5 Tools to Save Money and Time for Associations

The Yapp team attended ASAE’s Technology Conference & Expo (#Tech15) on December 14 and December 15, 2015. It was my first year attending and I had a wonderful time meeting association professionals, learning about challenges faced by various associations, and how adapting disruptive technology can help address those challenges or open doors to new opportunities.

I was floored to hear that many of the association executives had never heard of several free or affordable technology solutions that we rely on heavily on a day-to-day basis. Even more shocking was the fact that $1000s are being spent on paying vendors set-up fees when easy-to-use, self-service options with equivalent or more features are available. Why spend $1000s on a vendor or in-house tech resources when you can use more cost-effective alternatives?

Here is a list of 5 tools to save money and time for associations:

  • Slack – Slack brings all your communication together in one place. You can connect all the tools you use to Slack seamlessly and the mobile app is very user-friendly. Believe it or not, we no longer use email at our company after we started using Slack!

Price: Starts Free. Official 501c3s get a 100% discount!

  • Trello – Trello is a project management tool that helps teams and organizations of all sizes keep track of everything. It’s incredibly flexible so you can choose exactly how you’d like to set up the various teams, projects or tasks along with due dates, checklists and more!

Price: Majority of the features are free. 

  • Canva – Easily create beautiful designs and documents for any of your needs. choose from existing templates and plenty of free stock images.

Price: Free unless you’d like to use paid images or upload your association’s colors and font (though that’s free for nonprofits too)

  • Zapier – You can easily connect apps you use, automate tasks and get more out of your data. No coding skills are required. You and your colleagues are guaranteed to be more productive with Zapier. 

Price: Starts free. Paid plans are based on your usage and nonprofits get 15% off all plans.

  • Calendly – A simple and effective scheduling tool so you can stop playing email tawww.g for any internal or external appointment moving forward. With the option to include specific questions for appointments, preparing for meetings is a breeze too!

Price: Starts free. Premium version is $8 per user/month

BONUS: Yapp – Yapp is truly one of the best tools for creating event apps. It’s easy, fast and affordable. No limits, no coding skills, no RFPs or long wait times involved. Just use the award-winning, self-service platform to create and publish apps instantly. At 90% cheaper than comparable solutions, Yapp is priced just right for budget-conscience nonprofits and associations!

As Director of Marketing for Yapp I might be biased, but David’s initial reaction when he first heard about Yapp at #Tech15 is definitely not!