15 Completely Free Tools To Keep Your Interns Productive and Manageable

	A	B	C
1	Platform	Description	Use it for
2	HelloSign	HelloSign makes signing onboarding contracts a breeze. With their free pricing tier, an intern can sign up to 3 documents per month. HelloSign can be integrated with Google Drive which makes sure you have a place to easily keep track of and and all legal documents.	Onboarding
3	Free Invoice Generator	This generator from Invoiced is a great free option if you're paying your interns a monthly stipend and require them to send invoices to your accounting department. Interns with little real-world job expeirence can often be intimidated by the financial forms and documents if they've never had exposure, but this generator has an easy-to-use design and has a simple, fill-in-the-blank customization option.	Onboarding Project Management
4	Tweetdeck	If Twitter is the focus of your social media strategy, Tweetdeck is a great, free way for interns to write, schedule and publish content for your nonprofit's account. They can also easily respond to DM's and manage list activity all on the same screen.	Social Posting
5	Hootsuite	Hootsuite has a free plan that allows your intern to help write and schedule content for up to 3 different social media platforms using one login. They can schedule up to 30 messages across your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all in one place which teaches them the importantance of planning ahead and time management.	Social Posting
6	Canva	Whether your intern is a design pro or a novice, this free tool allows them to make graphics for social, mockups, and more! They even offer their premium version to registered nonprofits for free: https://about.canva.com/canva-for-nonprofits/	Social Posting
7	Draw.io	If you're looking for a practical task to assign to your interns, have them try to update your company's organizational chart. They can use Draw.io to outline the different departments, titles and names. It can serve as a good visual of how your nonprofit is structured and provide clarity when it comes to chains of command, accountability, etc.	Admin Projects
8	Google Analytics	Getting your interns to do a deep-dive into your company's Google Analytics account provides fresh eyes on data that you've analyzed hundreds of times. Give them access and see if they have ideas for new content to write, or specific insights about your website visitors, and develop strategies they think could be successful.	Reporting
9	Asana	We use Asana here at Whole Whale to keep track of the work we do for our clients. Their free plan is great for smaller nonprofits with a couple of interns. It's a great way to assign tasks to them while providing accountability and transparency company-wide.	Project Management
10	Grammerly	This free chrome extension is helpful in ensuring any content or emails your interns write is well-written, free of typos, and professional (no English degree required.) Having interns that can confidently write to donors or publish high quality content will always reflect well on your organization.	Content Marketing
11	Evernote	This web application serves as a convenient place where interns can jot down questions they have throughout their internships, write down learnings from any meetings they shadow, and overall be a log of personal progress they've made. They can also prep for checkins and reviews with their managers, outlining what they've liked and if there's anything they would change about their experience.	Project Management
12	Google Forms	This free tool is part of the Google Suite and can be used to get honest feedback about your internship program at it's conclusion. It can be filled out anonymously if preferred, and can ask both quantitative and qualitative questions. For example, how they would rate specific tasks in terms of difficulty but also ask for feedback about specific members of the team they've interacted with.	Project Management Offboarding
13	Awesome Timesheet	A chrome plug-in that allows your interns to clearly see how much time they're spending on certain tasks, helping them use every hour as efficently as possible. They simply click "Start" when they begin a task, and "Stop" when it's completed. They can keep track of the data in a Google Sheet and then visualize it into a graph to see their specific task breakdown, which can be helpful for both them and their managers.	Onboarding Project Management
14	Last Pass	Last Pass offers a free plan for up to 1 user, so you can set up individual intern accounts with their emails and have them pre-filled with passwords to any site they might need. It could be anything from social media profiles to your website's CMS. Having them all pre-loaded in one safe and secure place reduces the need for redundent questions and prevents unnecessary delays on projects.	Onboarding Project Management
15	Yoast Plug-in	Yoast's free SEO WordPress plug-in is great if you have a content or marketing intern. It makes it easy to input focus keywords, meta-descriptions and categorize any exisitng or new content on your site.	SEO
16	Fundly	If your intern is focused on promoting crowdfunding efforts, introduce them to Fundly. It provides a secure website for you to accept donations online and it's easy enough to create that any intern should be able to put it together. There's zero cost to starting a fundraising campaign, but, like most 3rd party platforms, Fundly will take a small fee, but only after you've successfullly raised money!	Crowdfunding
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