Best Project Management Software for Nonprofits
monday.com is the easiest start for a small nonprofit: eligible organizations get ten seats free, and its colorful, board-driven interface tends to land well with volunteers who have never used a project tool. Jira goes further on price, free for up to 25 users through Atlassian's social impact program, but it was built for software teams and still reads that way.
For everyone else, the questions are how the discount works and who the free plan covers. Six vendors publish 50% or more off, three settle a discount case by case, and Wrike publishes no nonprofit program at all. Free plans run from unlimited members on ClickUp, Wrike and Nifty down to one person on Notion, and that decides whether a large volunteer base costs you anything.
Our picks
- A staff of ten, with nothing to pay: monday.com. Ten seats free for eligible nonprofits, with more seats at a steep discount, on a $9 list plan.
- A nonprofit that also runs a website or app: Jira. 100% off for up to 25 users through Atlassian's program, and the ordinary free plan covers ten.
- Many volunteers and hours logged against grants: ClickUp. The free plan has unlimited members, unlimited tasks and native time tracking.
- Lowest list price, with a CRM on the same bill: Zoho Projects. $4 per user, with nonprofit wallet credit covering up to half your spend and the rest of the Zoho suite behind it.
- Tracking records rather than projects: Airtable. A linked database for grant deadlines, volunteer records or participants, with 50% off the Team plan.
At a glance
| Option | Price | Nonprofit Offer | Free Plan | Tool Type | User Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10.99source | 50% or more offsource | Limited userssource | Work management platformsource | 4.5source | |
| $9source | Free up to a seat capsource | Limited userssource | Work management platformsource | 4.6source | |
| $7source | Discount by applicationsource | Unlimited userssource | All-in-one workspacesource | 4.6source | |
| $5source | 50% or more offsource | Limited userssource | Kanban task boardssource | 4.5source | |
| $10source | 50% or more offsource | Individual use onlysource | All-in-one workspacesource | 4.7source | |
| $20source | 50% or more offsource | Limited userssource | Database and app buildersource | 4.6source | |
| $10source | Unlimited userssource | Work management platformsource | 4.4source | ||
| $9source | Discount by applicationsource | Trial onlysource | Work management platformsource | 4.5source | |
| $4source | 50% or more offsource | Limited userssource | Work management platformsource | 4.5source | |
| $9.99source | Discount by applicationsource | Limited userssource | Work management platformsource | 4.5source | |
| $7.91source | Free up to a seat capsource | Limited userssource | Agile issue trackingsource | 4.4source | |
| $10source | 50% or more offsource | Unlimited userssource | All-in-one workspacesource | 4.6source |
Free seats, half off, or a sales call
Only two tools give seats away outright: monday.com (ten) and Jira (25). Asana, Trello, Notion, Airtable, Zoho Projects and Nifty publish 50% or more off, with conditions worth reading. Notion's discount applies only to its Business plan, Airtable's to the Team plan, and Zoho's arrives as wallet credit covering up to half of what you spend rather than a cut on the invoice. Trello's paid plans fall under the same Atlassian program as Jira.
ClickUp, Smartsheet and Teamwork.com offer a discount you have to apply for, so you learn the number only after asking. Wrike goes a step further: special pricing has to be negotiated with its sales team, so budget planning starts with a phone call. Because the cheapest list price here (Zoho Projects at $4) and the priciest (Airtable at $20) both come with roughly half off, the order of the Price column mostly holds after the discount.
Letting volunteers in without paying per head
ClickUp, Wrike and Nifty are the three free plans with no member limit, though Nifty caps you at two active projects. The limited free plans vary a lot in what limited means. Asana's is down to two people, Airtable's allows five editors, Zoho Projects holds five users and three projects, Teamwork.com five users and five projects, and Jira's ordinary free plan covers ten.
Two have little to offer a volunteer team at no cost. Notion's free tier is built for one person and caps at 1,000 blocks once a second workspace owner joins, and Smartsheet retired its free plan for new signups in August 2024, leaving a 30-day trial.
Tracking staff hours against a grant
If a funder wants staff hours reported against a grant, look at time tracking first. Teamwork.com makes time logging, rates and capacity forecasting core features, ClickUp includes native time tracking on its free plan, and Nifty bundles it with tasks, docs and chat. monday.com is the one to check first: time tracking is locked to its higher paid plans, so the ten free seats may not cover it.
The options in detail
Asana
Asana is one of the most widely adopted work management tools, and its nonprofit program is refreshingly simple: a flat 50% off paid plans once your organization is verified. It is strong at running repeatable programs, with templates, workload views and approvals that suit teams coordinating grants, events or campaigns across departments. The catch for small nonprofits is the free tier, which Asana has narrowed to two people, so most teams pay from day one. Reviewers rate it highly for ease of use, though a minority report slow responses when they need support urgently.
monday.com
monday.com has the most generous entry offer here: ten seats free for eligible nonprofits, with additional seats at a steep discount on top. The interface is colourful and board driven, which tends to land well with volunteers and program staff who have never used a project tool before. It also bends easily into things that are not really projects, like a volunteer roster or a grant pipeline. The trade-off is that features nonprofits often want, time tracking among them, are locked to the higher paid plans.
ClickUp
ClickUp packs the most into its free plan: unlimited members, unlimited tasks and native time tracking, which is unusual at no cost and genuinely useful for allocating staff hours against a grant. Its nonprofit discount is real but unpublished, so you apply and find out what you are offered rather than reading a number off a page. The depth cuts both ways: reviewers praise the feature set and the value, while small teams can find the sheer number of settings overwhelming to configure. It is the strongest pick for a budget-conscious nonprofit willing to invest the setup time.
