Designing real change: Celebrating 500,000 nonprofits using Canva

We have an important Two-Step Plan at Canva: (1) build one of the world’s most valuable companies, and (2) do the most good we can. With more than 30% of Canva committed to doing good in the world, as we increase our value and economic power, we’re able to contribute towards helping to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges by taking tangible action through our “Step Two” work.

One important way we can join forces with our community to make a difference is by empowering nonprofits with access to our premium visual communication tools for free to amplify their impact and achieve their goals. Today, we’re proud to share that our nonprofit community has reached a very special milestone: 500,000 incredible organizations using Canva for Nonprofits.

One community, millions of lives changed

Since launching Canva for Nonprofits, we’ve been constantly inspired by the positive impact our community has in every corner of the globe. Every day, we see changemakers, advocates, and leaders who are working on our global goals use Canva to create real change – and together, these nonprofit teams have created over 150 million designs!

We love seeing the creative and different ways our community uses Canva to create designs to spark change and raise awareness around important topics and causes. We’ve seen our nonprofit community love using the Canva editor to bring designs to life in custom sizes, and the most used design types have been Instagram posts and stories. Printing materials is another great way to help spread the word about your mission, and our nonprofit community’s favorite Canva Print products have been business cards, postcards, and invitations.

Designs that make a difference

We’re constantly moved by the stories we hear about how our nonprofit community is making a difference, and the powerful ways Canva’s tools play a role in their success.

For Andrea Lytle Peet, life was turned upside down following an ALS diagnosis – but she’s made it her mission to encourage others to appreciate the gift of life and help others facing ALS through the Team Drea Foundation.

Establishing the Foundation from scratch, and with 10 volunteers as staff, Canva has been an essential visual communication tool for Andrea and her team to grow awareness, spread their mission, and drive fundraising efforts. They’ve utilized Canva for Nonprofits to create social media posts that have driven record fundraising results, and have easily developed videos in Canva’s video editor without needing specialized capabilities. To date, Andrea and her team have raised more than $750,000 USD for ALS research.

For GivingTuesday, the world’s largest generosity movement, Canva has significantly helped the organization scale rapidly around the globe. An event that started out over 10 years ago as an annual giving day has transformed into a year-round giving event celebrated in more than 80 nations (plus a space station!) and over 100 languages, by introducing Canva for Nonprofits as a centralized design tool to share engaging visual content, the team at GivingTuesday has been able to supercharge this success.

Not only has GivingTuesday been able to positively impact millions of people all over the world, but in 2021 alone, the GivingTuesday campaign raised over US $2.78B in just 24 hours and garnered over 20 billion impressions across social media platforms worldwide.

Our Two-Step Plan

All the work we do with our nonprofit community ladders up to our greater Two Step Plan, and in particular, Step Two, where we work on four pillars to help us focus our energy and resources on the issues we believe we can have the most impact on:

1. Empower nonprofits: Our Canva for Nonprofits program unlocks all the premium features of Canva Pro – for free.
2. No extreme poverty: Discovering the most effective means of permanently uplifting individuals and entire communities from poverty.
3. Quality education: Ensuring everyone has access to high-quality, free educational materials on Canva.
4. Help local communities: Engaging in local projects and volunteering initiatives, with a particular focus on ending homelessness.
   

As part of our ’No Extreme Poverty’ goal, we first partnered with GiveDirectly in 2021 to help empower the world’s poorest households through direct cash transfers to 12,800 people living in extreme poverty in rural Malawi. Our work with GiveDirectly has shown us that giving money directly to people living in extreme poverty is one of the most effective ways to contribute towards this goal – we’ve seen firsthand how these transfers have an immediate positive impact on recipients and a positive uplift for the entire community.

Earlier this year, we were excited to announce the launch of our second phase of work with GiveDirectly, with an additional $20 million dollar cash transfer program for people living in extreme poverty in Malawi. Since we commenced our second phase, GiveDirectly has been able to provide direct cash transfers to 6,645 more people, and more than 25,000 are now fully enrolled in the program.

Designing a better world, together

We’re humbled and inspired by the profound impact the 500,000 nonprofits in the Canva community are having.

We truly believe communication and design are critical when taking action on solving the most pressing issues of our time, so we’re proud to host hundreds of resources and templates for nonprofits in our content library for nonprofits to use to design real change. As we celebrate this milestone with our nonprofit community, we’re excited about the next 500,000 and many more to come.

Find out more about Canva for Nonprofits today.

Stay in the loop with our monthly newsletter! From the latest news and announcements, to stories and insights, join our community for updates delivered straight to your inbox.