Getting started (everyone)
Whatever your role, the on-ramp is the same five steps. Most people finish them in under fifteen minutes.
- Create your organization on the My Organization page: name your nonprofit and start your workspace.
- Invite your team and board from that same page. Colleagues on your organization's email domain join automatically; others use an invite code.
- Connect online donations in Donor Management, under Organization Settings then Online donations, so gifts go straight to your own account.
- Connect your email tool in the Technology app, under Communications, for newsletters and email campaigns.
- Open your first app and try it. Your launchpad lists everything you have.
Then get to work. Wherever you start, these five habits make the platform pay off:
Go to the member portal at app.allinonenonprofit.com and sign in with Google. The "My apps" launchpad lists everything you have.
Pick the suite that matches your job (formation, governance, operations & compliance, fundraising, or Executive Director & Board) and open its tools from the launchpad.
Add your organization name, EIN, letterhead, and signature in Settings. Each app remembers, and your documents come out branded automatically.
Open the AI Automations tab in any app (20+ tools have one) and let it draft your routine letters, plans, minutes, and reports. You review everything before it's used. See pricing for details.
Ten apps now have a Predictions tab (under the Dashboard) that flags what needs your attention from your own data: donors about to lapse, members up for renewal, filings at risk, volunteers drifting away, indicators behind target, board seats coming up, and more. Every score shows the reasons behind it, and a one-click AI brief turns it into a short action plan. The scores and the AI brief are both included with the All-Access subscription.
Directors & Executive Directors
You own the whole machine: governance, compliance, fundraising, and operations. Your job in the platform is to set up the trackers once, then run a steady monthly and annual rhythm. New Executive Director? The Executive Director app has a Getting Started page in its sidebar: a saved, step-by-step first-weeks checklist that links to the right tool at every step.
Your first week
- Sign in at the member portal (app.allinonenonprofit.com) and open the "My apps" launchpad. Create or join your team so the board shares one organization profile.
- Set up the Compliance Tracker: pick your state(s), confirm which filings apply, and let the deadline calendar populate. This is the single most important fifteen minutes you'll spend.
- Run the Tech Readiness Assessment in Technology & Digital Services. You'll get a letter grade and a prioritized fix list, each item points at the tab that fixes it.
- If you fundraise, load the basics into Donor Management: your donors and recent gifts, so acknowledgments and year-end statements can be generated from real data.
- Open the Executive Director app and work through the First 90 Days and Annual Work Plan worksheets. Its built-in Cadence Calendar gives you a month-by-month routine.
- Take the Operations Audit when you have an hour: it baselines your whole organization and hands you a prioritized to-do list tied to the right apps.
- Set up Training for your board and volunteers: assign a video and a quick acknowledgment or quiz (start from the ready-made library, board orientation, conflict-of-interest basics, governance 101, volunteer safety), and people complete it from their member portal. Certificates file themselves into your Document Library, and you can require a training before someone registers for an event.
Your monthly rhythm
- Run the board packet cycle. Committee chairs submit their "Report to the Board" in Committees; the Board Report Compiler in Board Management auto-collects them and reminds stragglers. (See the diagram below.)
- Send donor acknowledgments for the month's gifts from Donor Management: the letters include the IRS-required language.
- Check the Compliance Tracker: what's due in the next 60 days, and mark completed filings.
- Clear pending invoice approvals in the Invoice Approval Log in Board Management: the app computes which sign-off each invoice needs.
- If you have dues-paying members, open Membership: see who's due to renew in the next 45 days and send the reminders, with your payment link included.
- If you run a scholarship program, open Scholarship Management: collect applications, score them against your rubric with the selection committee, and record awards, all in one place.
Your annual rhythm
- IRS Forms Assistant: confirm your Form 990 version, work the checklist, hand a clean package to your filer.
- Annual Development Report: the compiler in Donor Management rolls a year of gifts and statements into one report.
- Annual Effectiveness Review: committee self-assessments feed it; schedule it with the board.
- Annual Report: tell the year's story with impact stats, financials, and donor recognition.
- Review the strategic plan with the board in the Strategic Progress tracker: each goal shows a live status pulled from your Impact app numbers (on track, at risk, or behind). Add a board update, generate the one-page board report PDF, and the board can watch progress between meetings from their member portal.
- Collect annual conflict-of-interest disclosures in Board Management: send each director a private signing link by email (no account needed, they type or draw their signature), and a signed disclosure marks that director complete automatically. The signed records file into the Document Library for you.
- Annual tech plan: the Technology Plan Compiler builds it from your assessment, stage, and budget table.
- Consolidated annual budget: chairs submit requests from the Committees app, and the Annual Budget Compiler in Board Management assembles the board draft, with computed totals, a gap analysis, and an adoption resolution.
The monthly board cycle
This is the platform's core loop. Committees do the work; the board sees it without anyone chasing email attachments.
Officers: President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer
Each board office has its own playbook module in the Board Officers app, with worksheets and guidance for the role. Start there, then add the two or three apps your office actually owns. Prefer a checklist you can tick off? The Board Officers app has a Getting Started page in its sidebar: pick your role (President / Chair, VP, Secretary, or Treasurer) and work through a saved, step-by-step first-weeks checklist that links to the right tool at every step.
Your first week
- Open the Board Officers app and pick your role: President / Board Chair, Vice President, Secretary, or Treasurer. (Executive Directors: your app is here.)
- Fill in your role's worksheets in the Board Officers app: onboarding, role agreement, duties and focus, all saved in your browser to revisit anytime.
