Learning to Love Canva: An Essential Creative Tool for Nonprofits

Back in my design school days, my peers and I balked at the idea of using Canva. Cheugy typography, bad stock photography, your cousin’s clip-art wedding invite–be gone!

Deep down, these allergies to the up-and-coming platform were just design snobbery, which got in the way of recognizing Canva for what it is: a powerful creative tool to reach audiences through collaborative and accessible design.

I believe good design and branding provides ease of use for folks from all backgrounds. Anyone can be creative and channel creative-thinking. Canva provides the perfect space for clients to create effective and powerful brand touch-points to reach audiences–and to have fun while doing it!

Nonprofit organizations–whether they have in-house designers, partner with a studio or agency, or have no creatives on staff–can benefit from Canva. It helps standardize workflows, build efficiency, and facilitate creativity within helpful confines.

At Teal, when we hand off a new brand, we equip our clients with the necessary mechanisms and templates to easily communicate their missions to the world. We make certain the organizations we serve continue to breathe life into all of their channels for years to come.

One example of a time when we used Canva to empower social movements is our partnership with the incredible LGBTQIA+ advocacy group, PFLAG National. We used Canva to build flexible branded templates and tools for local chapters across the country.

From that experience, here’s why we love Canva for our nonprofit clients:

• We use Canva to create content that is not only beautiful, but fits within tight timelines and budgets. Through Canva, we apply the custom digital marketing strategy, social media calendars, and other extensive deliverables we make. And the best part, we–and our clients–are left with wide-ranging templates to quickly repurpose and grow!
• Canva allows us to effectively organize the brand assets we create for our clients in one place, through its Brand Kit feature, which provides consistency across brand applications.

• We make it easy for stakeholders and internal teams to follow brand guidelines by turning on brand controls, locking elements on designs, and establishing collaborative approval workflows in their accounts.
• Canva is a one-stop shop for all content and design needs! There are built-in photo editing capabilities, video tools, AI features, etc. No more hopping between various programs when you’re in a time-crunch or not a design expert.

• Through Pro or Teams accounts, Canva’s stock photography and elements library is extensive (and way better than it used to be)! There are so many options for free-to-use images, animations, vectors, and more.
• It’s easy for us to share designs in Canva, whether clients want to invite more users or decide to send out a clickable link that anyone can access.
• Canva has a vast, free tutorial library for when we (or our clients) get stuck.
• Canva evolves every year, expanding what’s possible.

With our trusty PFLAG Canva account in hand, we trained countless volunteers from 400+ chapters on how to use and apply their new brand.

We hosted virtual learning sessions and recorded bitesize Canva tutorials specific to PFLAG’s needs (for example, we use a lot of custom, people-centered collages, so we recorded a video where we created a collage from scratch and broke down our design decisions/process step-by-step).

Folks of all ages, especially elderly grandparents eager to support their LGBTQIA+ grandchildren, joined our calls to ask any brand and Canva related questions.

Not only did the turn-out deeply inspire me as a Queer person, but it also proved that with the right amount of curiosity and passion, anyone can be empowered to create.

Design is a powerful tool for social change, and Canva brings it to the masses.

From this project forward (thank you PFLAG), we became Canva converts!