With so many nonprofits pursuing admirable causes, your organization needs to do what it can to stand out from the crowd and attract supporters. Exceptional nonprofit graphic design can be what sets your organization and cause apart from the rest.
From your organization’s website to its logo, graphics are intertwined with your nonprofit’s image at every corner. A poorly designed logo or event signage that doesn’t fit your brand can turn prospects away. On the other hand, a sleek and captivating website or a well-put-together explainer video can be exactly what your team needs to drive deeper connections with prospects.
If your nonprofit’s graphic design materials are lacking, it’s worth it to take the time to strengthen them and learn what goes into effective graphic design for nonprofits in particular. To help, we’ve compiled this ultimate guide, complete with some recommendations for taking your marketing materials to the next level. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Common Nonprofit Graphic Design Materials
- Tips to Leverage Better Graphic Design for Nonprofits
- Turning to Professional Graphic Design for Charities
- 9 Free Nonprofit Graphic Design Tools
- About Our Professional Graphic Design for Nonprofits Services
At Kwala, we aspire to power the next generation of nonprofits through professional graphic design. We strongly believe that any materials associated with a nonprofit’s brand should accurately represent its cause and establish brand awareness among its supporters.
If you’re ready to hear what we’ve learned during our time in the space, let’s dive in!
Common Nonprofit Graphic Design Materials
As a marketer, you understand that there are several public-facing components that make up your organization’s brand. Whether they’re creating their official website or hosting an event, nonprofits use graphic design to create marketing materials that push their mission forward.
Here are a few types of materials that an organization might create using graphic design:
- Their official logo
- Website design
- Social media artwork
- Business cards
- Merchandise like t-shirts or decals
- Printed materials such as fundraising flyers, solicitation letters, or service brochures
While you can create some of these on your own, note that you’ll likely need to outsource some of the work to a professional designer.
Tips to Leverage Better Graphic Design for Nonprofits
If you’re looking to amplify your nonprofit’s marketing materials with better graphic design, there are several best practices you’ll want to keep in mind. Otherwise, you’ll end up with
Even if you’re looking to outsource the work to a professional graphic designer, you’ll still want to understand what makes for effective imagery. That way, you can choose an agency that creates exceptional graphics that truly capture your mission.
Here are a few tips that make for effective graphic design for nonprofits:
- Infuse your brand. First and foremost, your graphic design elements are a formal representation of your nonprofit. That’s why you should infuse your colors, fonts, and any other recognizable elements into your designs when applicable. That way, your supporters will immediately recognize that the graphics are associated with your brand.
- Consider your colors and contrasts. You can make your artwork pop if you use colors and contrast effectively. Note that people associate different colors with different moods. You’ll want to use a blend of colors that go well together while still sticking to your theme. This is more of a technical strategy that’s best handled by a professional who understands which colors to use in different contexts.
- Choose timeless looks. Ideally, your nonprofit’s graphic design materials will have a timeless look. Instead of following current trends, going with more timeless images and fonts will ensure your team doesn’t have to spend resources creating new graphics every few years. If you do follow trends with some of your materials, make sure to revisit them down the line.
Take the following infographic created by the designers here at Kwala for example. Notice how it’s clearly branded with the organization’s logo and uses captivating visuals related to nature to communicate the organization’s impact:
A professional graphic designer will already be well aware of these best practices, among many others. Although, if you’re considering leveraging nonprofit graphic design tools, you’ll want to keep these tips in mind and continue exploring others as you go.
Turning to Professional Graphic Design for Charities
There’s a lot that goes into graphic design for nonprofits. From choosing the right colors to not overcrowding your materials with excessive elements, your best bet is to turn to a professional nonprofit graphic designer.
For one, your team members are already limited on time. Instead of learning the ins and outs of graphic design, their time is better spent on pursuing your mission.
Not to mention, your nonprofit’s level of professionalism among its constituents is directly associated with the quality of its graphics. Poorly designed graphics can discredit your organization and position it as untrustworthy.
That’s why we highly recommend turning to professional nonprofit graphic design services like Kwala. We take the guesswork out of graphic design and provide you with everything you need to make your organization stand out through captivating imagery. Whether you want to create t-shirts or need accessible infographics, you have the options you need to create a holistic and sustainable marketing strategy for your cause.
Using Professional Nonprofit Graphic Design Services on a Budget
We understand that professional nonprofit graphic design services aren’t plausible for every organization. Having professional artwork created for your charity can be costly. However, there are plenty of routes you can take to reduce costs, so you can still benefit from professional design without blowing your budget.
Here’s how we recommend you cut costs:
- Choose a cost-effective provider: This is your best bet to receive professional graphics without sacrificing quality! Providers that specifically offer graphic design for nonprofits understand that charities operate on a limited budget. That’s while they often offer cost-effective pricing.
