Social Media for Nonprofits: Crafting Compelling Visuals
As a nonprofit on social media, your position in the digital marketplace is unique. While other organizations are on social media to sell a product or service, nonprofits on social media are there to share about events, find the individuals who could benefit from their services, recruit volunteers, and solicit donations through fundraising campaigns.
Despite these differences, even non-profits have branding to uphold. Having high-quality content and visuals is important to convey trustworthiness and foster recognition on social media.
As a social media manager and social media marketing consultant for nonprofits, here are my top tips for creating compelling visual social media content for your nonprofit.
Before you start: identify and understand your audience
Everything in social media really comes back to this foundational consideration: who is your target audience? For nonprofit social media visuals, the question still holds: who is in need of your offering?
Audience to visuals flow
One reason this is so important is because different audiences are on different platforms, and different platforms demand different kinds of content, and different kinds of content require different visuals. The infographic below illustrates that flow.
While every social media platform appeals more to younger audiences, some platforms are more accessible to certain generations than others. For example, more than 70% of TikTok users are under 35. Compare this to only about 58% on Facebook. Stats source.
This is useful information when making decisions about social media visuals as a nonprofit. If you're a nonprofit providing meals to shut-in elderly folks, your audience is probably those elderly folks and their caregivers, often their Gen X children. Those audiences are far more likely to be on Facebook than TikTok. Conversely, if you're a nonprofit, no-tuition preschool serving underprivileged communities, your audience is more likely to be millennials, so you may turn to TikTok as one of your platforms.
Platform determines the types of content you'll post, and types of content you post determine the ultimate outcome of your visuals. A photo-based graphic you post on Instagram you might design in Canva or Adobe Photoshop with branded fonts and colors. On TikTok, videos with text added natively in-app perform better than the curated designs you might make in design programs. That's obviously going to impact the final visual you post online as a nonprofit.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Visual content can be tailored to appeal to your target audience
Another reason remembering who your audience is impacts the visual content you create is that prioritizing the needs of your target demographics and emphasizing their key interests in your social media content is more likely to attract—and retain—their attention.
A nonprofit with the mission to support mothers and maternal health needs to post pictures that center women and babies, not men. A nonprofit that builds homes for the unhoused should post pictures of homes they've built. A nonprofit after-school center should use bold, primary colors in their social media graphics. A nonprofit grief support group should use muted, somber colors in their social media graphics.
Set goals and objectives
Sometimes, organizations and businesses are on social media just because everyone else is. That's a good place to start, but it won't take you very far on a growth path as an organization. Instead, it's important to set goals for your campaigns.
Defining goals for your nonprofit social media visual content and campaigns
This is an area where having a social media marketing strategist (like me! 🤭) on your team can be a huge help. Social media strategists can help nonprofits determine the areas of their social media accounts that can be improved and how to use their social media content to help accomplish the organization's goals.
One way nonprofit social media strategists can do this is by doing a competitor audit and identifying key content buckets or pillars. Learning what other nonprofits with similar missions are doing with their social media content can help provide insight into what's working and what isn't in the realm of nonprofit social media.
Content pillars or content buckets help determine the distribution of different content types. For a nonprofit, content buckets could be: youth services, community outreach, events, holidays, and fundraising. The buckets serve as a way of mentally organizing the different ways you talk about your nonprofit organization on social media. Different services or areas of your organizations may demand different types of posts which will require different types of visual content.
For example, under the "events" content pillar, you'd likely be making Facebook events. The visuals associated with Facebook events will need to meet some kind of tricky rules of proportion, affecting everything from the framing of the photo to where text is located in the overall design.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success
When posting online as a nonprofit, it's good to be aware that certain types of content will have different goals. Some content will be published just to touch base with your online community and some content will be published with specific goals, such as fundraising.
When putting out content with highly-specific goals, you'll need to tailor your content to achieve those results. These are your KPIs.
Want people to interact with your content? Your KPI is engagement—likes, comments, shares. Want people to donate? Your KPI is conversions. It's important to keep in mind that some KPIs are better suited to organic nonprofit social media efforts, just regular posting, and some KPIs are better suited to paid social media posting, like ads or boosting.
Each side of the organic vs. paid issue comes with its own set of visual best practices. Feeling overwhelmed? That's okay, that's why paid ads expertise from a social media manager can be a lifesaver.
Whether designing/posting for organic or paid social media, it's vital to select visuals that are best optimized for each use so that even down to the design or subject of your posts is in alignment with your goals!
Crafting engaging visuals
Here's where we get into the details! What works best as far as visuals go on social media for nonprofits?
Design principles
Luckily for us, there are some widely-recognized principles of design that we can use to help us create good social media visuals, even if we're not professional designers. I'm going to pinpoint a few major ones: contrast, balance, emphasis, proportion, hierarchy, repetition, white space, variety, and unity.
Contrast: contrast is important so everything can be read (can't read white on white! need darker colors on lighter colors) and for visual interest. Other ways this could show up: pair bigger elements with smaller elements or straight fonts with script fonts.
Balance: building off of contrast, balance is the way you make sure that even while elements are contrasting each other, they're balanced well. If one side of your design has a bunch of heavy elements like strong colors and bold fonts, rearrange things so that even contrasting elements balance out well.
