If you are blessed to have a full or even part time graphic designer on staff, you are blessed indeed. You may be one of many church staffs with utility players who produce graphics for upcoming events, sermon series, social media, website, and everything in between.  These players are graduates of YouTube University and have Googled their way through many a project.  They are some of the truest MVPs for learning Adobe heavyweight software like Photoshop or Illustrator as they go. Or you may be paying a pretty penny contracting out design work.  But there is a third option. 

Enter Canva. 

Canva is a free to use, web-based graphic design tool. It is user friendly for the complete beginner.   Your projects will take a huge leap forward in looking professional and trendy. I was introduced to Canva a little over a year ago and it has changed my ministry life. (And I’m not being dramatic.)  If you’re not using Canva, you should be.  Here are three reasons why: 

1. It requires little to no skill. 

Canva is a treasure trove of templates for nearly every publication you could imagine.  Flyers, social media posts, brochures, presentations, videos, and so much more! They look professional and take a lot of guess work out of digital design.   

2. It will save you time.  

Gone are the days of building design projects from scratch.  With templates you can let someone else’s effort couple with your creativity to save you time.  

3. It is free.

Canva is free! (Insert a thousand hallelujahs here).  The free version itself is completely worth it, but I would suggest checking out Canva Pro.  Canva Pro unlocks several more design templates and features.  The good news is many are eligible for Canva Pro for Nonprofits. Click here to see if your ministry qualifies Canva for Nonprofits eligibility guidelines | Canva. 

Side Note: I learned about Canva Pro for nonprofits in a Church Communications group on Facebook.  One thing to note (as it was our experience) you may be initially denied.  Based on the group discussion, it was mentioned to send a direct email to support on the Canva website asking them to detail what we were missing.  When we did this, we then resubmitted and were granted access to Pro. This seems to be a common experience. 

Save time, money and staff resources.  Check out Canva for your ministry today!