CANVA is a free graphic design tool that helps individuals and organizations design anything – that’s their mission. The tool can help people who don’t have a design background or design experience create attractive images for their website, social media, posters and even documents to be printed and distributed, such as business cards or annual reports. It is important for NGOs to communicate the work that your organization does. To do this, it is important to have a good website, up-to-date social media accounts and other communication tools such as e-newsletters to speak to donors and the general public about the organization and give people a chance to support your cause.
While some NGOs might have a substantial marketing budget, most NGOs direct their funds toward on-ground program costs and have little to spend on marketing tools such as website design and graphic design. This is where Canva can help NGOs who need the design help but don’t necessarily have the budget or expertise to create appealing and effective images, videos and documents for their organization. The most helpful part about Canva is that it is entirely free to use and comes with pre-existing templates to help you get started on your designs!
Here are 9 ways Canva can help NGOs:
Logo and branding
The logo and colors of an NGO is one of the most crucial aspects of an organization’s marketing but it can be hard to come up with a logo on your own that captures the heart of your organization. While NGOs would ordinarily need to hire professional designers to help create a logo, Canva’s free logo maker can create a logo within minutes according to the shape, size, colors and images you prefer! You can also create your own logo using the millions of images and templates that Canva offers to users – free of cost. The tool can also help you create a color palette for your logo, such as the iconic shade of blue that characterizes UNICEF, which you can use for all your communication materials such as letterheads and future designs.
Website design
A website is perhaps the most important online tool that your NGO can invest in because it is where people can find information about each major aspect of your NGO: programs, people, partnerships, fundraising, volunteering and so much more. It is crucial, therefore, to make sure that your website’s design and images reflect the heart and soul of your NGO. But designing images can be a challenge and take people months to do. Canva’s free website templates offer more than 1,600 designs that you can personalize based on your NGO and the style you want your website to reflect: modern, simple, minimalist, colorful and more. Canva’s designs for different webpages can help you create a personal and professional website.
Social media
Social media platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook are the places to be for NGOs who want to share their work with the world and encourage people to support their noble initiatives. But social media is driven by visual content, which means that images and videos have to look interesting and catchy to get more views, likes and comments. Canva has a free photo editor and free video editor to help you create and edit attractive images and videos, which each have different dimensions. Canva has editing tools such as effects and filters that are simple to use and helps you add text, animation, icons, stickers and other design elements to enhance your images and videos to make it more appealing for viewers.
Reports
It is important for NGOs to publish annual reports and other program reports every few months or quarters. This is to keep supporters, funders and potential investors up-to-date on the progress of the NGO and also indicate how funds are being utilized. But without a professional designer, it can be difficult to know how to begin designing an attractive and easy-to-read report. Canva has multiple ready-to-use and free report templates that you can select with a click. Once you select the report template you want to use, you can then change the placeholder text and images with your own content and pictures. The report templates are also editable, which means you can change the colors, fonts, font size and add your own logo.
E-newsletters
It is crucial to keep the lines of communication open between you and your NGO’s supporters, volunteers, donors and potential donors. E-newsletters are a wonderful way to do this. E-newsletters keep people aware of what your NGO is involved in and helps them learn more about your work and communicate with you about donations, volunteering and partnerships. To help you do this, Canva has over 1,000 free newsletter templates for you to use depending on the theme of your program. If you are creating an e-newsletter for a younger audience or financial partners, for example, Canva has templates that appeal to each target audience to help you create professional and tailor-made newsletters based on topic or audience.
Brochures
A brochure is a catalog that contains information about your NGO, the vision and mission of your organization, the programs you conduct, the impact your NGO has made and how people can contact you. It can be helpful to have a brochure which can be displayed in offices, police stations, colleges and other institutions depending on the services your NGO provides. Canva’s free brochure templates offer you more than 1,600 designs to choose from depending on your NGO’s personal style and the target audience you want your brochure to reach. The templates come in various styles, such as colorful, creative, corporate, professional and templates that appeal to students that you can choose depending on your audience.
Posters, flyers and leaflets
NGOs often work with multiple stakeholders that take them to schools, colleges, police stations, Government offices and corporates. Oftentimes, your NGO will be allowed to put up posters or distribute flyers and leaflets to people which will contain information about an issue that your NGO is raising awareness on or encouraging people to volunteer. Designing these posters is important since most people will only give it a glance for a few seconds to determine whether it captures their attention or not. Canva has over 10,000 free poster templates that contain all the major sections you will want to include in your poster. Once customized, these designs are easy to download and print for your NGO’s use.
Email signatures
In this digital age, most communication is done online and via email. Whether sending information to other teams within your NGO or as official correspondence from your NGO to an external stakeholder, email communication is vital to keep in touch with donors, partners, funders and the authorities. To make your email correspondence as professional as it can be, email signatures are important to include. But they are not always easy to create or include into your emails. Canva’s free email signature generator helps you create a customized email signature and has millions of backgrounds, graphics and fonts that you can choose from. This will help your NGO establish its brand and build trust with others.
Business cards, letterheads and invoices
Each NGO needs to have well designed material for official use such as business cards, letterheads, invoices and other documentation. When communicating with internal or external individuals or organizations on an official level, it adds legitimacy to your NGO when these are designed well and follow your NGO’s branding guidelines. Canva has free business card templates to help you create tailor-made cards, free letterhead templates which will include your NGO’s logo and color theme, free invoice templates that you can use for your official financial process and templates for other official documents to help you communicate in a more professional manner that reflects well on your organization.
Canva For Non Profits
We have been discussing Canva’s free tools offered to any user that registers with Canva. But Canva also has a special feature just for NGOs called Canva For Non Profits which offers Canva’s premium content for free for NGOs that are registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act. That is, the NGO must have an FCRA license. Furthermore, the organization should also be registered as a society, a trust or a Section 8 company (formerly Section 25).
Give.do and NGOs
In this article, we have explored ways that your NGO can boost your presence using free tools such as Canva which also has dedicated design tools for NGOs. Our mission is to “make giving bigger and better”. Give.do‘s community of 2.7M+ individual donors and 300+ organisations supports 3,000+ verified nonprofits with 80G deduction and serves 15M+ people across India. If you are an individual who wants to donate to a good cause or an NGO who wants to join our community of 3,000 NGOs raising funds on our platform, explore Give.do:
Shirley has been in the development sector for over 10 years and is passionate about making a change in the world around her, including adopting dogs and writing to make a difference.
Discover more from give.do
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
