Short answer: an app for your charity or nonprofit is a free template here, installed on your volunteers’ phones the same afternoon, with a working backend and your name on the icon. Changes cost a few credits and the plan that covers them is $5 a month. The one thing it will not do is take donations, and this note says why and what to do instead. People search for an app for my nonprofit as often as an app for my charity, and the answer is the same either way.
What most nonprofits are trying to fix
The email nobody opens. The group chat that buried the rota under photos. The event where half the people who said they were coming forgot. The new volunteer who does not know who to ask. None of that is a website problem, and it is not a social media problem either. It is an app problem: one place on a phone that belongs to your organisation, with a notification that lands when something matters.
Which template fits
- The community hub. A notice board with announcements that track who has read them, events people say they are coming to, groups with their own announcements and members inside, a wall for talking, and leaders who publish. Built for an organisation talking to itself, which is most of what a nonprofit needs.
- The events app. For the fundraiser, the open day, the quiz night. People book a place against a capacity, get a QR pass, and your door team scans it from the same app. A ticket can show a price, but paying happens outside the app.
- The members club. A membership card people show at the door, a diary of sessions to book into, a notice board and a directory of everyone else. Dues stay where they are collected today.
- The group messenger. Direct and group conversations with photos, read receipts and push, for a committee or a volunteer crew that has outgrown the chat app.
- The team tasks app. Who is doing what by when, for a volunteer committee of two to twenty.
Pick the one nearest to your week, name it after your organisation, choose your colour, and it installs. Ask for changes afterwards in the app’s chat: “call groups teams”, “add a rota to each event”, “show the safeguarding lead on the leaders page”.
The one thing it will not do
None of these templates take donations or payments in the app. That is deliberate. Taking money means a payment processor, receipts, refunds, Gift Aid where it applies, and rules from Apple and Google about what may be sold inside an app. Your existing giving page already handles all of that. Keep it, and put the link in an announcement or on your organisation’s page in the app. If you later want a shop for merchandise, the shop template takes cards once you connect your own payment processor.
What it costs, with what that buys
The template is free, with no card and no time limit. Installing on Android phones is a link and a QR code, no store account needed, which for a small organisation is the whole answer. Putting it on iPhones needs an Apple developer account at $99 a year, Apple’s rule, and Google Play is a one-off $25 if you want to be on the store. Changes cost a few credits; Basic is $5 a month with 50 credits, Pro is $19 a month with 250 credits, Business is $49 a month with 1000 credits. When you outgrow the free backend, move the data into your own Supabase account and you own it end to end.
Who runs it
Whoever claims the template holds the account. Inside the app, you make the chair, the coordinator or the secretary an admin from the settings, and they run the notice board without ever seeing the builder. If a trustee wants the data, it is in a database you can download in full at any time, along with the app’s complete source code.
A nonprofit does not need a grant to have an app. It needs a name, a colour, and an afternoon.