How to Use Canva for Nonprofits in 2024

Nonprofits rely on visual storytelling and graphics to put their message across in the most engaging way. When done correctly, these visuals breathe life into your message and mission. 

Canva is an online tool that can help nonprofits create visuals through a variety of different templates and custom brand assets. Canva for Nonprofits is a free version that includes premium features for nonprofits.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Canva for nonprofits, its special features, and how to use it to carry out your social media activities for nonprofits. 

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Table of contents

What is Canva?

Key features of Canva for nonprofits

Getting started with Canva for nonprofits

Nonprofit design: Best practices with Canva

Top 4 alternatives to Canva for nonprofits

Final thoughts on Canva for nonprofits

FAQs on Canva for nonprofits

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What is Canva?

Canva is an online graphic design tool for creating visuals, pictures, illustrations, and designs. Its easy-to-use interface makes it convenient for nonprofits without an in-house graphic design team.

With Canva, nonprofits can create high-quality marketing materials, donation pages, and educational infographics. This means nonprofits do not need external help or hire professional designers to create posts and develop other digital marketing strategies. 

Instead of free stock images, nonprofits can access images, add fonts, and use templates to create social media posts, fliers, web pages, newsletters, and more. These include:

• Canva's templates
• A visual library of images, graphics, illustrations
• Thousands of font styles
• GIFs and animations
• A free library of educational materials, including tips, case studies, tutorials, etc.

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Key features of Canva for nonprofits

Access to unlimited content

Canva Pro offers nonprofits access to 75+ million premium stock images, graphics, and videos for use in designs, communications, and website pages.

There are 420,000+ design templates for emails, social media posts, and other marketing elements.

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Brand template

Canva’s brand template is another crucial feature for nonprofits, allowing you to create a reusable custom template. You can add your logo and use your brand colors and fonts. 

Canva offers a library of customizable templates for inspiration, allowing easy creation of assets from social media posts to annual reports.

Nonprofits can use this feature to create a consistent brand experience for the audience, adding recall elements.  

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Brand kit

Canva Pro for nonprofits allows you to create a brand kit to keep all your brand assets in one place. 

The Pro version provides 100GB of storage for all your designs, allowing you to keep them safe and accessible. 

Organizational tools like folders help streamline asset management and make designs easily retrievable for future projects.

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Simplified login and integration 

Canva Pro integrates with single sign-on (SSO) and two-factor authentication, which you must link while signing up.

This integration saves your team time when creating a Canva account and helps avoid the hassles of multiple passwords. 

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Easy collaboration

Canva for the team is a unique feature that allows you to invite your team and create content together. The easy-to-use collaboration features help team members create designs and share ideas in real time. 

They can share feedback and make instant design updates, ensuring everyone is on the same page. 

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Drag-and-drop functionality

Canva offers drag-and-drop functionality, allowing anyone without design experience to create customized templates.

You can easily resize, rearrange, or add elements by dragging them around and placing them in the desired position. Layer the elements and group them to localize their movement to create intricate, professional-looking designs. 

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Content planner

Canva's integrated social media scheduler enables nonprofits to plan and automate their posts across various platforms. Create your designs and schedule them to post on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, etc.

This functionality allows pausing and editing posts without re-uploading files, saving time and ensuring consistent, timely content. The planner also provides performance insights for social media posts.

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Resize and Magic Switch

Magic Switch is another feature that allows you to resize your design into many different sizes instantly. This means you do not need to create the same design from scratch for different platforms, and the feature helps create designs and posts for multichannel campaigns.

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Getting started with Canva for nonprofits

Step 1: Check your eligibility

Step 2: Gather your documents

Step 3: Create a Canva account

Step 4: Fill out and submit your application

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1. Check your eligibility

The application process is easy, but first, you must verify your nonprofit status with Canva. Organizations with 501(c)(3) status are eligible to apply for Canva's nonprofit program.

Organizations that are not eligible for the program include:

• An organization with 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(6) status
• A K-12 school, college, university, or trade association without any charitable purposes
• A political organization
• An individual or business

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2. Gather your documents

Depending on your organization type and the country you operate in, specific documents may be required.

Check the necessary papers you need to submit.

• All organizations must submit 501(c)(3) IRS (Internal Revenue Service) documentation to prove their nonprofit status 
• Social impact organizations must provide governing documentation that defines their nonprofit’s mission and mission-related activities 
• Public health organizations and government entities must show proof of their public health service status 

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3. Create a Canva account

Ensure that you use your nonprofit’s general email account, as this will give your application more credibility. 

Since there are no set guidelines for using an official ID, you can create an account using Gmail, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, or any other provider.

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4. Fill out and submit your application

Fill out the application form by entering the following details:

• Organization name
• Organization size
• Location of your organization
• Organization type

Attach all the necessary documents to show your nonprofit status and submit your application. Canva’s team can take 7 to 10 days to review and decide about the status of your application.

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Nonprofit design: Best practices with Canva

Build your brand kit

Visual identity is crucial for nonprofits to build credibility and trust among donors. Using the same color palette, font styles, graphics, and photos in all your communications helps your nonprofit look professional and familiar.

With Canva's built-in branding tools, creating a brand kit is easy,  thanks to its beginner-friendly interface. 

