These days, everyone’s focused on digital marketing. While the online space opens up your cause to the world, it doesn’t always enable you to connect with supporters on a deeper level like in-person efforts. That’s why it’s best to use a multichannel marketing approach where you combine different marketing channels. Fundraising flyers are the perfect way to do exactly that!
Fundraising flyers are a low-cost, effective way to promote your campaigns. While they’re traditionally used to promote opportunities to local supporters, you can also take them to the digital world by posting them on social media or emailing them to your contacts. This makes them the perfect strategy to pull into your promotional efforts, whether you’re focused on digital or direct marketing.
From including the right details to using effective graphic design, you’ll want your flyers to grab your supporters’ attention right away. That’s why we’ve compiled some ideas for how to make eye-catching, engaging fundraising flyers. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Important Information to Include in Your Fundraising Flyer
- 8 Fundraising Flyer Ideas to Promote Your Next Campaign
- How to Distribute Your Fundraising Flyers
- How You Can Create Eye-Catching Fundraising Flyers With Kwala
Here at Kwala, we connect nonprofits with our skilled graphic designers who understand their needs. We understand the specifics of creating marketing collateral for mission-driven organizations, including fundraising flyers. We enjoy working with nonprofits to bring their visions to life and help them raise money for their causes.
We’re happy to share what we’ve learned about designing informative and striking fundraising flyers for your mission. If you’re ready to elevate your cause, there’s no time to waste. Let’s get started!
Important Information to Include in Your Fundraising Flyer
Before jumping straight into your design, you need to lay out the details of your fundraiser. Remember, the purpose of fundraising flyers is to communicate information about your nonprofit’s campaign, so it’s important to include all of the necessary details. What do supporters need to know to get involved?
You likely want your supporters to take some type of action, whether that’s buying a ticket to an event, donating, volunteering, or something else entirely. No matter what your end goal is, you’ll need to motivate them to participate in your fundraising initiatives by giving them all the information they need, including:
- The name of your campaign
- Participation details like the date, time, location, and entry fee
- Benefits of participating
- Your organization’s logo and any sponsor logos
- Your campaign goal
- Prize, raffle, or sweepstakes information, if relevant
- Contact information for your organization
- A call to action
Bear in mind that the above is a lot of information to include in such a limited area. You’ll need to rely heavily on effective graphic design to convey all of these details in a digestible way. With that, let’s jump into our top ideas that will transform your flyer design!
8 Fundraising Flyer Ideas to Promote Your Next Campaign
While there’s set information you should always include in your fundraising flyers, you have more creative freedom with the actual design. With the level of customization that fundraising flyers provide, the options for creating a unique flyer are endless.
Let’s explore several design ideas that will take your flyers from subpar to visually stunning.
1. Feature captivating graphics.
Your graphics are what will catch people’s eyes and reel them into your fundraising flyer. When paired with all the right information, your graphics will help communicate what your fundraiser is and encode the must-know details in readers’ minds. After all, people perceive pictures much faster than words alone.
Research suggests that the human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. When paired with text, visuals have also proven to increase retention.
In other words, put thought behind your graphics and determine what will actually communicate your campaign’s purpose. Think about it: if you’re hosting a bake sale, it doesn’t make much sense to feature graphics of animals or school supplies. Instead, you should include pictures of doughnuts, cookies, and other sweets.
Take the following fundraising flyer template from Adobe for example! While it includes all the information a prospect would need to know, what catches your eye is the big graphic at the top. The designer combined a guitar with candy, which presumably represents the kids who will benefit from the proceeds. As a result, the simple graphics here communicate what the event is and who it benefits.
2. Get creative with your typography.
While it can be tempting to choose fun and creative fonts, stick to fonts that are still readable yet still bold enough to catch people’s attention. After all, your fundraising flyer will be useless if supporters can’t read the information on it!
Beyond the font itself, make sure the colors you choose for your text are also readable. Not every fundraising flyer needs vibrant colors, especially considering that will drive up printing costs.
In the example below, you’ll notice how the designer replaced the O’s in ‘Food Drive’ with two plates. This was a smart way to capture the purpose of the fundraiser while catching supporters’ attention by changing up the typography. Plus, the entire flyer is grayscale aside from the two plates, helping to accentuate the campaign’s purpose even more.
You can find this fundraising flyer template on Canva if you want a similar format to kickstart your design!
3. Infuse your brand.
Any of the elements you include in your fundraising flyer should stick to your nonprofit’s unique style, tone, and message. It should be clear to anyone that the campaign was designed by and will clearly benefit your cause.
