Having a memorable nonprofit logo is critical in making a good first impression on potential donors. Your organization relies on people remembering who you are, what your purpose is, and ultimately making a donation. A good logo is able to do all of this in a single image.
What makes a good nonprofit logo?
A well designed nonprofit logo visually communicates your organization’s mission and purpose. It should make a lasting impression on the people you’re trying to reach so your logo eventually becomes synonymous with your nonprofit’s purpose.
Whether you’re starting a new nonprofit, or rebranding an existing one, you can find a lot of inspiration for your logo by looking at the logos of other nonprofit organizations. To help you get started, we’ve curated a list of what we think are some of the best nonprofit logos. As you go through our list, be sure to read the insights from members of our design and marketing teams to learn what makes these logos so great.
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“The best animal organization logos clearly display the types of animals being helped by the nonprofit, whether it’s one species or many. These logos not only reflect the animals associated with the nonprofit, but the colors of the logos coincide with colors that come to mind when you think of those creatures. WWF, with their panda logo, use black & white for the entirety of their logo, to play off the colors of pandas.”
“These arts and humanities logos are fun, bright, and evocative! This type of organization is not as serious as say, a healthcare provider, so their goal is less to establish trust, but to let you know what experiences they specialize in. Font and colors can be pivotal; the typewriter-esque typeface used in the Girls Write Now logo connects the logo to the mission, and the hippy-inspired colors and lines in the Global Peace Film Festival give a visual reference to the concept of Global Peace.”
“The marks below effectively show that sometimes all you need is just one color. Additionally, the logo for The Mentoring Project demonstrates a very clever use of negative space by overlaying the two elephants. Nicely done!”
“A great environmental organization logo stays close to natural imagery and colors. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s logo plays off of the official AT logo, and uses a similar green to the AT markers found along the trail. Environmental organizations typically use green if they work for the environment in general, or have a focus on forests and plants. Organizations working with water will often use blue.”
“Colour is an important factor to consider when creating your logo; both red and brown are colours that make us hungry when we look at them. These food and agriculture logos take advantage of this, as well as smaller details like creating the Home Brewer Association logo inside the shape of a bottle cap. Fun!”
“A great housing organization logo communicates exactly what they do, by using imagery of houses, roofs, and the family underneath it. Breaking Ground’s logo is energetic, and the way the letters move both up and down helps illustrate the way the foundation is laid, and walls go up. For people getting a home for possibly the first time, these housing organizations logos symbolize a bright and hopeful future.”
“Here in the human services category we see some great examples of tailoring the style of your logo to your target audience. For Every Child Oregon, the logo is created to be welcoming and friendly, as they work with individual families and children that are in crisis. By contrast, the Human Rights Campaign logo is firm and decisive, as they work on a policy and advocacy level. It can be helpful when designing a logo to think about who you want to reach and appeal to.”
“These organizations chose to embrace minimal logos with clean lines for their brand, which allows them to be used effectively on a variety of applications. The symbols serve as the primary focus point, thus allowing the secondary wordmarks to be translated to other languages.”
“It’s typical for Mental Health Organizations to use blue as a primary color in their logo, since according to color psychology, blue exudes calm and serenity. The lifesaving ring used as the main icon of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention symbolize what they see their role being to those served by their organization. The squiggly line illustration used in Mind’s logo demonstrates how many of us may feel mentally– a little mixed up an all over the place.”
“Each of these logos strongly relate to their organization (the silhouettes of girls in the Girls Scouts logo, the 4 H’s representing the Head, Heart, Hands, and Health that 4-H strives for). We also see a lot of green, which is a colour that evokes growth and action. What better choice is there for a youth development organization than a colour that says, “let’s go and let’s grow!”?”
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