How to Design a Nonprofit Logo That Amplifies Your Mission

Your nonprofit’s brand is an essential tool for building trust with supporters. When your audience sees the same visuals and messaging throughout all of your communications, it makes your organization recognizable and memorable for them. Plus, since your brand represents your mission, it instills confidence that they’re supporting a good cause with their resources and time.

The centrepiece of your brand is your logo. According to Loop, “Your nonprofit logo is the visual representation of your organization’s identity. It translates your mission, vision, and values into a graphic that encapsulates who you are, what you stand for, and the impact you strive to make.”

To help your organization’s logo accomplish this purpose, let’s review four best practices for designing it.

Choose Colours Carefully

Colour is the foundation of all graphics, especially logos. The colours in your nonprofit’s logo will influence the look and feel of all of your marketing materials. In many cases, brand colours become very closely associated with the organizations using them—think of Coca-Cola Red on the for-profit side and Girl Scout Green among nonprofits, for instance.

When choosing colours for your nonprofit’s logo, consider:

• Psychology. People tend to associate colours with specific feelings or ideas, and they’ll translate those associations to your organization based on its branding. For example, environmental nonprofits often use green in their logos because it’s linked to growth and nature. On the other hand, many healthcare organizations prefer red logos because they convey boldness and urgency.
• Contrast. Ensure adequate contrast between text and background colours to make any words in your logo readable for all audiences. While the recommended contrast ratio is 3:1, using dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background is usually a safe bet.
• Competitors. Your brand should make your nonprofit stand out from other organizations in its local area and vertical. If your animal shelter creates a blue and orange logo design, but three other animal shelters in your city also have blue and orange logos, yours might get lost in the noise.

In your organization’s brand guide, include not only the names of the colours in your logo, but also the specific hex codes (for example, “light purple” could be #d3b3f2 or #e4affa). This way, you can input the codes into any graphic design tool and get the exact shades in your logo every time you create branded marketing materials.

Balance Simplicity With Uniqueness

Generally speaking, simple logos are more memorable than complex ones. However, since your logo represents your nonprofit’s unique identity, the design needs to have the same one-of-a-kind factor.

Here are a few ways to make this happen:

• Choose a central image. Design your logo around a single graphic that encapsulates a key aspect of your nonprofit’s mission or values. In some cases, this representation is literal—think of the WWF panda logo, which depicts a vulnerable species the organization is actively working to protect. Other logo images are more symbolic, like the Girl Scouts, whose trefoil logo represents the three parts of the Girl Scout Promise.
• Include your nonprofit’s common name. Rather than using an image as your entire logo (known as a symbol mark), pair the symbol with your nonprofit’s name (a combination mark). Many organizations are also known by a shortened version of their official names, so use the common version in your logo. One nonprofit that does this particularly well is the YMCA—its logo includes “the Y” and “YMCA” to denote both of its popular name abbreviations.
• Remember that colour adds complexity. All three of the nonprofit logos mentioned above use just two colours each, which is an ideal number to make them memorable and easy to display. Three colours is the absolute maximum you should include in your logo, not counting the background.

If you have a few logo ideas in mind but aren’t sure which one will resonate most with your audience, hold a focus group or create a survey for longtime supporters to gather direct input on which design they find most appealing and why.

Create Several Iterations of Your Logo

Your logo should feature prominently in all of your nonprofit’s communications, from your website’s navigation bar to signage at fundraising events. Once you’ve chosen a primary logo design, create a few variations of it to ensure you can naturally incorporate your logo into various materials.

Here are some popular logo design iterations and their functions:

• Black and white: Multi-page print communications such as conference presentation handouts or large batches of fundraising letters.
• Simplified/symbol-only: Small spaces like social media profile pictures and favicons (i.e., the small image that often appears in address bars or browser tabs when someone visits your website).
• Reversed colours: Highly decorative materials where you might want additional flexibility in choosing background colours, such as flyers or branded merchandise.

Keep your logo’s core symbol at the centre of every variation to tie it back to your brand, and document all approved versions in your brand guide for your team’s reference.

Update Your Logo Design As Needed

While your logo and branding should always align with your nonprofit’s identity, that identity will evolve as your organization grows and changes. There are many reasons your organization might choose to rebrand, including:

• Attracting new audience segments to your supporter base.
• Keeping up with changing trends in graphic design.
• Visually reflecting updates to your vision and values.
• Signaling a new era of your organization after a leadership transition.

Since your logo is at the core of your brand, evaluate it first if you’re considering rebranding. Gather input from staff members, board members, and employees on if and how you should change your logo, then plan the rest of your rebrand from there. Before you officially launch your new logo, give supporters a sneak peek of the design so they understand the reasoning behind it and aren’t surprised by the change.

Following the tips above will provide your nonprofit with a solid foundation for creating a mission-driven, memorable logo. Look to other organizations’ logo designs for inspiration, and don’t hesitate to reach out for professional branding help if you need it at any point in the process!