Revisit your brand guidelines and make sure each part of your flyer adheres to them. Here are a few elements that you might consider adding:
- Your organization’s name
- Your logo
- Your tagline
- Official brand fonts or ones that match the campaign
- Colors that match the campaign’s message or your official brand colors
- Graphics that emphasize your cause
Check out this example from Adobe’s fundraising flyer templates. Thanks to the clear branding, readers know exactly what the campaign is, who created it, and how it’ll help the organization.
It starts with Bear Valley’s logo plastered across the top in a large font. The flyer restates who the campaign is for, shares the organization’s website, and displays an image that emphasizes what the event is.
4. Print your fundraising flyer on a different shape.
Making a fundraising flyer requires some creativity if you want to stand out among a sea of others on a bulletin board. That means thinking outside the box — the traditional rectangular flyer box, that is!
Change the shape of the paper you print your fundraising flyer on. It can be as simple as choosing a square, triangle, or circle. Or, you can choose a shape that relates to your cause or the campaign you’re hosting.
For instance, you might print your fundraising flyer in the following shapes:
- A heart for a blood drive
- A paw print for an animal shelter or other animal nonprofit
- A can of soup for a food drive
- A picnic basket for a community picnic
- A running shoe for a 5K
You’re only bound by your creativity (and printing capabilities)! Just note that this strategy may take a bit more time and money. You’ll either need to recruit volunteers to cut the shapes or pay a print shop extra to do the work for you.
5. Grab attention with statistics and facts.
Tying statistics to your campaign may be just what your fundraising flyer needs to inspire people to get involved. A statistic that’s prominently displayed on your poster will capture attention and make it easy to understand why your cause is worth supporting.
Often, nonprofits work toward missions dealing with world hunger, poverty, wildlife conservation, and cancer. These are hard concepts for people to wrap their heads around, but statistics and facts make those causes more consumable.
For instance, someone might know that ocean pollution is a big problem. However, they might not know that ocean conservation research has found that by 2050, plastic will likely outweigh all fish in the sea. This statistic helps to illustrate the immediate urge for people to support ocean conservation efforts, making them more likely to get involved in a campaign for this type of cause.
Check out this fundraising flyer from charity:water. It infuses key statistics about the impact of dirty water throughout the world. Some are even emphasized with large text, highlighted with a yellow background, and broken down into sections like “Health” and “Women Empowerment.”
6. Save space with QR codes.
Your fundraising flyer should have a clear call to action. In other words, it should be abundantly clear what you want readers to do. Do you want them to donate, register for an event, or something else?
Here are a couple of pages you can lead prospects to with your QR code:
- A campaign page. If you have a lot of information you want to share on your fundraising flyer, create a page on your site devoted to explaining your campaign. Then, you can add a QR code to your poster, inviting donors to scan it to learn more. That way, you won’t overcrowd your poster.
- Your donation form. Make it as easy to donate as possible by including a QR code that leads directly to your giving page. Especially if you have a particularly compelling flyer, donors will be motivated to give right then and there.
- Your event registration page. If your fundraising flyer promotes an event, help people register quickly by including a QR code that leads to your registration page. That way, they can go ahead and register rather than having to manually navigate to your website.
Especially considering that donors are on the move, they can easily scan the QR code, go about their day, and return to your cause later on.
More often than not, you only have one chance to connect with prospects. Make it count by making it easy to support your cause.
With that in mind, check out how The Girl Scouts River Valley incorporated a QR code into their fundraising flyer. It’s incredibly clear that they want people to purchase their cookies, and they provided a QR code that leads readers to the order page.
7. Experiment with contrast.
Our eyes are naturally drawn to high-contrast designs. That’s why when creating your fundraising flyer, you should consider how you can create a punchy, eye-catching design through your color choices.
Essentially, this means using bright splashes of color against dark, minimalist backgrounds. This will help you steer clear of busy, overcomplicated designs and emphasize the most important details.
In the fundraising flyer template below, readers can instantly recognize that the poster directly relates to animals thanks to the close-up image of a dog’s face. You’ll notice that the main colors on the page are black and white. Then, the hazel-colored eyes on the dog reel readers in and give a sense of life to the poster, helping to communicate why the campaign is taking place.
The white lettering and simplistic design help communicate only crucial details. That way, readers get the must-know information and can keep their focus on the cause behind the fundraiser.
9. Keep things simple.
While there’s a lot you need to communicate through your fundraising flyer, people will likely only look at it for a few seconds before going about their day. Make sure to emphasize the must-know details in your design without overloading the page with extraneous information.
You can draw attention to the most important elements using:
- Contrasting colors
- Large fonts
- Bolded words
This will help to cut it down into bite-size pieces and make it easy for someone to still understand your campaign just by skimming your poster. There’s no need to tell the entire backstory behind your cause when you can communicate your mission through a few simple words or compelling graphics.