- Read (or generate) the board handbook in the Board Handbook so every officer is working from the same rules.
- Sign in at the member portal and join your organization's team so you share the roster and profile.
- Bookmark your Member Portal (sign in with a one-time email link, no password): it is your board-member home for documents to sign, your assignments, upcoming events, the org's shared files, any training assigned to you, and the strategic plan's progress.
- Complete any assigned training from the portal (a short video plus an acknowledgment or quiz); your certificate is filed automatically.
- Skim the Board Management course lessons on meetings and the board's legal duties, especially if this is your first board office.
Per-role pointers
- President / Board Chair: own the agendas and governance. Draft agendas with the AI Automations tab in Board Management, keep committee charters current in Committees, lean on the Board Officers app (President role) for meeting leadership, and keep the board on the strategic plan with the Strategic Progress tracker (live goal status, board updates, and a one-page report for each meeting).
- Vice President: own committee oversight and be ready to step in. The Board Officers app (VP role) plus the Committees app cover most of the job.
- Secretary: own the record. Use the minutes drafters in Board Management and Committees, adopt a retention schedule with Document Retention & Security, and keep the official file in the Document Library (reachable from every app's sidebar): one organization-wide vault with version history, where you can route minutes and policies through a review-and-approve step so the board's adoption is on the record.
- Treasurer: own the money and the filings. The IRS Forms Assistant for the annual Form 990 return, the Compliance Tracker for everything with a deadline, and stay UBIT-aware: the glossary explains unrelated business income in plain language.
New board chair? Your first week
- Learn the role before acting. In the Board Officers app, pick President / Board Chair, read the Role Duties & Focus, and sign your Role Agreement. The chair leads the board, not the organization.
- Meet the Executive Director. Set a standing one-on-one in your first two weeks; the Executive Director app has a ready-made Board Chair 1:1 Agenda your ED can bring. This partnership is most of the job.
- Get the year on paper. Confirm the meeting schedule and the annual governance calendar: conflict-of-interest signatures, the Form 990 review, officer elections, the ED evaluation, and budget approval. Load the dates into Board Management meetings and the Calendar.
- Check terms and succession. Board Management's Terms & Renewals shows which seats and officers turn over on your watch; the Board Officers Succession Plan keeps the handoffs orderly.
- Plan the ED evaluation. The chair leads the executive director's annual review on the board's behalf. Board Management's ED Evaluation view walks you through the whole process, from board input to the documented compensation decision the Form 990 asks about.
Who owns what
Committee Chairs
Your whole platform job fits one sentence: run good meetings, and turn each one into a one-page report the board actually receives. The Committees app does the heavy lifting.
Your first week
- Get added to your committee in the Committees app: ask whoever manages the team roster, or set the committee up yourself if it doesn't exist yet. If you already have a member list, you can import it in one step from the Team page: each committee has an Import members (CSV) button (columns Name, Email, Role).
- Check the charter. If your committee has one, read it; if not, generate one from the template library (126 templates) and run the AI charter gap review.
- Draft an annual work plan from the work-plan template so the committee knows what it owes the board this year.
- Confirm your meeting cadence and put the board packet deadline on your calendar: your report is due before the compiler closes the packet.
- Try the minutes drafter once on a past meeting so the after-meeting routine below takes ten minutes, not an evening.
After every meeting
- Draft the minutes with the minutes drafter in Committees, review, and file them.
- Draft your “Report to the Board”: decisions made, items needing a board vote, what's next.
- Submit it to the packet. The Board Report Compiler in Board Management collects it automatically; if you forget, it reminds you.
Once a year
- Run the committee self-assessment: is the committee doing what its charter says?
- Send the results upstream: self-assessments feed the board's Annual Effectiveness Review.
- Submit your budget request: the Committee Budget Request in the Committees app turns your line items into a clean request, totals computed by the app, and sends it to whoever compiles the annual budget.
- Refresh the charter and work plan for the coming year.
From committee meeting to board packet
Cross-platform workflows
Three more flows that run across multiple tools. Each one starts with a single action and ends with a document your board, your donors, or the IRS actually needs.
The donor flow
Every gift triggers the same chain, and the platform generates each link from the gift record you already logged in Donor Management.
The new-org formation journey
If you're starting from zero, the path runs free → guided → filed → compliant.
The technology on-ramp
Start with the free audit before you sign in to anything.
The sign-and-file flow
Any governance document that needs a real signature, a conflict-of-interest disclosure, a volunteer waiver, an officer role agreement, a policy acknowledgment, or a PDF you upload, runs the same short loop, and the signed copy lands in your vault without a separate save.
The new board member or volunteer flow
Everyone who is not the operator, board members and volunteers, gets one self-service home. The Member Portal figures out what involves them from your existing rosters; you never build a members-only website.
Real-world scenarios
A donor just designated their gift. A board member just resigned. An IRS letter just arrived. The Workflow Workflow Scenarios walks through 23 of the moments every nonprofit hits: step by step, with the right app at each step and the classic mistake flagged.
23 walkthroughs in five categories
- Money In: designated gifts, grants, stock and in-kind donations, fundraising events, year-end giving, and the donor list lifecycle.
- Money Out: vendor invoices, reimbursements and the accountable plan, and hiring your first employee.
- Governance: bylaws changes, elections, mid-term resignations, conflict-of-interest season, board onboarding, the handbook, the annual budget cycle, and publishing a newsletter, journal, or books.
- People: the member and volunteer lifecycles, each with its loop drawn out.
- Compliance & Risk: the annual compliance cycle, audits, expanding to another state, and the first 48 hours when something goes wrong.