Every non-profit is different, with varied audiences and requirements to meet. The one common denominator is that these numerous charitable organizations are vying for the same dollars. No matter what your specific layout needs are, from monthly newsletters to letters of donor appreciation or detailed progress reports, creating a unique, individual identity is crucial to succeeding. The critical factor in aiding this success is keeping layout costs to a minimum.

To that end, 3 possible solutions are available to you:

Option 1: Employ a professional graphic designer. These designers will certainly help in devising/ maintaining a unique brand identity and impressing sponsors, while bringing a level of skill and finesse to your layouts and presentations. However, this approach can be a time-consuming process, involving significant costs and substantial energy/effort investment. The end result may not be what was originally envisioned either. 

Option 2: Purchase the software and take control of the layout yourself. Unless you possess the required computer skills, this will become a drawn-out process, with a difficult and steep learning curve. Having the required computer knowledge is also of very little benefit, if graphic design training is not present.

Option 3: This requires no further thought. Buy a pre-designed template from a design company like indesigntemplate.com and add your own minor customizations. The templates are affordable, but professional and crisp, resulting in a specialized, quality result. Add you own images, colors and logos to an existing non-profit template, and hey presto, almost complete. Replace the Lorem Ipsum text with your specific description/ content and the newsletter/letterhead/report etc. is complete.

If you are more experienced, the page layout can be altered to your needs. The arrangement of the text items/ images and shapes can be amended to your current and future requirements. A small investment of time and budget now can provide for your future design needs, and this route is substantially cheaper than taking Option 1 or 2 above.

For simple projects like company letterheads, personalized business cards or stationery, Adobe InDesign is the number one choice. Adobe Indesign was ultimately designed to create complex and sophisticated layouts

that were required in the magazine and newspaper industries but this can easily translate to small business needs too. Indesign is compatible with many operating systems (Mac, Windows) and can be adapted to run on Linux if necessary. Non-profits can avail of hugely-discounted versions of the software, which normally sells for $699.

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.