Celebrating more than 250,000 nonprofits using Canva

Throughout history, society has used visuals to communicate and inspire change. From grassroots campaigns, to mass protests, to community-led fundraising appeals — visual communication has emerged as one of the most effective ways to evoke emotion and action, empowering nonprofits to champion and raise awareness about important causes.

We’ve also come to learn that nonprofits are particularly scarce on time and resources, which is why we launched Canva for Nonprofits⁠(opens in a new tab or window) in 2015, providing every nonprofit with free access to our platform as well as community educational workshops to upskill them with invaluable marketing and visual communication expertise.

Today, we're excited to share that more than 250,000 nonprofit organisations (a figure that has more than doubled in the past 12 months) are embracing Canva. That’s over 800,000 people within those nonprofits who are visually communicating to promote and champion important causes across the globe. From Forever Projects who are using Canva to secure critical funding, to UNHCR and Starlight Foundation who are scaling their brands, we wanted to take an opportunity to share a few of their stories and how visual communication has empowered them to create change.

Forever Projects

Forever Projects⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is on a mission to help women in Tanzania break the cycle of poverty and create a self-sustaining future. It does this through locally led change: by partnering with local teams on the ground in Tanzania to empower women to build strong, connected families and live with dignity and hope. Like most nonprofits, Forever Project relies on the generosity of donors to continue operating.

Visual communication is helping Forever Projects build awareness and connect with more donors than ever before. Forever Projects founder Mark Dombkins and his team are creating visually engaging content to scale their mission, secure critical funding and keep fundraising partners and donors informed about the impact they’re having – think presentations⁠(opens in a new tab or window), videos, funding proposals and thank you cards.

This personalized approach has seen Forever Projects deepen relationships with existing donors and attract entirely new ones.

A funding proposal

In the last two years, Forever Projects has sent as much money to Tanzania as the previous eight years combined.

UNHCR

UNHCR⁠(opens in a new tab or window), the UN Refugee Agency, is a global humanitarian organization operating in over 130 countries. With the support of donors and fundraising partners, UNHCR has been able to help to save lives and build better futures for millions forced from their homes over the past 70 years.

Driving awareness of fundraising campaigns and initiatives is critical to supporting UNHCR’s emergency programs. Brand consistency – or in this case, ensuring UNHCR branding is widely known and recognized – is critical to ensuring legitimacy and trust with donors. Any fundraising content that appears off-brand or illegitimate can deter people from donating. With UNHCR staff and volunteers stationed across various locations and time zones, delivering high-quality, on-brand, and localized information quickly and at scale has become increasingly important to support their important humanitarian programs, both internally and externally.

With access to UNHCR’s logos, brand colors, and fonts, teams have the flexibility to create on-brand social media templates, such as paid Facebook posts, and visual email banners to communicate with existing donors, ultimately cutting down on wait times and internal approval processes.

Being able to visually communicate at speed allows UNHCR to begin driving initiatives to support those affected by humanitarian crises - whether it’s through social media posts, donor updates, or sending timely briefings to staff and partners.

Starlight Children’s Foundation

Starlight's⁠(opens in a new tab or window) mission is to brighten the lives of seriously ill and hopsitalized children across Australia. To achieve this, it calls on the community for generous support. Visual communication is empowering Starlight to scale its brand, raise awareness and engage with more donors and partners than ever before. It’s unlocking creativing across the organization, enabling teams to communicate with impact. Teams are able to create on-brand and visually engaging content regardless of prior design experience. From weekly schedules and activities lists for their Starlight Express Rooms, to Christmas e-cards thanking their donors and partners, to marketing materials and more.

Teams can access a range of on-brand and editable templates and update logos, fonts, and colors with the click of a few buttons – saving Starlight valuable time and resources. These efficiencies have helped Starlight continue its life-changing work and become one of the most well-known and admired charities in Australia.

Inspiring Nonprofits with Canva

We’re also committed to ensuring nonprofits have access to the resources they need to stand out in an increasingly competitive digital environment. As part of this commitment, we recently launched a new onboarding course made up of bite-sized videos⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to assist nonprofits with familiarizing themselves with Canva and getting the most value out of our platform. We’ve also created a number of webinars⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to help upskill nonprofit teams, with topics ranging from effective story telling, to how to leverage social media to increase impact.

Nonprofits also have access to a number of resources like marketing toolkits⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and crisis toolkits⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to assist with responding to a crisis (from natural catastrophes to conflicts and pandemics). Our bespoke billboard collaboration with Voices of Hope⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a New Zealand-based non-profit aiming to break the stigma around mental illness, inspired us to create a suite of billboard templates⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to help nonprofits scale their impact.

We’ve always had a ‘simple’ Two-Step Plan surrounding Canva from the beginning — Step One: to build one of the world’s most valuable companies, and most importantly, Step Two⁠(opens in a new tab or window): to do the most good we can. By providing nonprofits with free access to the premium features of Canva, we hope we can play a small part in empowering nonprofits to continue the invaluable work they’re doing and amplify their impact. If you’re a nonprofit, sign up for free today!⁠(opens in a new tab or window)