Whether your nonprofit is large or small, you can’t get around the fact that managing your nonprofit requires an incredible amount of paperwork. To simplify the process for you, we’ve compiled the internet’s largest list of FREE nonprofit templates, worksheets, and guides you can use for anything and everything your organization might need. This list is updated regularly, so be sure to check back for new stuff!
Editor’s Note: While some of the links provided lead directly to the templates themselves, others require you to subscribe via email before downloading.
Starting a nonprofit organization from the ground up requires a great deal of work. This checklist template covers all the basics – federal requirements, the board of directors, website, and more – so that you can start the process on the right foot.
The articles of incorporation is a legal document you must file with the secretary of state to create your nonprofit organization. This process is called incorporating. In some states, the articles of incorporation are referred to as a certificate of incorporation or corporate charter.
Bylaws are the rules a nonprofit creates for governing itself. Bylaws are established when starting a nonprofit and can help define the structure of your organization. Some states require nonprofits to have bylaws, but not all. Still, they can be helpful internally by providing direction and resolving conflict, and externally by demonstrating to the public that your nonprofit is responsibly managing its affairs.
Meeting minutes serve as the official written record of any meeting that occurs within a nonprofit. They typically describe what happened in the meeting, who attended the meeting, and which matters were discussed.
Your nonprofit mission statement is a brief, simple statement that tells people what you do and why you exist. A mission statement template will help you craft the perfect mission statement for your nonprofit.
Your nonprofit’s vision statement is a concise, clear statement of your organization’s future direction and goals. Our vision statement template will help you craft a vision statement that will appeal to your nonprofit’s internal and external stakeholders.
This sample calendar can serve as a jumping-off point for setting organized goals and directives for your board of directors for the year.
A code of conduct is needed to provide a guide for the ethical conduct of all board members, officers, and employees to help them identify and address ethical issues and provide a process for reporting unethical behavior.
A board composition matrix is a tool that nonprofits can use to chart the skills, talents, and other characteristics of each individual member of the board. It helps organizations identify any gaps in their team and build a well-rounded nonprofit board.
There is no one-size-fits-all ideal structure and composition for boards. A board composition policy helps nonprofits set their own standards for their board of directors by detailing the process for appointing directors, the tenure of directors, skill requirements, diversity requirements, and succession planning.
A consent agenda is commonly used in nonprofit board meetings to streamline the decision-making process so that the bulk of the time may be spent on substantive matters.
Could your nonprofit’s board of directors be improved in any way? This simple pre-assessment form can help you take the first step in determining any areas of growth your board may have.
Joining the board of a nonprofit organization can be a positive, rewarding experience, but it can also be risky. This due diligence checklist was created to help prospective board members determine whether or not a board is safe to join.
A board meeting agenda can help your nonprofit’s board stay on task and make the most of the time within a meeting. The agenda structure may be followed at every meeting to ensure consistency.
It’s likely that your nonprofit has some committees that run well and others that need improvement. This form can provide the board feedback on the effectiveness of various committee meetings.
This form can help your nonprofit’s board track the activity and involvement of individual board members over the course of a year.
These documents can help your nonprofit engage your board members in fund development by providing them with clear expectations, having them commit on a yearly basis, and guiding them in developing their own personal fundraising plan to support your nonprofit’s mission.
A board member agreement outlines each board member’s commitment to uphold his or her duties and details the shared expectations of individual board members and the full board. Topics include: meeting and event attendance, behavioral norms, and financial commitments.
How effective are the members of your nonprofit’s board of directors? These self-evaluation tools will help the members of your board assess their own performances, successes, and areas of growth.
If you want your nonprofits’ board to meet your expectations, you must be clear about what those expectations are. The document below is a great tools to help get the ball rolling as you think through what you need from the members of your board.
When appointing a new board member to your nonprofit’s board of directors, the following orientation materials may be a helpful way to introduce policies, practices, and expectations.
How effectively does your board of directors serve the mission of your nonprofit? This self-assessment form was designed to help your board gauge its effectiveness overall as a governing body within your organization.
These screening forms are designed to help your nonprofit determine whether or not prospective board members are a good fit for your organization.
If your nonprofit accepts referrals for new potential board members, this card could be a useful way to keep track of that information.
The audit committee selects and works with the auditor on the organization’s annual audit to provide oversight for a nonprofit’s governance, risk management, and internal control practices. The audit is generally an organization’s only outside review, making it an extremely important governance tool. An audit committee charter is drafted and approved by the board to enact the audit committee’s authority.
The executive committee in a nonprofit organization has special responsibilities and authorities above all committees. Most often it can act on behalf of the full board and make decisions between board meetings when needed, or in urgent and crisis circumstances. An executive committee charter is drafted and approved by the board to enact the executive committee’s authority.
