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!

Chapter quality: ⭐️⭐️ (2/5)

This chapter is a work-in-progress. You will still find some useful tools. However, in most cases, you will need to evaluate these tools yourself. In addition, we have not yet written good guides on how to use these digital tools effectively.

As the digital landscape changes quickly, this is is also a difficult chapter to keep up-to-date. We encourage tech-savvy activists to contribute by clicking the blue edit button in the bottom right!

Get started #

• 🧑‍💻 What is a digital organizer?

• 🛠️ Choosing your tech stack

• 💯 Evaluating tools

Communication tools #

The following tools can be used to communicate within your movement, and reach out to potential new members. For example, check out our comparison of chat apps, where we provide some suggestions for how to set up internal communication channels if your group starts getting bigger.

We also have guides on how to use social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter effectively. And if you need pictures to post on your socials, make sure to bookmark our collection of free photos, illustrations and videos.

• ❤️ Social media

• 💬 Chat apps

• 📸 Photo libraries

• ✏️ Vector illustration libraries

• 🎞 Video footage libraries

• ☎️ Video calling

• ✉️ Email and newsletters

• 📱 Broadcasting messages

• 🔗 Website

• ❓ Support desk

• 🔍 Search engine optimisation (SEO)

• 🔴 Livestreaming

Productivity apps #

Adopting powerful tools to support activities that go beyond simple, direct communication is often necessary as soon as your organization starts growing beyond a few people.

This section details several categories of tools that you can adopt to support your processes, track and coordinate activities, archive your knowledge, and take decisions effectively.

• 🗂 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.

• 📊 Data apps: modern spreadsheet apps for collecting, using and analysing any data

• 💽 People database (CRM)

• 📈 Website analytics: keep track of website visitors

• 📝 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 #

Media production is often a demanding activity for most public-facing activist organizations. This section covers the basic of what tools to use to produce the most common media formats.

• 🎨 Images: 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.

• 🎬 Videos: 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.

  Custom tools #

  Sometimes existing software and its features are not enough. If your organization has specific needs and enough resources, developing custom tools becomes an option.

• 🔧 No-code tools

Acting #

• 📝 Petitions

• 📞 Contacting politicians

• ⚠️ Responding in crises

Digital challenges #

• Digital security

• Privacy

• Tools for archiving

• Bandwidth limitations / No Internet

• Access in countries that implement filtering / censorship

• Accessibility of digital tools for people with disabilities

• Smartphone-only users/no access to desktop

• Multilingual content/Translations

• Difficulties to use digital tools (digital activism gap)

• Building a new web

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.

Improve this page #

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.

This article performs well in search engines**.** Lot's of people look up ‘tools for activists’, and we show up 3rd in the results on average. Help us reach even more people by adding information and pictures to this article.

What are people looking up? #

External resources #

• StacLabs Index

• Common Knowledge

• 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

• Beautiful Rising Research [GitHub repository] (outdated but might still contain useful info)

• Digital and Online Activism – Digital for Good by Anna Rees (2013)

• Digital Tools, Democracy, and Activism - ethical.net by James Milin-Ashmore (2020)

• Digital Tools for Activism | Curated list of awesome lists by Drew Wilson

• 4 Online Tools for Activists, by Activists

• How Young Activists Deploy Digital Tools for Social Change by Henry Jenkins (2017)

• Online activism and accessibility - Blog by Charlotte Boulton (2018)

• Online Activism Has Made Social Movements More Accessible by Bailey Basham (2020)

• For People With Disabilities, The Internet Makes Protest Accessible by Samantha Chavarria (2018)

• Accessibility in Social Media. A look into the movement towards… | by Ellie Oliver by Ellie Oliver (2020)

• New Mode

• Digital First Aid Kit by CiviCert/Rapid Response Network

• What Campaigners Should be Considering About Artificial Intelligence by Tectonica

• Social Movement Technologies, courses