Using visuals to tell a story is VITAL to your nonprofit's fundraising, but making great visual content isn't easy (especially when you don't have a designer on staff). These 7 free tools make it easy to create beautiful content to wow your donors!

1. 7 FREE VISUAL
STORYTELLING TOOLS FOR
NONPROFITS

2. • STORYTELLING
• DATA
• USING VISUALS TO COMMUNICATE
WITH DONORS
YOU KNOW THE
IMPORTANCE OF:

3. THE PROBLEM IS:
HOW THE HELL DO
YOU DO THAT?!

4. THE PROBLEM IS:
HOW THE HELL DO
YOU DO THAT?!
HERE ARE SEVEN FREE
DESIGN TOOLS TO
HELP YOU!

5. CANVA
If you’ve ever thought you need Photoshop to make
compelling visuals, Canva is out to prove you wrong.
Canva is web-based (so you can use it anywhere), simple, and
best of all free.
Sign up for an account, and choose one of their hundreds of
templates to get started. Canva has templates for Facebook
cover photos, infographics, posters, and one of my favorites,
Instagram posts.

6. INFOGR.AM
Infographics are cool, but you know what’s even cooler?
Animated infographics!
Infogr.am helps take your visual data to the next level, all
without any design or computer coding skills needed.
Choose a template, enter your data, then watch it come to
life.
You can embed them directly onto websites too!

7. UNSPLASH
Unsplash provides beautiful, high-resolution photos that
you can use on your blog, in emails, wherever, for free.The
photos are all released with a Creative Commons Zero
license, meaning not only are they free, but you don’t even
have to attribute the source if you don’t want to!You can
use them how you wish.
Many of the photos are generic enough that you can find a
use for them just about anywhere to spice up your
communications.

8. 1001FONTS.COM
Sometimes the fonts that come preloaded on your
computer just won’t cut it. For those times, check out
1001Fonts.com.Thousands of fonts, all for free!
Use their free fonts to jazz up a flyer or email image to
make it a bit more compelling. Pay attention though: unlike
Unsplash, some of these fonts require an attribution to
use.

9. HUBSPOT ICON KIT
Icons are a simple way to add some visual flair to data.
Let’s play a game: which example is more compelling and easier to read?
Example 1:This year, you helped feed 162 homeless families in our
community! The $55,300 raised in our crowdfunding campaign was the
biggest single gift ever received by the local shelter, and our volunteers
built 13 new houses for needy families.
Example 2:

10. POWTOON
Videos are a fantastic visual resource to use in your
communications with supporters, and they’re growing in
popularity every week.The problem is, they can be difficult
and time consuming to make.
PowToon allows you to quickly and easily create fun,
captivating cartoon videos with animations, voice over,
sound effects, and music.They offer a free version of the
tool that’s perfect for creating light-hearted videos to
make donation asks or update supporters on your
organization’s efforts.

11. POWERPOINTThat’s right, little old PowerPoint.You’d be amazing at what a solid visual content
creation tool PowerPoint is!
In fact, I use PowerPoint to create all my visuals for blog posts.
You’ll find most of the best goodies in the format picture menu.
Select an image in PowerPoint, then select the format picture menu. Here, you can easily
crop an image, rotate it to give it a 3D effect, recolor it (great for those icons!), or my
favorite, remove the background! If you’ve ever dealt with trying to find a copy of a logo
that doesn’t have a white background, you know what a handy tool this can be.
It’s also great for adding text to images. Create a text box, place it on an image, type
what you need (using some good fonts), then group the text box and image together.
Right click, then select “Save as picture” and viola!You’ve got a great feature image to
use for blog posts, in emails, or on fundraising pages.

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