- Request in-kind contributions: Chances are, you have a few artists and designers among your constituents. Consider reaching out to see if they’d be willing to do some nonprofit graphic design work for your cause. Alternatively, you might reach out to local businesses, agencies, and freelancers in your area to create materials for you as a form of corporate philanthropy or community service.
- Offer real-world experience to students: Graphic design students are often required to complete projects to meet their degree requirements. You might reach out to student groups at a nearby college or university to request help. You’ll receive professional-grade marketing collateral. In turn, they’ll be able to add it as professional experience on their resume.
Leveraging expert graphic design for nonprofits doesn’t have to be costly. You have plenty of options for limiting expenses and still receiving the resources you need to push your mission forward!
9 Free and Discounted Nonprofit Graphic Design Tools
While we highly recommend that you leverage professional services, there are also plenty of great free and discounted graphic design tools that you can leverage to create marketing collateral yourself.
To help, we’ve curated a list of some of the best free nonprofit graphic design tools that can help tell your nonprofit’s story.
These options are a low-risk way to test out the types of software your nonprofit needs without wasting your budget. Note that many of them also offer paid plans, which you can use to expand access to other useful features on each platform.
Let’s take a look at some of our top recommendations!
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #1) Adobe Express
Formerly known as Adobe Spark, this tool is a one-stop shop for your graphic design needs. Great for people with experience using Photoshop or Illustrator, Adobe Express allows you to create premium images, landing pages, and basic videos to promote your cause or next event.
When using the free version, you’ll be able to design a lot. However, the Adobe watermark will be saved on your nonprofit’s graphic designs.
Remove the watermark by upgrading to a paid plan. You’ll also gain access to a wider range of features on a paid plan, such as Adobe’s full library of professional-grade templates and fonts. Best of all, Adobe offers discounts to verified nonprofits!
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #2) BeFunky
Primarily a photo editor and collage maker, BeFunky is an effective nonprofit graphic design tool for creating images. They also offer a variety of templates to create eye-catching infographics.
These templates are designed in an easily digestible way, making them perfect for presenting key information while retaining supporters’ attention. Easily customize templates using your own images, adjusting the text, changing the colors, and tweaking the layout.
User-friendly features like batch editing, free stock images, and thousands of vector graphics make this platform a fan favorite! Not to mention, this nonprofit graphic design tool is completely free!
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #3) Canva
As one of the most popular online platforms, Canva is another great nonprofit graphic design tool that we recommend!
It’s a free web-based tool that enables you to do the following:
- Choose from a wide range of materials: You can create just about any project you want, including Facebook posts, websites, videos, logos, presentations, fundraising posters, and more.
- Kickstart your projects with templates and free elements: Canva offers more than 420,000 templates, 75 million images, 3.5 million graphics, and 3,000 fonts to help you create powerful graphic designs for nonprofits.
- Collaborate with others: Invite other team members to edit your brand assets, provide feedback, and enhance your visual content.
Using the free plan for nonprofits, you’ll be able to work with your team to design everything from logos to social media content. With tons of free templates, graphics, and fonts, you’ll be able to bring your vision to life with ease!
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #4) Design Wizard
Great for video and image design, Design Wizard helps you create professional graphic designs to make your nonprofit stand out online. Get started with a template for social media, posters, or your website. Then, customize your template with premium images, videos, and fonts.
Design Wizard offers a free plan that includes the basic tools from their platform, including:
- A custom color palette
- Image resize tools
- The ability to add text and shapes to images
- A library of more than 1 million images, videos, illustrations, and graphics
- Pay-as-you-go image and video downloads
Upgrade to a paid plan, which starts at $9.99 per month, to gain access to additional features like font uploads and image uploads.
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #5) Desygner
Marketed as a graphic design tool for non-graphic designers, Desygner is an incredibly user-friendly nonprofit graphic design platform that doesn’t require any experience.
Launch your project forward with an immersive library of thousands of templates and unlimited access to 150 million Shutterstock images and videos. You’ll also be able to leverage features like an automatic image background remover, an animator, and resize tools — all without downloading any software or plugins.
Desygner makes it easy to create a consistent brand style across different channels by storing your logos, images, fonts, colors, and text blocks to reuse across different templates. That way, you’ll strengthen your digital brand awareness, giving your audience a sense of familiarity each time they come across your organization online.
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #6) Infogram
Create immersive infographics, maps, charts, and reports to share with your supporters, staff, and stakeholders using Infogram’s nonprofit graphic design tools. Infogram makes it easy to illustrate your impact with modern infographic templates that you can customize to fit your brand.
Designed for nonprofit graphic design, here are some of the features your team can leverage with this platform:
- Drag-and-drop editing to create eye-catching reports
- An extensive library of images to transform your fundraising materials into engaging visuals
- Embeddable charts that update automatically when connected to real-time data
- Reusable themes and templates that match your brand’s colors, fonts, and style guidelines
Not to mention, Infogram offers discounted plans to nonprofits, empowering your team to share your worthwhile cause through engaging data visualizations that resonate with your community. To access the discounted rates, you’ll need to apply and be approved by the Infogram team.