Trello
Trello is the simplest tool on this list and the one volunteers pick up fastest, because the whole model is a card moved across a board. It works well for a single recurring workflow such as an event checklist, a donation acknowledgement queue or a content calendar, and much less well once you need reporting across many projects at once. Its free plan covers a small team per workspace, which is enough for plenty of grassroots nonprofits to never pay anything. Because Atlassian owns it, paid upgrades also fall under the same nonprofit program that covers Jira.
Notion
Notion is a documents-first workspace where a project is a database you build yourself, which suits nonprofits that want program notes, policies and task lists living in one place instead of three. It is the most flexible option here and the most work to set up, because almost nothing arrives preconfigured. Two limits matter for this audience: the nonprofit discount applies only to the Business plan, and the free tier is really built for one person, capping at 1,000 blocks once a second workspace owner joins. If someone on staff enjoys building systems, Notion rewards that; if nobody does, it stalls.
Airtable
Airtable is a database that looks like a spreadsheet, and nonprofits reach for it when the thing they are tracking is not really a project: grant deadlines, volunteer records, program participants, equipment. It links records together in ways a normal spreadsheet cannot, and it can put simple forms and internal apps on top of that data without code. It is the priciest per seat in this comparison, though the 50% nonprofit discount on the Team plan brings it back toward the pack. The free plan is capped at five editors, so it works better as a small back-office system than as an all-staff tool.
Wrike
Wrike is the most conventional project management tool in this group, built around folders, Gantt timelines and intake request forms, and it fits nonprofits running formal projects with defined phases and handoffs. Its free plan is unusual in supporting unlimited users, so a large volunteer base can be brought in without paying per head, which few competitors allow. The gap for this audience is that Wrike publishes no nonprofit program at all: special pricing exists but has to be negotiated with their sales team, so budget planning starts with a phone call. Reviewers most often flag the learning curve rather than the feature set.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is the grid-based option, closest to running your programs out of a very capable spreadsheet, and it turns up most often in larger nonprofits whose staff already live in Excel. It handles portfolios, resource allocation and approval routing at a scale most tools here do not attempt. Two things make it harder on a small budget: the free plan was retired for new signups in August 2024, leaving only a 30-day trial, and the nonprofit discount is unpublished and settled during the purchase conversation. It suits an organization that already has a dedicated operations person more than one buying its first tool.
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is the cheapest paid option in this comparison by a wide margin, and the rest of the Zoho suite sits behind it, which matters if you also need a CRM, accounting or a donor database on the same bill. Zoho's nonprofit program works as wallet credit rather than a percentage off the invoice, covering up to half of what you spend. The free tier holds five users and three projects, enough for a very small team to trial it properly rather than just look at it. It is less polished than the leaders here, but on a tight budget the value is hard to argue with.
Teamwork.com
Teamwork.com is built for organizations delivering work against a budget and a deadline for somebody else, which maps unusually well onto grant-funded program delivery. Time logging, rates and capacity forecasting are core rather than add-ons, so tracking staff hours against a specific grant is a first-class job rather than a workaround. Its nonprofit pricing is not published; their billing team handles requests case by case. The free plan tops out at five users and five projects, so treat it as an extended trial rather than a permanent home for a growing team.
Jira
Jira carries the strongest free offer on this list: Atlassian's social impact program currently gives eligible nonprofits 100% off Jira for up to 25 users, which is a real staff-sized team at no cost. It was built for software teams and still reads that way, with sprints, backlogs and issue workflows, so a nonprofit with no technical staff will find it heavier than the job requires. Where it earns its place is an organization that also runs a website, an app or an internal IT function alongside its programs. Even without applying, the ordinary free plan covers ten users.
Nifty
Nifty is a smaller all-in-one option bundling tasks, docs, chat and time tracking into one workspace, aimed at teams who would otherwise pay for three separate tools. Its free plan allows unlimited members, which almost nothing else here does, though it caps you at two active projects, so it behaves as a real trial rather than a permanent free tier. Nonprofits get 50% off its paid plans, which puts a small staff team well under the cost of the better-known names. The trade-off is a much smaller review base and a thinner integration ecosystem, so verify it connects to the tools you already run.
How we researched this
Two columns carry this table: the list price of the cheapest paid plan, per user per month on annual billing and before any discount, and the Nonprofit Offer, which records what each vendor gives a verified nonprofit. Every rating is GetApp's overall score, the one review directory we could read consistently for all twelve, so the narrow 4.4 to 4.7 spread compares like with like. Zoho hides its prices from page text, so its $4 is cited to GetApp's pricing page, and Smartsheet's nonprofit terms come from a post on Smartsheet's own community site. Nifty's $10 is its per-member rate for teams under seven; larger teams move to flat plans such as $79 a month for Pro.
Basecamp was left out only because it charges a flat price per team ($25 a month Freelancer, $59 Studio) with no per-user option, a pricing model that can suit a volunteer-heavy group. Microsoft Planner is not cleanly sold or priced as a standalone product, Freedcamp and Hive were cut for space, and donor CRMs such as Bloomerang, Bonterra and Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud are not project tools. The one blank is Wrike's Nonprofit Offer, because Wrike has no program page to cite. Offers like Jira's 100% off are as of September 2026, and each depends on the vendor verifying your nonprofit status.