The point is that you don’t need to include every single detail on your fundraising flyer. Your audience shouldn’t need to work hard to find the key information you’re trying to share. So boil it down to the crucial details.
How to Distribute Your Fundraising Flyers
Once you’ve created the perfect fundraising flyer, it’s time to share it with your community and attract new supporters!
Start by recruiting volunteers to distribute your flyers. The more volunteers you have, the more ground you can cover quickly. Arm each one with a stack of flyers and assign them to cover different areas of your community. For example, you might have a few post flyers around a downtown marketing district. Meanwhile, others can post them around residential neighborhoods, and some can still help stuff flyers into envelopes for mailing.
The idea behind this is three-fold. Having volunteers hand out your fundraising flyers makes them feel personally responsible for your campaign, enables more flyers to be handed out, and puts a friendly face at the forefront of your campaign whenever they personally hand a flyer to a potential supporter. Your community will see your volunteers’ passion and that they’re supporting a worthwhile mission. Just be sure to express gratitude for your volunteers both during and after distributing your flyers.
Here are a few places you might distribute your fundraising flyers:
- Community bulletin boards. If there is a place in your community where organizations and private individuals can post flyers, add yours to the collection. These bulletin boards may be located at community centers, town hall buildings, or outdoors in shopping districts with high foot traffic.
- Direct mail. When it comes to mail, it can be tempting to just stick flyers in mailboxes, but resist the impulse. In the United States, it is against federal law to place materials without proper postage into mailboxes. This ruling includes everything from political leaflets to birthday cards to fundraising flyers.
- Partnered businesses’ windows. If your nonprofit has connections with local businesses, now’s the time to leverage them. Ask your business partners if you can put flyers in their windows or if they would be willing to hand them out to customers. While not every business will say yes, many will be happy to have an opportunity to publicize their commitment to corporate philanthropy by showing off their connection to a good cause like yours.
Additionally, don’t forget to publish a digital version of your flyer on social media and share it via your email newsletters! That way, you can expand beyond your local community and share your campaign with the largest audience possible.
How You Can Create Eye-Catching Fundraising Flyers With Kwala
There’s a lot of work that goes into crafting the perfect fundraising flyer for your cause. Instead of wasting time learning the ins and outs of effective graphic design, turn to the professionals and have them do the work for you!
The experts here at Kwala fully understand what goes into effective nonprofit graphic design for any type of marketing materials, including fundraising flyers!
We partner with mission-driven organizations to fulfill all of their graphic design needs. We’ll take the time to understand your cause and then craft the ultimate flyer for your campaigns. After years of practice, we know how to strike the balance between informative and easily digestible with our designs, so you’ll inspire more supporters to get involved with your flyers.
Consider turning to our team if you want to experience the following benefits:
- Unlimited fundraising flyers: We’re an unlimited graphic design company, meaning you’ll receive as many fundraising flyers as your nonprofit needs each month. We also offer unlimited revisions, so you’ll end up with marketing materials that you love!
- One-on-one graphic design support: We’ll pair you with one of our professional graphic designers, so you’ll know who’s behind your designs and can contact them with requests whenever you need to.
- Nonprofit-specific graphic design experience: We work exclusively with mission-driven organizations. We bring an unparalleled understanding of the unique needs of nonprofits that generic graphic designers can’t match.
We’re committed to elevating our clients’ causes through powerful graphic design. Get started to be matched with one of our graphic designers and start your marketing transformation today!
More Fundraising Flyer Resources
Flyers have been around since the Renaissance period, and they’ve evolved to promote everything from political campaigns to nonprofit fundraisers. They’re still around today for many reasons: they’re cheap, quick to produce, and can be dispersed in massive quantities.
Over the years, we’ve learned what draws readers in and inspires them to take action. From getting creative with typography to using high-contrast designs, there’s a lot you can do to make your fundraising flyers stand out.
Overall, the more focused and well-designed your flyers are, the more likely you’ll inspire people to donate, attend an event, or support your work in some other way. So put thought behind your design, and remember to reach out to the experts here at Kwala if you need expert design help!
In the meantime, check out some of these educational articles that will help you along your fundraising flyer graphic design journey:
- Graphic Design for Nonprofits: What To Know & 9 Free Tools. Learn the role graphic design plays in your marketing and gather professional design tips along the way!
- 100+ Best Nonprofit Logos To Inspire Your Team. Your logo is an essential asset to include in your fundraising flyers. Check out these top examples to inspire your logo design.
- 13 Types of Fundraising Flyers to Market Your Organization. If you’re looking for more design inspiration, explore these 13 examples from Getting Attention.
