A Review Of Canva For Creating Club Marketing Materials

Creating interesting, eye-catching graphics is a key part of marketing your club or association. Whether it’s a social media post, an event header, or an email image, it doesn’t really matter; it needs to catch and hold people's attention long enough to get them to read your content. However, the average person isn’t a graphic designer, so to get nice images for your organisation, you either have to pay a professional graphic designer or accept that your images may look a little amateur hour. 

This is where Canva comes in. Canva is an online video and photo editor, designed to allow pretty much everyone to create stunning images. So today, let's dive into:

• What Canva is: How the drag-and-drop interface works for everyday volunteers.
• The total cost: The pricing options for clubs on a tight budget.
• Free vs paid: Whether you actually need to upgrade to handle your marketing needs.
• The pros and cons: The best and worst things about the platform.
• Our final verdict: The official recommendation for your membership organisation.

What Is Canva? 

Canva is an online photo and video editor designed to help the average person create attractive, professional-looking images and videos. It works by letting you create a design based on the dimensions you need, then drag and drop graphics, photos, and text onto it. You can customise these elements as needed before exporting your file in the format and size of your choice. 

Canva also provides access to a range of design presets to make selecting the right size easy, along with a wide variety of templates that make creating a visually appealing design simple. 

Just drag a template onto your design, then edit whatever you need to make the design your own. In about five minutes, I turned the above template into this. 

 

The point is that Canva makes creating good-looking images quicker and easier, and it gives you plenty of tools and guidance so pretty much anyone can create better graphics. 

How Much Does Canva Cost? 

I’m sure the question you’re asking right now is, “How much does Canva cost?” because let’s be honest, non-profits don’t have a lot of cash to splash around, particularly on things that aren’t crucial to your operations.  

Well, the good news is that Canva does have a free version as well as several paid versions. Canva’s pricing is as follows: 

 

The big difference between the free package and the paid ones is the number of assets you have free access to. 

• The free version has “4.7M+ photos, videos, graphics, and audio”. 
• The paid versions have “141M+ premium photos, videos, graphics, and audio”. 

I know that 4.7 million assets sounds like a lot, but Canva does not separate out the images you do and don’t have access to, so you often have to scroll past images you can’t use, looking for ones without the gold crown icon. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll definitely be able to find plenty of photos and graphics to use, but it can be a slightly frustrating experience. 

 

If you do find a premium asset that perfectly fits your project, you can add it to your design to see how it looks. If you decide you absolutely must use it, Canva allows you to purchase that single graphic for $1 without committing to a full subscription. 

It is also worth noting that great features, such as the background remover and the Branding Kit for locking in your official club fonts, colours, and logo, are restricted to the paid packages. Starting with the free tier is a fantastic way to test it out and see if the basic tools meet your committee's needs before committing to paying for anything. 

If you are a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Nonprofits Commission (or your country’s equivalent regulatory body), you can apply to get Canva Pro for free. You can find everything you need to know about the qualification rules at Canva for Nonprofits - Are You Eligible? 

Canva For Clubs & Associations: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Let’s take a good look at some of the best and worst features of Canva, to help you decide if it’s worth trying. 

Canva: The Good For Clubs

There is certainly a lot to love about using Canva:

• Versatility: Canva allows you to make pretty much any kind of image, from social media graphics and email headers to PDF files, presentations, and much more. This adaptability means that a single Canva account can handle almost everything graphic design-wise for a non-profit. 

 

• Ease of Use: While it does have a lot of features that might look intimidating to new users at first glance, it is all fairly self-explanatory, and the learning curve is not very steep. Anyone, no matter their level of technical ability, should be able to use Canva to make good-looking graphics for their club.

 

• Well Priced: Budget-wise, Canva has a highly capable free version, and its Pro version works out to $13.75 a month when paid annually.
   
• Support for Creator: The platform also allows photographers, graphic designers, and artists to upload their own creations to the library. This means there are always fresh designs available, and real human creators get paid a small amount of money every time someone uses their work.

Canva: The Bad For Clubs

Canva doesn’t have a lot of bad things about it, however there are a few downsides that are worth mentioning. 

• Unlabelled AI Graphics: Some creators upload AI-generated images to Canva. The issue is that these images aren’t labelled as being AI-generated, so you may end up using an AI image without realising it. Depending on how you feel about AI, this may not be a concern, but it’s worth knowing. 
• Third-party integrations: It can be unclear where Canva ends, and outside apps begin. You might try to use a feature only to find out you need an account with a different company, though this mostly happens with fringe features like AI voice-overs.

Canva: The Ugly For Clubs

• The Video Editor: So, I don’t want to call Canva’s video editor bad, as it’s not bad. It’s not more complicated than the rest of Canva; it has the standard features you’d expect from video editing software. I’m sure you could edit all of your club's YouTube videos on there; I’m sure someone could even use it to edit a feature film. However, the workflow is tedious for anything more than a simple social media clip. It technically works, but you will likely find yourself wishing you had just used a dedicated video program instead. 

The Final Verdict: Is Canva The Right Tool For Your Membership Organisation 

I like Canva. I use it for pretty much everything besides video editing; I would and have wholeheartedly recommended it to people who are looking to create nice images and professional-looking documents. Whether you use the free version or pay for the pro version, Canva is definitely a good choice to make your organisation's graphics look more professional, without hiring a graphic designer. 

Speaking of marketing, if you are trying to decide which social media sites you should try and reach potential new members on, have a look at  The Best Social Media To Use To Grow Your Membership Organisation For Free.

If you want a closer look at how you can use those new Canva graphics to improve your organisation’s branding, check out Mastering Your Organisation’s Identity: The Essential Guide to Modern Branding.