Someone close to me is helping get a not-for-profit off the ground. Early days: a handful of volunteers, a board forming, a mission that is clear and a budget that is not. She asked me the question every new organisation asks in its first month. What should we sign up for?
She had a list. A website builder. An email marketing tool. A social media scheduler. A form tool. Probably a CRM. Each one reasonable, each one fifteen to fifty dollars a month, each one with its own login, its own export format and its own idea of where your data lives.
I replied from my phone, and the whole answer fitted in one long text. I think it is the right answer for nearly any organisation that is just starting, so here it is, with the reasoning I did not have room for.
The text message, more or less
One Google Workspace account, on the cheapest plan. About ten dollars a month. That single account gives the organisation its own email address, a calendar, shared storage, documents, spreadsheets, forms, slides and video meetings. It is the organisation’s home. It belongs to the organisation and not to whichever volunteer happened to set things up.
Everyone else stays on their own email. Volunteers and board members do not need a paid seat. You share the specific folders, sheets and documents each person needs with their personal address, and you remove them when they move on. It costs nothing, and Google’s own sharing controls are better than most people realise: some sheets open to the whole team, some to three people, some to one.
A simple, fast website that you own. Not a website builder on a monthly plan. A proper site, built once, hosted free, quick on a phone, and good at being found. I build these with AI now, which is why it takes days rather than months, and why changes afterwards take fifteen to thirty minutes instead of a quote. The parts that change often, city chapters, groups, events, are set up as simple collections that a wider circle of people can edit without touching anything else.
One Claude subscription, connected to that Google account. This is the part that makes the rest more than a cheap setup. With the mail, calendar and drive connected, whoever does the admin can simply ask: what came in this week, who have we not replied to, draft the update to the board from the last three meeting notes, what did we decide about the launch date? Connect Canva as well and the same conversation produces the social tiles.
Socials run from the same place. Draft the month’s posts with the AI, keep them in a sheet in the shared drive, and schedule them with the free tools the platforms already give you. Later, a small automation can publish from the sheet on a timetable.
That is the whole thing. Ten dollars a month for Google, plus the Claude and Canva subscriptions at whatever level suits. Perhaps another ten to fifty a month down the track, once you understand the shape of your data and know what is genuinely missing.
Why I think this beats the list
Your data is in one place you own. The membership list is a spreadsheet, not a record inside a tool that charges more as it grows. When you eventually need a real database, moving a clean sheet is an afternoon.
The AI can see all of it. This is the point people miss. Six separate tools means six walled gardens, and no assistant can answer a question that spans them. One home means “which of the people who came to the last event have not heard from us since?” is a sentence you can type.
There is nothing to outgrow expensively. Every paid tool you add in month one is a migration in year two. Starting nearly empty means each addition is made when you understand why you need it.
It takes very little time to look after. A new organisation runs on volunteer hours. Every tool is a thing someone has to learn, and the person who learned it always leaves.
What I would change about my own advice
I wrote that text quickly, and there is one part I would do differently on reflection.
I suggested that two or three trusted people share access to that one account. It is what small organisations do, and it is a weak spot: a shared password, no record of who did what, and a scramble when someone leaves. If you truly must start that way, use a password manager and two-step verification and treat it as temporary.
The better answer costs nothing for many organisations. Registered not-for-profits can usually get Google Workspace free through Google’s nonprofit programme, and Canva runs a similar one. Once you are eligible, give each admin their own login from day one. For the AI, one person’s subscription is a fine start; when several people need it, move to a team plan rather than passing a login around.
Two honest gaps as well. When your mailing list passes a few hundred people, send newsletters through a proper email service, because deliverability and unsubscribe rules matter, and several are free at that size. And donations need a payments provider. Neither changes the principle: add a tool when you can name the problem it solves.
It is not only for charities
The same advice holds for a two-person consultancy or a family business. The organisations that feel modern in two years will not be the ones with the most software. They will be the ones whose information lives somewhere an AI can read it, under an account they control.
If you are setting something up and the list of subscriptions is already getting long, send me the list. I will tell you which ones you need, and it is usually fewer than you think.