features, so give it a genuine fortnight.

For the wider systems picture, our digital transformation guide covers how a CRM sits alongside monitoring, finance and reporting, or browse the free tools and templates in our resources library. If you would rather talk through which of these actually fits your team, get in touch.