Emphasis: bold fonts or colors inherently create emphasis on those elements, so be aware of the way that emphasis is distributed across your design. Put the most important stuff in bigger letters and bolder colors so that no one is confused.
Proportion: similar to balance—be aware of how sizes of elements interact to create good ratios of elements to other elements rather than an off-kilter vibe.
Hierarchy: hierarchy builds on emphasis and proportion. Rank the importance of the information in your design and graduate the size and placement of those elements in a way that implies the correct order of emphasis. Here's a fun design that circles the internet occasionally that demonstrates this idea.
Repetition: repeating elements is important for predictability. This is one reason why it's so important that you not go crazy with fonts in a single graphic—people need repetition to feel stable. You can also use repetition to create emphasis.
White space: don't be afraid of negative space (it doesn't have to be literally white). Negative space helps when establishing balance and contrast in a design. It's okay for there to be some real estate without anything in it.
Variety: much like you need repetition to create predictability, you need to apply the idea of contrast and understand that variety provides interest. For example, it's not good to use 5 fonts in one design, but it's also sometimes equally problematic to use only 1. Variety is the spice of life.
The importance of a brand kit
Following good design principles is easiest if you establish rules for design across your organization. Brand kits can be simple and streamlined or they can be all-encompassing. The extent to which your brand kit needs to go will depend a lot on the size of your organization, the number of people doing marketing-adjacent tasks (design, copywriting, etc.), and even the legal complexities of your niche.
At minimum, a brand kit should outline:
The 2-3 fonts you should use and when they should be used
The 3-5 specific colors you should use and when they should be used
The ways in which your logo should be used
Any language that should be prioritized and any language that should be avoided
Style: tone of voice guidelines and imagery guidelines
With a brand kit in place, it's much easier to create consistent and well-designed visuals.
Consistent branding
Speaking of consistency, remember that you want all of your designs to look like they go together. So often, I see brands using different fonts and colors for different graphics—pink background with swirly font for Valentine's Day, professional font for event promotion on a black and gold background, then a bright green graphic for St. Patrick's Day using yet another font. Even though each application feels like its own distinct item, it's better to think about each design as a piece to a cohesive brand puzzle.
Brand kit, branding, and logo design services are all offered as part of my services here at Aelsa on Socials—if you're looking to cement your nonprofit branding on social media and beyond, I'm happy to help codify that for your organization! Send me a message!
Leverage user-generated-content
User-generated-content, or UGC, is a great area to consider when building a content strategy and deciding on visuals to post. People tend to resonate with content that's clearly from real people.
Encourage supporters to share their stories and experiences
Depending on what you do as a nonprofit, there are probably some restrictions on what you want to crowdsource. But whether from people who have benefited from your services or from people who support your mission, narratives from real people make all the difference.
Testimonials can be imposed over a stock photo that aligns with your nonprofit's purpose/mission. Calls-to-action presented by previous donors on video can make a huge difference during fundraising campaigns.
Showcase UGC to build trust and foster engagement
UGC helps people see that you're really doing what you say you're doing, which is critical for nonprofits asking for donor funds. If you're a faith organization promising to send gifts overseas to children, sharing real phone camera footage of kids opening their gifts helps future donors know that you're following through. If you're creating ads for a performing arts ensemble, sharing photos taken by real audience members of real audience members will help first-time attendees see themselves in your marketing.
Pro tip: Before you start asking for UGC or even using it, it would be good to have an organization-wide conversation about it from the perspective of avoiding the dynamics of privilege and exploitation that can come into play when you use real people for content.
Ensure accessibility and inclusivity
Accessibility and inclusivity begins at the top of your organization, but particularly on social media, it's important to remember human differences when creating visuals. Nonprofits should be leading the way in this area, with two specific focuses.
1 - Designing with accessibility in mind
Remember contrast from the design principles? Even more important for visually-impaired consumers. Additionally, more and more platforms are allowing you to add "alt-text" which becomes meta-data associated with your post that describes what is in the picture for people who can't see it at all. When creating video content, always add closed captions.
2 - Representing diversity in your content
It shouldn't need to be said, but I'm saying it anyway: nonprofits serve everybody. While your target audience should be front and center in your imagery and designs, remember that even in communities, there's diversity. Diversity is a buzzword but it shouldn't be performative, it should truly just be part of your organization's DNA—that will show in your content.
Finally—measure, track, and report
You're not going to improve if you don't learn things, and you're not going to learn things if you don't look at the numbers. Whether you do this monthly or biweekly or even just once every six months, be sure to pull reports and look to see how those numbers are lining up with your KPIs! If you feel overwhelmed by the numbers and what they mean, I'm happy to help!
I love helping nonprofits optimize their social media presence, from strategy to content. Aelsa on Socials exist to bring cost-effective social media support to nonprofits, especially in the central Illinois (Bloomington-Normal, Champaign-Urbana, and Peoria) area. Contact me to get started!
PS - here are some resources for creating quality visuals for nonprofit social media posts!
Canva - a design software with a free plan available! You can build brand kits in the app to help keep everything organized!
Pexels - a free stock photo website
Unsplash - another free stock photo website
1001 Free Fonts - see free fonts to help you decide on brand fonts!
ColorSafe - Choose accessible color palettes
