E-signatures for nonprofits and charities

Which documents do nonprofits teams sign with eSignSimple?

Which nonprofits documents can be signed electronically?

• Volunteer and event waivers
• Photo and video releases
• Sponsorship agreements
• Event and catering contracts
• Offer letters
• Contractor agreements

How do you get the most out of e-signatures in nonprofits?

• Save your volunteer waiver as a template, then bulk send it before large events or share it as a web form link volunteers sign themselves.
• Have waivers reviewed for your jurisdiction; enforceability varies.
• Store signed releases with the certificate of completion.
• Combine the liability waiver and photo release in one document to halve the number of requests volunteers receive.
• Keep sponsorship benefits, such as logo placement and deadlines, in the agreement itself to avoid misunderstandings.
• Our take: waivers for minors need a parent or guardian signature, and waiver enforceability varies by jurisdiction. Get a local lawyer to review your standard waiver once rather than copying one from another organization.
• Put the web form link for your volunteer waiver in the sign-up confirmation email, so signing is part of registering rather than an extra task.
• Check your bylaws for who may sign contracts for the organization, and only send sponsor and vendor contracts to those people.
• Short on budget? Check pricing: the free plan covers 3 documents a month. For volunteer season, a web form (Silver and up) for your waiver saves you sending each one by hand.

Before you rely on an e-signature for a specific document, check the rules where you work: see e-signature law in the United States, the United Kingdom or other countries, and read how we store and protect signed documents.

How do we collect volunteer waivers with a web form?

Take a charity 5K with 120 volunteers. Combine your liability waiver and photo release into one single-signer template with fields for the volunteer's name, emergency contact and a photo consent checkbox. Create a web form link from it (Silver and up) and paste the link into the volunteer sign-up confirmation and the briefing email.

Each volunteer opens the link on their phone and signs their own copy; you receive a completed PDF with a certificate for every one. A week before the race, compare the signed list with your rota and email the few who have not signed. On race day, keep the same link open on a tablet at the volunteer tent for walk-ups. No clipboards, no typing up names afterwards, and no box of paper to store.

What about volunteers under 18?

In most places minors cannot sign a binding waiver themselves, so a parent or guardian must sign. Do not use the same open web form for adults and minors. Instead, send a separate parental version to the parent's email, with fields for the parent's name and the young person's name and age, and the activity described in plain language.

Youth programs often need more than a waiver: medical information, pickup permissions and safeguarding rules. Keep medical details to the minimum you actually need, and check your local safeguarding and data protection rules. Have a local lawyer review the parental waiver once; enforceability for minors varies more than for adults.

Which plan fits a small nonprofit?

If you sign a few sponsor and venue contracts a month, the Free plan's 3 documents may be enough. Once you send waivers individually to dozens of volunteers, Bronze ($4.99/month, 25 documents) adds automatic reminders. If you want waivers signed through a web form or bulk sent to a whole list, you need Silver ($9.99/month), which also removes the document limit.

A pattern we see often: stay on Free or Bronze for most of the year and move up to Silver for the months around a big event. Paying yearly saves money if you are busy all year (Silver is $89.99/year instead of $119.88 paid monthly). See pricing for current details, and our guide on collecting signatures with an online form for the setup.