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #7) Pixlr
Pixlr empowers you to edit your photos and create stunning designs with tools similar to Photoshop. Create your designs directly in your browser or on your phone, making it easy to create your marketing materials.
Pixlr gives you the creative freedom to start with an empty canvas, a photo, a video, or one of their professionally-designed templates. Beyond that, you can leverage the following features:
- Professional-looking animation presets and the ability to create your own animations
- Creative filters and effects to transform your photos into artistic visuals
- Basic editing tools such as cropping, a color picker, and a fill and gradient feature
- AI-powered background removal to save your team time from doing it manually
You can access Pixlr for free on your desktop or phone. For more advanced nonprofit graphic design tools, you can upgrade to a paid plan, which will unlock more advanced editing tools.
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #8) Promo
Great for nonprofits that want to move into video creation, Promo will empower you to bring your vision to life in minutes. Strengthen your brand awareness by creating compelling videos that convey your mission and communicate your nonprofit’s story.
Plus, Promo offers a free plan to qualifying nonprofits. With it, you’ll gain access to everything you need to promote your work and inspire change, including:
- A collection of ready-to-use customizable templates
- Millions of high-quality video clips that are regularly updated
- Horizontal, vertical, and square aspect ratios, making it easy to create videos for any platform
- Royalty-free music to add some flair to your nonprofit’s videos
Whether you want to create volunteer recruitment videos or commemorate your latest event, Promo is an effective platform for your nonprofit graphic design needs!
Nonprofit Graphic Design Tool #9) VistaCreate
Formerly known as Crello, VistaCreate empowers nonprofits to create eye-catching visual content for social media within minutes. Simply pick the template for the platform you want to use, work with the user-friendly design tools, and upload your finished product to social media.
Great for social-media-focused nonprofit marketing teams, VistaCreate’s library is stacked with more than 80 million photos and 6,000 graphic design templates that can be used to create standout social media content.
Whether you want to bring a fresh look to your Instagram Stories or your nonprofit’s YouTube channel, check out VistaCreate’s free social media graphic design tools.
About Our Professional Graphic Design for Nonprofits Services
While there are plenty of great tools out there to fulfill your nonprofit’s basic graphic design needs, your team’s time is better spent pursuing your mission instead of learning how to use these different platforms.
Professional design services will provide your team with stellar brand creatives that will make your cause stand out to supporters and prospects. Bear in mind that finding and hiring a graphic designer can be a challenging task, though. Not to mention, not every designer understands the unique needs that nonprofits have. That’s where our team at Kwala comes in!
Kwala is an unlimited graphic design company formed to give mission-driven organizations the freedom, options, and cost-effectiveness that you need for your marketing strategy.
Our goal is to simplify graphic design for nonprofits, so you can focus on what matters most for your organization: pushing your mission forward. Here are some of our graphic design guarantees:
- A wide range of brand creatives, including logos, flyers, t-shirt graphics, stickers, web ads, and more
- Unlimited designs and revisions so you’ll get the perfect design
- Web and print graphic designs to suit all of your needs
- You’ll get full ownership and the source files for your designs
- Mission-driven expertise so you’ll work with a professional who understands your work
- Subscription pricing so you’ll pay the same price every month regardless of how many designs you want
We value each and every project we create and guarantee timely responses and exceptional nonprofit graphic designs. You’ll simply subscribe to our month-to-month service. From here, we’ll match you with one of our professional designers, who will work as an extension of your team and create any graphic your nonprofit needs.
If you’re ready to get started, take the guesswork out of hiring a graphic design agency and turn to our experts. With our flat pricing, unlimited designs, and a 21-day money-back guarantee, we’re your nonprofit’s stress-free design solution!
Wrapping Up
When it comes to expressing your cause through compelling designs, the right image is essential to your nonprofit’s success. Well-designed, visually-engaging brand creatives have the power to capture prospects’ attention and transform them into committed supporters.
From your logo to your nonprofit’s videos, you want to communicate the right message about what your nonprofit is and what it strives to achieve. That’s why we highly recommend that you turn to a professional nonprofit graphic design service like Kwala. That way, you can continue working toward your mission with full confidence that any artwork created for your nonprofit is accurate and high-quality.
If you’d like into the expansive universe of nonprofit graphic design before hiring a designer, check out some of these great resources:
- 15 Best Nonprofit Graphic Design Examples. Get inspired by graphic designs from some well-known nonprofits. This guide features real-world examples for logos, websites, videos, and more!
- 5 Nonprofit Graphic Design FAQs to Help You Stand Out. Still have lingering questions about the basics of graphic design for nonprofits? Check out this guide to clear up any confusion!
- Essential Guide For Choosing A Graphic Design Company. Hiring a graphic design company can be a big undertaking. Make the right choice by following the guidance in this article!
