There is no communication app or platform you will not have some complaint about. That is true of every option on this list, and I will be honest about the weaknesses of each one. But there is one option that deserves more complaint than all of them combined, and it is the one most boards are still using as their primary channel. Email.
Email has not meaningfully evolved in twenty years. It still has its place — it is the right tool for a lot of inbound communication, someone reaching your organization from the outside. But as the primary way your board runs its internal communication, it is close to archaic. Threads split. Replies go to the wrong person. Attachments get buried three messages deep. Someone gets missed on a reply-all and finds out about a decision after it was made. It is the easiest tool in the world to get lost in, and boards lose real things in it: deadlines, decisions, and the paper trail that governance depends on.
The Real Cost Is Not Another App
I know nobody wants to learn another app. I understand the resistance. But even more annoying than another app is another missed deadline, another miscommunication, another time you relied on a board member or a committee to deliver information by a specific date for a specific reason, and that information got lost or never arrived at all.
Governance is good stewardship. Good stewardship means using good systems. Email was never built to be one.
That is the whole case, really. If you believe governance is stewardship — and I do — then the systems you use to run your board are part of what you are stewarding. A board that cannot reliably get information from a committee to the table by a deadline is not just disorganized. It is failing at a basic form of care for the mission it exists to protect.
Text Threads Are Not the Answer Either
I want to head off the obvious workaround before I get to the real one. Your board cannot afford to communicate primarily over email, but it also cannot afford to communicate primarily over a WhatsApp group or a text thread. There is a place for a quick text — someone running five minutes late, a fast yes or no before a meeting. But quick and unstructured is exactly the problem. Nothing in a text thread is searchable in any meaningful way, nothing is organized by topic, and nothing lives anywhere your next chair or your next committee lead can find it a year from now.
Everything that matters to your board's ongoing work needs to live in one place. Centralized, organized, and searchable. That is not a preference. That is what a real system looks like.
What a Real Platform Gives You
The right platform does three things email and texting cannot. It keeps a searchable record so nothing is truly lost. It lets you organize conversations by topic or committee instead of one long undifferentiated inbox. And it lets your board be lighter with each other — an odd joke, a quick aside — without derailing a thread that is supposed to be about the budget.
Here is my honest ranking of the platforms worth considering, based on what I have actually used and recommended to boards.
Microsoft Teams
My top pick, and the practical default if your organization is already on Microsoft 365, which most nonprofits are. Teams shares one localized place for every file your board touches, integrates directly with SharePoint for document storage, and connects straight into Outlook for anyone who still lives in their email. You can set up a channel per committee, keep board-wide conversation in a general channel, and never lose a file in a forwarded attachment again.
The honest weakness: Teams can feel heavier and less intuitive than a purpose-built chat app, especially for board members who are not particularly tech comfortable. Permissions and channel structure take some upfront setup to get right, and notifications can get noisy if nobody configures them. Worth knowing: many nonprofits qualify for Microsoft 365 Business Basic free for up to 300 users through Microsoft's nonprofit program, which includes Teams. If you already pay for Microsoft licensing and are not using this, you are leaving something free on the table.
Visit Microsoft Teams →Slack
The cleanest, most intuitive option on this list, and the best search of any tool here. Channels are simple to set up, subcommittees can run in their own space, and the mobile app is genuinely pleasant to use, which matters more than people admit for volunteer board members checking things between meetings.
The catch, and it is a real one for a board specifically: Slack's free plan only keeps searchable message history for 90 days, and anything older than a year gets permanently deleted. For a board that wants a running record across a full year of governance, that is a meaningful gap unless you commit to a paid plan, which runs a per-user monthly fee. Slack is excellent. Just do not run it on the free tier if you are counting on it as your institutional memory.
Visit Slack →ClickUp
Not a chat app first, a task and deadline app first, and that is exactly why it belongs on this list. If your board's biggest failure point is deadlines quietly missed because nobody had a shared place to track who owed what by when, ClickUp solves that directly. Every task can carry its own comment thread, so the conversation about a deliverable stays attached to the deliverable instead of floating in a separate inbox.
It is not as natural for casual back-and-forth as Slack or Teams, and there is a real learning curve if your board is not used to project management tools. The free forever plan is generous — unlimited users and tasks — though storage is limited. ClickUp also offers custom pricing for registered nonprofits if you reach out directly.
Visit ClickUp →Also Worth a Look
Basecamp. Dead simple — message boards, to-dos, a built-in casual chat called Campfire, and file storage all in one project. Basecamp offers a nonprofit discount and its flat-fee Pro plan is genuinely attractive once you have a larger number of users. For a small board, the per-user pricing on its standard plan can add up faster than the platforms above, so run the math for your board's actual size before you commit. Visit Basecamp →
Google Workspace and Google Chat. If your organization already runs on Google rather than Microsoft, this is the natural fit. Chat integrates directly with Drive, Docs, Calendar, and Meet, and qualifying nonprofits can get Google Workspace Business Starter free through Google's nonprofit program. It is less mature as a dedicated team chat tool than Slack or Teams, but if your files already live in Drive, the friction of adopting it is close to zero. Visit Google for Nonprofits →
Subcommittees, Staff, and Who Sees What
One more thing worth knowing, because it solves a problem a lot of boards do not realize has an easy fix. On Teams or Slack, a subcommittee can run entirely inside its own channel, visible only to the people on it. You can add your staff or operations team members to the same overall account and simply leave them out of the conversations they should not be part of. When their expertise is genuinely useful to a subcommittee for a short stretch, you add them to that channel or start a short-term chat for exactly that purpose, then remove them when the work is done.
- Committees get a real working space instead of a side email chain nobody else can see
- Staff can be brought in for a burst of specific expertise without being handed permanent access to board-level conversation
- Nobody has to build a new list of recipients every time a subcommittee needs to talk
- The record of every conversation stays where the next chair or committee lead can actually find it
And there is a smaller benefit that matters more than it sounds like it should. In a real platform, your board can enjoy the odd casual joke without derailing an email thread that everyone now has to scroll past to find the actual agenda item. That lightness is part of what makes a board pleasant to serve on. Email makes it awkward. A real platform makes it easy.
The cost of lost information and scattered communication is too great to keep tolerating.
The setup for any of these platforms is simple. It does not take a lot of time. And it will drastically improve your board's governance, your communication, and your ability to find what you need when you need it. Pick one. Set it up this month. Your future board — and whoever inherits your files after you — will thank you.
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