Category: Office Tools and Suites

Open Office

iGetcha thinks the power of Open Office is not being realized. It's free for one.

GIMP

Why use Photoshop when GIMP is for free?! Not all nonprofits know this application and it's one of the most valuable resources to have if you can't afford Photoshop. It's exactly the same! Well, maybe not exactly but it has all the features that you have in Photoshop and it's (you guessed it!) open source and free!

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is one of the best free email client out there for nonprofits.

Lightning

For those nonprofits dependent on an Outlook Calendar, Lightning adds on to your Thunderbird so that you can schedule meetings with everyone inside and outside your organization. Also check out SunBird as an option from Mozilla Foundation too!

NGO-in-a-Box

Actually, iGetcha is surprised how little NGO-in-a-Box is utilized. Ideally, nonprofits could spread the files that NGO-in-a-Box has provided and help those small initiatives such as a shelter with obsolete software or no software on PCs. As a nonprofit, if you as a nonprofit want to distribute DVDs/CDs with free and open source software, NGO-in-a-Box provides iso files for you to put on DVDs/CDs.

Use these tools as a core and you can build around NGO-in-a-Box with iGetcha's suggestions :)

Gmail offline

Gmail offline recently graduated from a 0.4 version in December of 2009. Take this email client seriously if your nonprofit operates with a Google account.

Scribus

Scribus is open source desktop publishing that is featured in NGO-in-a-box. Scribus has been around for 6+ years and you can use it for brochures, posters and newletters for example :) This is awesome for nonprofits! Now the question is, how do we get free printers and printer cartridges to make our nonprofit brochures ;) Check out recycles.org if you're in the US.

Open Workbench

Open Workbench is the only project management tool for free that iGetcha could find online. Although it may not be as good as commercial project management software, look for it to improve as more users start to utilize open source and free software. If you're not on the Internet frequently, this is the tool for your nonprofit. If you are on the Internet, we recommend ZOHO.