• Set up a style guide to keep everyone on the team on the same page
• Upload your fonts if you don't find your fonts in Canva's directory
• Link your Dropbox or Google Drive to your Canva account for easy accessibility and save the hassle of uploading multiple images one by one
• Use brand fonts or fonts of similar style to add variety
• Ensure fonts are easy to read (avoid scripted or overly small fonts)

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Keep it simple 

While you can use thousands of design elements with Canva, it is important to keep it simple. Remember to keep language and visuals concise, highlighting the main point. 

Focus on key messages and break down complex ideas into smaller, easy-to-digest bits of information. Use infographics and design elements strategically to tell facts and numbers. 

Avoid using too many elements in one design. Use animations and videos to tell real-life success stories and showcase impact, but don’t go overboard. 

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Enhance your nonprofit website’s visual appeal

Canva offers premium features to transform your website and garner support for your cause. 

It offers thousands of website graphic templates for designing captivating banners, icons, and hero images, along with a background removal tool to make subjects stand out.

Use the library's graphics to craft a dynamic website, making it convenient for nonprofits to maintain a digital presence and connect with supporters. 

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Collaborate with team members in Canva

Canva allows multiple team members to access and work on the same file, which means anyone and everyone on your team can create, edit, leave comments, or approve content from anywhere. 

This feature facilitates remote collaboration, enabling volunteers and team members to work together from any location. You can change the permissions on the design links according to the project and campaign needs. 

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Join Canva’s nonprofit community

Canva is a popular design tool with a community base from around the world. You can join the Canva community to connect and build relationships with like-minded people from nonprofits. 

The exclusive Canva Nonprofits Community offers insights, tips, and a platform to ask questions about marketing tools. You can join the community to ask for feedback from peers on your designs and marketing content. 

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Create presentations and annual reports

Canva offers a variety of templates for creating presentations and reports that are easy to share and download. Use the templates to help tell your impact stories, including infographics and presentations, quickly.  

With well-designed templates, you can craft presentations, infographics, impact reports, and charts to share important information. Nonprofits can tell their impact stories more compellingly, attract donors, gain support, and raise more funds. 

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Improve visual storytelling with videos

Videos make your stories more impactful and thought-provoking, which is the best way to inspire supporters to contribute to your cause. 

Canva’s video creation tools, including video templates, transition effects, and other audio elements, make it easy to create videos. These tools help nonprofits create professional-looking fundraising videos with limited resources.  

Use Canva’s scheduler to upload videos directly to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. With Canva, you can create promo videos, 30-second short videos, GIFs, etc., to suit the formats of different marketing channels.

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Top 4 alternatives to Canva for nonprofits

1. Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a popular tool for editing and creating designs. It offers 160 million royalty-free stock photos and over 20,000 licensed Adobe Fonts for creating nonprofit marketing materials. 

Adobe Express provides nonprofit graphic design tools such as customizable templates and photo editing software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

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Pricing:

• 30-day free trial
• Adobe Express for Nonprofits: $0 for qualifying nonprofits
• Free version: Basic editing features and effects with 2GB storage
• Premium version: $9.99 per month for premium features and 100GB storage

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2. PicMonkey

PicMonkey allows you to add graphics, text, and borders to your images or recolor them as needed. The intuitive photo editing platform ensures that nonprofits can tweak their images and designs easily.

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Pricing:

• Free trial for 7-days
• Basic plan: $7.99 per month with 1GB storage
• Pro plan: $12.99 per month with unlimited cloud storage
• Business: $23 per month with unlimited storage and multiple brand kits

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3. Fotor 

Fotor is an all-in-one photo editor that improves and edits digital images. It has a user-friendly interface and retouching tools, effects, and filters for creating marketing designs. 

Cloud storage allows you to access and share edited images from anywhere. The tools also offer AI capabilities for editing images. 

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Pricing:

• Fotor premium account is free for eligible nonprofits
• Fotor Basic: Free
• Fotor Pro: $8.99 per month
• Fotor Pro+: $19.99 per month

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4. Snappa

Snappa is another user-friendly graphic design tool that allows you to upload nonprofit designs directly to social media. It offers a range of design elements, including icons, vectors, photos, and simple shapes. 

Snappa design templates only cover sizes for social media channels and blog graphics. It doesn’t have templates for other marketing materials like documents and visiting cards. 

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Pricing:

• Starter plan:  Free; only three downloads per month
• Pro plan: $15 per month with unlimited downloads and other premium features
• Team plan: $30 per month covering all Pro plan features and five users

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Final thoughts on Canva for nonprofits

Canva is a necessary tool for nonprofits, helping them with visual storytelling. The platform is free, has a user-friendly interface, and offers many graphic design templates. 

Use Canva for Nonprofit's free features and best practices to create your nonprofit’s brand identity. This will help you attract supporters and improve your fundraising efforts. 

Many small nonprofits operate with limited budgets and time. Canva is a helpful tool for creating graphics without hiring external help.

For more fundraising insights and nonprofit resources, explore our comprehensive guides. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a curated collection of valuable blog posts delivered to your inbox every month, helping you stay informed and maximize your nonprofit’s impact.

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FAQs on Canva for nonprofits