11 Event Planning Tools for Nonprofits in 2026

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11 event planning tools for nonprofits in 2026, covering registration, fundraising, volunteers, email, schedules, and reporting

The best event planning tools for nonprofits are not always the products with the longest feature lists. They are the ones that fit the event, reduce manual work, protect supporter data, and leave more time for the mission behind it.

A fundraising gala, volunteer orientation, annual conference, and community workshop each create a different workload. One team may need ticketing and donations. Another needs abstract submissions, session schedules, certificates, and detailed attendance records. Before comparing brands, it helps to decide which jobs your technology must handle.

This guide compares 11 useful tools across the nonprofit event workflow. You will find options for project planning, design, email, fundraising, ticketing, volunteers, donor records, agendas, audience participation, virtual delivery, and connected event operations.

The central choice is not simply which tool has the most features. It is whether separate tools will stay simple or force your team to become the connection between them. That difference often decides whether an event feels manageable in its final weeks.

Editorial note: Dryfta publishes this guide and appears in the comparison. We reviewed official product and help information available on September 24, 2026. We assessed each tool for a specific job rather than declaring one product the winner in every situation. We did not run the same event on every platform. Features, nonprofit eligibility, pricing, and integrations can change, so confirm the details that affect your event before signing a contract.

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Post-Event Thank You Email: Templates & Writing Tips

A Guide to Writing Perfect Thank You Emails After Your Event

It is the season of gratitude. As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, it is the right time to talk about the post-event thank you email. Many event organizers already know that your event isn’t truly over until you have thanked the attendees, speakers, sponsors and your team for their contributions. Sending a thank you message is your chance to have a lasting impression on people involved in your event. 

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Leveraging Email Automation for Better Conference Experience

communicate smarter with email automation for conferences

Effective communication is the driving force behind a successful academic conference. It can make or break your conference. Speaking of communication, academics often prefer emails to be their most preferred channel of communication. Thus, it’s hardly a surprise that email automation plays a defining role in the success of academic events.

Starting from registration confirmations to post-event follow-ups, every time properly scheduled emails keep attendees informed and engaged. However, manually managing thousands of emails is tedious and is bound to be error-prone. Continue reading

Top 10 Podcasts for Event Professionals

Event podcasts
 

The world of events is ever-changing, and staying updated is crucial for success. Podcasts offer an excellent way to gain insights into the latest trends, technologies, and best practices in the event industry. Here’s a curated list of the top 10 podcasts that every event professional should consider tuning into.

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Borderless Cybersecurity Conference & Technical Symposium by Oasis Open – A Case Study

Successful use of Dryfta

Borderless Cybersecurity Conference helps organizations identify and avoid some of the biggest pitfalls in threat intelligence. The conference program brings together the OASIS Borderless Cyber and FIRST Technical Symposium communities to provide guidance, outline next steps, and identify available resources to help you deal with imminent or emerging cyber threats.

Oasis Open

Used Dryfta for: Collecting abstracts, Sending email campaigns, Assigning abstracts to reviewers & conducting Peer review, Creating Event website, Selling tickets through credit card payments, generating Program schedule.

Here’s a quick interview with Jane Harnad, Manager of Events, about her experience with using Dryfta event platform for Borderless Cybersecurity Conference
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University of Missouri, St. Louis – Case Study

Great Product, Great Price and Amazing Customer Service!

The Midwest Digital Marketing Conference is the largest digital marketing conference in the Midwest, is rated a Top Marketing Conference to Check Out in 2019 by Forbes and has set attendance records with nearly 2,000 marketers.

mdmc19_banner

Used Dryfta for: Collecting abstracts, Sending email campaigns, Assigning abstracts to reviewers & conducting Peer review, Creating Event website, Selling tickets through credit card payments, Program schedule building & management, and Engaging attendees on Dryfta event apps.

Here’s a quick interview with Brianna Smith, Adjunct Professor, UMSL Digital, about her experience with using Dryfta event platform for Midwest Digital Marketing Conference
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Improve Email Deliverability with a Whitelabel Domain

sendgrid-dryfta-integration

Dryfta event platform now provides you with the option to send email campaigns signed by your own domain and through your own unique IP address. This improves email deliverability to a large extent and also lets you access more detailed reports of where your mails are going and how they are being treated by spam filters.

To enable these features on Dryfta platform, we have partnered with Sendgrid. Sendgrid is a widely-used, reliable platform to send your transactional and marketing emails.

 

Here’re the steps to set up your campaign sending through Sendgrid:

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Sync Subscribers from Dryfta to Constant Contact

Dryfta is an event management platform for universities and organizations. The Constant Contact integration for Dryfta lets event organizers sync subscribers and mailing lists from Dryfta event platform to Constant Contact and vice-versa.

constant-contact-dryfta

Overall Benefits

  • Collect email addresses using the opt-in box on your Dryfta powered event website and push these subscribers to a mailing list on your Constant Contact account. That’s the combined power of Constant Contact email marketing and Dryfta event platform, at your disposal!
  • Apart from subscribers, you can also sync name and email addresses of your attendees and speakers to Constant Contact and send email campaigns using the Constant Contact email software.
  • Convert subscribers in your Dryfta event platform to registrants

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Sync subscribers from Dryfta to Mailchimp

Dryfta is an event management platform for universities and organizations. The Mailchimp integration for Dryfta lets event organizers sync subscribers and mailing lists from Dryfta event platform to Mailchimp and vice-versa.

mailchimp-dryfta

Overall Benefits

  • Collect email addresses using the opt-in box on your Dryfta powered event website and push these subscribers to a mailing list on your Mailchimp account. That’s the combined power of Mailchimp email marketing and Dryfta event platform, at your disposal!
  • Apart from subscribers, you can also sync name and email addresses of your attendees and speakers to Mailchimp and send email campaigns using the Mailchimp email software.
  • Convert subscribers in your Dryfta event platform to registrants

Technical & Support

To use the Mailchimp integration for Dryfta, all you need is your API key. Enter these credentials in your Dryfta dashboard and you’re all set to start syncing your mailing lists and subscribers to and from Mailchimp.

Cost

Mailchimp integration comes free with a Dryfta subscription.

 

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The Pain Points that Dryfta Solves

dryfta-event-platform

 

A common approach to set up an academic or a nonprofit conference is to use an array of tools, e.g., WordPress, Eventbrite, Easychair, and Mailchimp. Then put your staff into multi-tasking mode and try to get your event off the ground.

What would it be like if you could access all of these features from a single platform, all fully integrated, making for a seamless, unified data flow? Dryfta event platform solves this issue of unstructured data flow caused primarily due to using one too many tools by offering a set of fully-integrated tools. Let’s see how Dryfta stacks up with each of these tools regarding features and functionality.

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Why your Product never seems good enough

Level zero

Hi. This is your Chief Happiness Officer.

I’m very delighted to see 100s of users using Dryfta to manage their events 3 months after our private beta release. I take this oppurtunity to thank our founding customers especially my team for clinging to this vision of having an all-inclusive event management platform for event organizers and delivering on our promises.
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