About The Walkley Foundation

Through its prestigious Walkley Awards, the Walkley Foundation⁠(opens in a new tab or window) has established itself as a pillar of Australian journalism.

Beyond the eponymous awards, the Walkley Foundation supports journalists with professional development opportunities, mentorships, training, and grants.

The Foundation’s mission is to celebrate, safeguard, and aid public interest journalism, while advocating for the ethical practices of a free press.

The Challenge

Before Canva Teams, The Walkley Foundation faced some significant challenges when preparing for events such as the annual Walkley Awards.

Each year, the Foundation partners with multiple organizations and creatives for the awards ceremony. These partnerships are essential for the event's success and longevity, however collaborating on content with a large number of external partners can also be complex.

However, since using Canva, these issues have been largely mitigated.

“Since working with Canva the Walkley Foundation has been able to streamline its content output,” says James Gorman, Communications Manager of The Walkley Foundation. “While we still work with an external producer, the work they generate is also produced on Canva, which allows us to expedite our edits.”

As a non-profit with a limited budget, the team of 12 also faced challenges in marketing and advertising efforts. Outsourcing work was expensive and time-consuming. With both our proactive and reactive content needing to be turned around quickly, however, assets had to be sent back and forth for review.

“The main constraint was the time it would take to amend content, generate proactive and reactive content in a timely manner, and on occasion, effectively translate our briefs into content,” says James.

The Solution

The introduction of Canva marked a turning point for the Walkley Foundation. Canva's user-friendly nature and vast library of templates simplified the Foundation's workflow, enabling it to produce high-quality content in house.

“Canva has helped the Walkley Foundation streamline its look and feel across the organization’s numerous and diverse activities,” says Shona Martyn, Chief Executive Officer of The Walkley Foundation. “The Foundation has an immense volume of output that is held to high standards by the industry we work to serve.

“With so many things being produced in a very short time, it is easy for design principles to slip. Canva is changing this, and helping each team member deliver high-quality and beautiful work.”

Adopting Canva solved efficiency constraints and improved creative control and brand consistency in their materials.

“The quality of Canva templates helps ensure that we can be proud of the work we deliver,” says Tara Cheesman, the Walkley Foundation’s National Partnership and Sponsorship Manager. “When seeking to engage and influence journalists, quality content and material matters. Canva, as a design tool, has given us just that.”

Today, the Walkley Foundation’s Communications team uses Canva extensively in digital production, including social media posts, web images, and e-newsletters. They also lean on Canva for media releases, board reports, posters, event schedules, catalogs, and table plans.

The Awards, Partnership, and Professional Development teams also use Canva for a wide range of projects; including slide decks, video presentations, educational course guides, editing images and logos, designing letterheads, invitations, award laurels, name tags, and webinar titles.

Innovative approaches to time savings

Canva powered all communication touchpoints at the 66th, 67th, and 68th Walkley Awards ceremonies, from social assets to post-event reports.

“Canva has provided a quality solution for the Walkley Foundation,” says Shona. “Especially in developing the look and feel for our prestigious Walkley Awards from entry forms to social media to the graphic elements for our gala dinner's AV production.”

The platform's flexibility helped streamline team operations by allowing template resizing, color grading modification, and proactive content generation for live events.

Saving time with efficient workflows and online collaboration

Setting up effective content creation workflows and templates in Canva has proven to be a major triumph for the Walkley Foundation, leading to significant time savings.

These savings are incredibly valuable as they can be reinvested into the successful execution and enhancement of their programs.

“As a not-for-profit registered charity, we don't have the luxury of an in-house design team,” says Shona. “Yet working in the media, it is essential that our communication and design offerings reflect the excellence that is our byword.”

Shona says it has improved the Walkley Foundation's collaboration with partners by allowing everyone, regardless of their design skills, to contribute effectively.