Chances are, your nonprofit organization does more than one thing. Your end goal may be to get abandoned animals adopted, to raise money for cancer research, or to provide food to families struggling to get by. But in pursuit of that mission, you must typically solicit support in the form of volunteers, in-kind donations, and financial contributions.
To take it one step further, you must actually educate people about your cause, as well as your organization’s need. That’s a lot to do.
Right now, people’s attention is more divided than ever, and their focus is quite short. This reality has led to the rise in popularity of the infograhic. By combining some images, some text, and some data, you can create a way to get the attention of the very people you need on your side. And, you can do it while entertaining them, or at the very least, not annoying them. In some cases, you may even give them a great way to easily share your information.
In the simplest terms, an infographic is a visual representation of data. The most obvious form is probably a graph or chart, but with creativity, there is no limit to the ways you can share your data. Check out this list of 40 amazing infographics from 2011. There are some great free tools online that can help you present your data in a way that is appealing and powerful This post on Fast Company’s web site shares five great options. Of course, if you have a staff member, volunteer, or intern who is great with graphic design, you might be able to come up with something in-house.
As an added bonus, infographics have the potential to get shared. If you’ve succinctly made your point in an interesting way, your followers will share the infographic on their Facebook walls, link to it in their blog posts, and even email it to friends.
A few tips to keep in mind:
- Pick a nice color scheme and stick with it
- Focus on a few key pieces of information rather than trying to cram too much into the infographic
- Be sure to include references, when applicable
- Create your graphics in vector format so that they can change size without becoming distorted
- Add your URL to the infographic to drive traffic to your organization’s web site