In a nonprofit organization, the finance committee typically oversees balance sheets, investments, and returns. The finance committee charter is drafted and approved by the board of directors to enact the financial committee’s authority.
A fundraising advisory committee in a nonprofit organization is a group of individuals who are appointed by the board of directors to advise on matters directly related to fundraising efforts. The fundraising advisory committee charter is drafted and approved by the board to specify the committee’s specific areas of oversight and to enact the committee’s authority.
The governance committee in a nonprofit is generally a standing committee that takes the lead in reviewing the governance structures and practices, and in offering recommendations to the board. Key responsibilities of the governance committee include: composing a well-rounded board, evaluating the executive director, and conducting annual meetings and audits. The governance committee charter outlines the duties of the governance committee and enacts its authority.
A program committee in a nonprofit organization evaluates existing programs, oversees program expansion or development, and facilitates board conversations about its programs. A program committee charter details the committee’s responsibilities and enacts its authority.
A style guide is a visual overview of a nonprofit’s branding, whether it relates to proper use of your organization’s logo, or something more comprehensive, like a content marketing campaign. A style guide is useful when working with freelancers, vendors, or remote employees because it enforces visual standards your designers can follow, ensuring that no matter who is creating content for you, the look and feel will remain consistent.
If you want to keep your donor data organized and be up-to-date on donations, an excel spreadsheet can be a great way to keep up with contact information, donor status, and more.
A donation receipt is official documentation of a gift made by a donor. A donation receipt is important because it lets the donor know that their donation has been received and gives the donor important information for tax purposes.
A donor database is a software solution that houses the most important information you have about your donors. There are many donor database options out there, and this checklist was created to help you choose the right one for your nonprofit.
For nonprofits to successfully convert prospects into actual donors, it’s necessary to develop prospect profiles on your various high-quality giving candidates. A prospect profile will contain relevant data such as contact information, personal history, professional ties, and more to help your nonprofit decide how to best move forward with each potential donor.
After a donor makes a gift to your nonprofit, it’s important to turn that one-time donation into a recurring one. That’s where a donor stewardship plan comes in handy. A donor stewardship plan is an organizational document that helps you keep a record of communication with each donor, develop strategies to keep donors engaged, and build long-lasting relationships with donors over time.
A thank-you message to your donors expresses appreciation, serves as a receipt, and helps build a stronger relationship with them. To save time, use these templates as your framework (but don’t forget to add your own personal touch!).
Reconnecting with lapsed donors can help your nonprofit regain support from donors who, for whatever reason, stopped giving to your organization. This template can help you craft a letter that will rebuild those important donor relationships.
Does your nonprofit have a membership program? The template below may be a helpful tool when reaching out to current members about renewing their membership status.
If your nonprofit has a membership program, a membership roster is an easy way to keep track of your members and their information. Some examples of what you may find on a membership roster are: names, contact information, whether or not the member is active, payment status, membership level, etc.
An annual budget is a financial planning tool that reflects a nonprofit’s programs, mission, and strategic plan for the year. This budgeting checklist can help guide the budgeting process.
This Excel worksheet is designed to help nonprofit financial managers translate their operating budget into a detailed cash flow projection over the course of a fiscal year.
When an employee makes a purchase on behalf of your nonprofit, an employee reimbursement form is a standardized way an employee can report expenses and seek to be paid back.
An event budget spreadsheet can help your nonprofit with the process of planning an event. Your event budget will help you track your expenses and revenue – think venue rental, travel costs, vendor expenses, and more. What’s more, an event budget spreadsheet can help your nonprofit keep up with ticket and product sales and get an accurate picture of your overall profit.
This self-assessment worksheet will help your nonprofit assess the strengths and possible weak points of your financial infrastructure, and can serve as a jumping-off point for any changes that are needed.
A financial management policy helps your nonprofit’s financial team clarify roles, streamline practices, and detail responsibilities for financial management activities and decisions.
This editable calendar will help your nonprofit keep track of all the financial management activities it may carry out over the course of a year, including internal reporting, external reporting, the annual audit, and budget development
This customizable template will help your nonprofit formulate its budget in relation to how it spends money on programs and events.
You can’t predict your nonprofit’s financial future, but you can project the possibilities to help aid in financial planning. This excel template was designed to help nonprofit leaders project best-, moderate-, and worst-case revenue scenarios to help prepare for any financial future.
A nonprofit’s statement of financial position reports the organization’s assets and liabilities in some order of when the assets will turn to cash and when the liabilities need to be paid.
