In this article you will find a list of digital tools that will come in handy for you as activist. Taking into account the limited resources of movements, we have selected a wide variety of affordable apps. We also have provided some open source alternatives, if you prefer to avoid evil big business out of privacy concerns.
You can contribute: This handbook is written by people like you. Feel free to create an account and add the tools that you find useful! Find out more about how to contribute.
¶ Communication tools
- 💬 Chat apps: Community building continues online. These chat apps will enable your movement to stay in touch.
- ☎️ Video calling: These tools allow you to meet face to face even when you are on the other site of the world.
- ❤️ Social media: Reaching out to potential supporters is vital for every activist organisation. Check out our tips how to use various social media platforms more effectively.
- ✉️ Email and newsletters: Email may seem old fashioned, but sending out newsletters is still a great way to call people to action. We have made a comparison of several newsletter services.
- 📱 Broadcasting messages: If your contact list contains phone numbers, these tools will help you broadcast text messages to your audience.
- 🔗 Website: Having a professionally looking website enables your members and others to find the information they are looking for. In this guide, we made a list of open source and cheap blogging, wiki and other website software for activist organisations.
- ❓ Support desk: No matter via what platform people reach out to you, these tools will help you communicate efficiently using omnichannel dashboards.
¶ Productivity apps
- 🗂 Productivity suites: All-in-one packages for productivity tools.
- ⚡ Movement organising: All-in-one solutions for membership management, hosting events, sharing petitions.
- 🙋♀️ Decision making: Platforms that help you make democratic decisions, including everyone in the conversation.
- ✅ Project management: Tools that help you keep track of projects and to-do's while working in teams.
- 📂 File storage: Solutions for storing and sharing documents.
- 📝 Documents: Modern text editors for collaborating online
- 🎤 Presentations: Apps to make presentation slides.
- 💡Brainstorming: Creative tools for collecting ideas online.
- ❓ Forms: Tools to collect responses using surveys and signup forms.
- 🤖 Workflow automation: Connect all your tools and automate repetitive tasks.
¶ Creative media
- 🎨 Graphic design: Creating visually attractive imagery is a great way to illustrate your message. In this article you will find a list of photography and vector editing applications.
- 🎬 Video editing / Videos (needs to be merged): By publishing promotional videos for your actions on social media and recording your protests, even people who are outside your direct circle will be able to get to know your movement. In this article we discuss various ways in which you can share videos with your fellow rebels, including Youtube and Vimeo, but also open source self-hosted alternatives.
- 🎤 Podcasts: Publish your audio recordings with one of these tools. Podcasts are a great way to convey your message in a personal way.
¶ Acting
¶ Security
You should protect yourself from hackers. As activist, you are in a high risk group. We highly recommend reading Watch Your Hack, which explains everything in layman's terms (1 hour reading time).
¶ Our honest approach
We only recommend tools that we actually like to use. We are not being payed to promote any services. We ask everyone who adds items to our collection to stay objective and review the tools with a critical mindset. Any spam or promotional contributions will be removed. However, if you have developed a useful tool for activists yourself, feel free to share it with us!
As most activist organisations do not have access to large funds, we prefer free and open source services over payed ones.
In addition, we like to see that the products that we use reflect the positive impact we are trying to make on this world. In other words: we do not only assess the quality of the tools that we review, but we also try to look at the people and organisations behind the tools.
¶ Related resources
- Apps and digital platforms for organizers by Blueprints for Change
- Tools for canvassing and door knocking by Blueprints for Change
- Digital security basics for campaigners by Blueprints for Change
- Texting campaigns by Blueprints for Change
- Volunteer-led phone banking by Blueprints for Change
- Org-in-a-box by Aslan French
- Privacy tools by Paper Revolution