Do you want to create a new letterhead for your nonprofit, or lay out a monthly newsletter or report? Send thank-you cards to donors? Create an invite for your next event? When multiple charitable organizations are chasing the same dollars, standing out from the crowd is critical to success. But the key question is: how much is this going to cost? There are 3 options:
Option 1 is to hire a graphic designer. There are plenty of good designers out there who can help you create or maintain a brand identity and add an air of professionalism to materials to help attract or retain donors. However, besides being an extremely time-consuming process, graphic designing involves substantial costs and great efforts without any guarantee that the end product would be what you had in mind.
Option 2 is to purchase the software and design the materials yourself. This can be a long process with a steep learning curve if you’re not adept at computers and knowing how to use the software is useless without a basic knowledge of graphic design skills – or at least a good eye.
Option 3 is the no-brainer. Purchase a design template from a design company like indesigntemplate.com and customize it yourself. It’s easier than starting from scratch and will produce more polished end results at a more affordable cost. Just take one of our existing non-profit design templates and customize it with your colors, logos, and more. Creating non-profit template has never been easier, faster, or more fun. Simply open the template, replace the Lorum Ipsum text with your own and then save as your new document. Done! More experienced users can play around with page layout for a slightly different look. Page layout involves the arrangement of design items such as text, images, colors and lines. Figure out what your needs are now and what they’re likely to be in the future, and hold them up against other factors like budget, staff and timeframe. The investment of time and money going this route is fraction of what you would spend with option 1 or 2.
For projects like creating stationery or letterheads, business cards or simple text-based layouts, Adobe InDesign is the obvious choice. Adobe InDesign was conceived to produce the sophisticated page layouts required by magazines, newspapers, catalogs and similar printed materials. InDesign is compatible with multiple operating systems, including Mac and Windows, and can run on Linux with a little work. InDesign retails for $699 but it is possible to get heavily discounted versions for non-profits.
Here at Indesigntemplate.com, we understand that non-profits need simpler tasks and less expense, not more. Indesigntemplate.com has many pre-designed templates for non-profits. Right now, we’re boasting a handful of new templates specifically for non-profits. If you really like these (like I do), or if you’re a newsletter-template-title purist, these are for you. Most of our templates are designed for other purposes but that does not mean they cannot be used
by non-profit organizations. Just like the other templates, you can edit these to match your organization’s brand or personality. In the end, by using professional looking templates, your materials will look better — and, by extension, so will your non-profit organization.