One of the most important revenue streams your nonprofit organization can have is the annual fund. The annual fund is defined as an organized effort to obtain gifts on a yearly basis to support, at least in part, general operations of a nonprofit organization. An annual campaign plan sets specific goals and strategies for the fundraising team over the next year.
Running a capital campaign is a daunting task for any nonprofit. Once you’ve determined that a capital campaign is right for your nonprofit, you’ll need to get organized. There are a number of steps that you have to take to properly plan your capital campaign, and this capital campaign checklist/timeline will help you start the process.
If your nonprofit is planning on running a crowdfunding campaign for your next fundraiser, these tools can help your fundraising team set goals, make a schedule, and stay organized.
A giving day in a nonprofit is a 24-hour, online fundraising event that is meant to spark donations and raise public awareness for your organization’s mission. Below are templates that can help your nonprofit successfully plan and implement your next giving day.
If your nonprofit requests donations by mail, here are some samples and templates to help design yours.
Since the majority of donations occur online these days, it’s important to have a well-designed donation form for your nonprofit’s website. Explore these donation form templates to decide which layout works for your nonprofit.
A fundraising bingo card is a creative way to boost donor engagement and donations by offering up prizes and other incentives to participants in your next fundraising campaign. This card was created with peer-to-peer fundraising in mind, but the template is customizable to fit a wide variety of needs for your nonprofit.
There are lots of fundraising options for nonprofits nowadays. Regardless of which type of fundraising works best for your nonprofit, you have to be organized to be successful. See the free fundraising calendars + checklists below to set clear fundraising goals and keep your next fundraiser on track.
Pulling off a fundraising event requires a large amount of planning and preparation. These tools will help your nonprofit plan, schedule, and implement your next fundraising event.
These customizable live appeal templates can help you craft the perfect “big ask” at your nonprofit’s next fundraising event.
If your nonprofit utilizes direct mail when fundraising, these samples and templates can help get you started.
A gift range calculator is an online tool that allows you to enter a monetary goal for your fundraising campaign, and see how many gifts you will need to raise at each level in order to meet your goal.
Monthly giving is an essential part of fundraising for nonprofits. Whether your monthly giving program and recurring donor email campaigns need just a few tweaks, or you’re starting from scratch, these email templates can help you leverage your emails to achieve maximum impact.
If your nonprofit relies heavily on peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns, it may be helpful to take stock of how successfully your campaigns are performing compared to the average campaign. Use this worksheet to help identify how your nonprofit stacks up — then celebrate strengths and address weaknesses.
Help your peer-to-peer fundraiser participants achieve success by providing them with these useful resources. Participants will feel more confident as they begin the fundraising process and your nonprofit will likely get more of the donations it needs.
A donation pledge is the promise a donor makes to give a certain amount of money toward a project or campaign.
A silent auction can be a great way to raise funds for your nonprofit. Below are templates for various items you might need for your organization’s next silent auction, including a bidding form, registration sheet, and item description sheet.
The end of the year is a top fundraising season for nonprofits. Use this checklist to help set your campaign’s focus, engage your supporters to the max, and increase donations as the year comes to a close.
Communicate clearly and efficiently with your supporters during your year-end giving campaign using these free templates.
For most nonprofits, #GivingTuesday is the biggest giving day of the year. Get organized with a campaign plan specifically designed for the day!
Get your subscribers excited about #GivingTuesday and maximize giving potential with these helpful communication templates surrounding one of the biggest days of giving for your nonprofit.
Free graphics and logos for your nonprofit to use in your #GivingTuesday campaign.
Use this master checklist to stay on track and align your team around your goals as you plan your Giving Tuesday campaign.
Send a physical reminder to your supporters about Giving Tuesday without spending precious time on design.
If you have multiple staff members entering donor information into your database, you need a policy document to provide clear instructions on how to format that information. Without consistent formatting, your donor reports won’t run accurately. After all, who wants to comb through all of that information by hand?
This online quiz is a quick, easy way to assess your nonprofit’s communication strengths and weaknesses.
One important aspect of reaching your target audience with your nonprofit’s message is matching the right tools to the right job. This chart was created to help your nonprofit identify the cost, reach, and best use of various media.
An editorial calendar is a visual tool that can help your nonprofit keep all of your content organized – from external communication with donors and the community to internal communication with staff and volunteers. An editorial calendar can help your nonprofit get a better handle on content, media, and scheduling so you know what you’re going to share and when you’re going to share it.
Email metrics measure how people are engaging with your nonprofit’s email content. Find out which metrics you need to be tracking — and how to track them — to get a sense of how your emails are performing with readers.
Connect with your supporters during the holidays by sending them a special message via email or social media.
How effective is your nonprofit’s marketing strategy? These free tools will help you examine your existing marketing strategy and develop a better marketing plan.
A marketing scorecard is one way of organizing your marketing metrics to determine where your nonprofit is succeeding and where it’s failing in its marketing efforts.
For the modern donor, text messaging is often the preferred mode of communication. Below are templates that will ease the process of crafting various text messages your nonprofit might need.
This short questionnaire can help your nonprofit gauge the likelihood that a corporation will give to your organization.
Sponsorship is a form of support nonprofits receive from businesses or other organizations for an event or project. To help you start securing sponsors more quickly, browse the various templates below.
Evaluating your nonprofit’s executive director on a yearly basis helps to document both their successes and their shortcomings, and helps the executive director identify any areas that require either personal improvement or better communication. Typically, a committee of the board (often the board officers) leads the evaluation process, reports on the evaluation to the entire board, and recommends salary for the next year.
A nonprofit bookkeeper enters income and expense data into an accounting system. Depending on the size and nature of your nonprofit, a bookkeeper may also process payments, pay bills, assist with year-end audits and tax preparation, or perform other clerical work.
The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) directly oversees all financial aspects of a nonprofit. The CFO reports to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and provides direction and support for internal operations, staffing, programs, and any new business developments as they relate to the budget. The specific duties of a CFO may vary across organizations depending on the nonprofit’s budget size and the complexity of its programs.
A chief operating officer in a nonprofit makes sure that an organization’s operations are running smoothly and are in line with the organization’s overall mission. The COO is an executive-level employee who manages teams, oversees programs and facilities, monitors internal processes such as staffing and budgeting, and even participates in financial planning. The specific role of a COO may vary greatly across organizations based on the nonprofit’s strategic goals, infrastructure, and culture.
A controller in a nonprofit is responsible for collecting and analyzing the organization’s financial data. The controller may perform a variety of accounting tasks, including payroll processing, financial reporting, and budgeting. They typically report to the CFO (if there is one) who utilizes this information to inform the nonprofit’s financial strategy.
A deputy director in a nonprofit is second-in-command to the executive director and manages the organization in their absence. The deputy director helps oversee everything internal; they typically supervise various departments, develop and oversee budgets, oversee organizational communication, help coordinate programs, and assist in overall strategic planning.
The director of administration and finance in a nonprofit is responsible for managing the organization’s cash flow, providing strategic business planning, overseeing budgets, and managing various administrative duties. A finance director ensures all of the nonprofit’s financial activities comply with the law and implements internal audits. They typically report directly to the CFO (if there is one). A finance director has similar responsibilities to a CFO, but they are not part of the top executive team.
Reach out to your network and find qualified candidates using this email job announcement.
What would happen if your nonprofit was faced with the unexpected and sudden departure of your executive director? Adopting an Emergency Succession Plan can help you ensure that essential functions continue uninterrupted by outlining a plan for the appointment of an acting executive director.
When an employee leaves your nonprofit, an exit interview can help you do the following: identify strengths and weaknesses in your organization, get an idea of the kind of skill sets you need from your next hire, and maintain a positive relationship with the employee.
An executive assistant in a nonprofit is the primary point person for the Executive Director or President/CEO and is their representative to the public. They serve as the liaison between management and the board of directors, staff, and volunteers. The executive assistant oversees internal communications, may assist with HR responsibilities, and will most likely help with fund development.
When hiring a new executive director to your nonprofit, a contract can be a useful document that helps lay out expectations and ultimately lays the groundwork for a successful relationship between your board and new executive director.
The executive director in a nonprofit is responsible for general management, evaluating programs, and sometimes developing a national expansion plan. This sample job description shares how one smaller-sized, growing, multi-site nonprofit organization configured the role of executive director.
The organization overview is the section in your nonprofit’s job posting that shares key information about your organization so that interested candidates can get a better understanding of your nonprofit’s history, mission, and goals.
The role of president in a nonprofit is to ensure successful achievement of the nonprofit’s long-term goals and vision by focusing on the organization’s core functions, such as: overall strategy, finance, board management, fundraising, and programs.
Program management roles at a nonprofit can differ based on the skill and experience required. At larger nonprofits, a vice president of programs may have an executive-level role that is similar to that of the executive director. Areas of oversight may include fundraising, program development and delivery, budget and team management, and public speaking and relationship management. At a smaller nonprofit, the program manager may have a smaller role that focuses primarily on program management.
The vice president in a nonprofit has the general role of helping to develop and enforce policies and initiatives within the organization that ensure it stays in line with its mission and meets its goals. The vice president works under the direction of the president or the board and manages employees and day-to-day operations. Depending on the organization’s specific needs, responsibilities may include: hiring staff, staff development, managing teams to coordinate community outreach and fundraisers, overseeing and maintaining finances, and helping with overall strategic planning.