Last updated on November 15th, 2022
Nonprofits are not typical companies that do business to earn money. Profit making is not their prime objective. Instead, they aim at making people’s lives better by resolving the key problems of their daily life. However, despite helping people selflessly with no intention of making money, these organizations still need impressive nonprofit logos to convey their message and mission.
The sole purpose of a nonprofit organization is to help people in distress and give them much-needed relief. But to promote the cause, even a nonprofit needs to market itself well. People come to know about a social cause through advertisements and marketing strategies. Therefore, a unique charity logo becomes essential to convey the message of help. The logo can evoke the right emotion of sympathy, compassion, kindheartedness, and solicitude.
Major Elements Of Nonprofit Logos
For nonprofits, such as a charity organisation or a religious place like a church, logos are their most viewed visuals. For instance, even for a religious places, their church logos are present everywhere on advertisements and marketing campaigns. Therefore, people visually recognize a logo immediately and associate it with a nonprofit organization’s cause. But the good impression of a logo depends on its quality of design.
Here Are Chief Characteristics Of An Impactful Nonprofit Logo
a. Simplicity:
A logo design that has fewer colors, fonts, lines and a simple shape catches people’s attention. They can quickly grasp its message.
b. Unique And Memorable:
While simplicity is the desirable aspect of a logo, it must be a unique design concept. It should stand out from many other logos from similar fields. Only such logos are memorable.
c. Aesthetically Pleasing:
We all like designs that appease our senses. An aesthetically great logo is the one that has a sense of proportion, symmetry, and timelessness.
d. Scalability:
Your logo will be scaled up too much on billboards or scaled down to the size of a postage stem for advertisement and marketing purpose. Therefore, it should appear as a clean design in all sizes.
e. Tell A Story:
Make sure that your logo tells a story of your nonprofit. The story may be in the form of a color or a shape of the logo. It may also be in the form of your mission statement.
f. Long Lasting Design:
A logo helps in turning a nonprofit into a brand that people trust. They see a logo and think of donating and helping the organization. Therefore, it is not wise to design a logo again very often. Instead, ensure a logo that you can keep for many decades.
If you are also looking for some great design ideas for your nonprofit, we can help.
Here Are The Key Nonprofit Logos For Your Inspiration
01. Voices Of Youth
Voice of Youth is a prominent nonprofit organization that helps young people express their opinion and ideas. UNICEF launched this organization to give voice to the young people whose opinions remain unheard. The nonprofit logo of the Voice of Youth has a speech bubble, which symbolizes the voice of the young generation.
Since the organization’s mission statement is to help young people exchange their ideas, the speech-bubble is the perfect element. The bubble completes the letter V. The company name ‘ Voices of Youth’ also becomes an integral part of the design. The ‘V’ design is visually strong and people can recognize it instantly.
02. Unicef
The Unicef logo is one of the most recognized logos. This nonprofit organization works under the United Nations to help needy people, especially children in many ways. The logo is in a round shape. Its main feature is a mother holding her baby high in a loving manner.
The logo is in a globe shape with contours visible. When you create a logo, make sure that it is a unique design. This logo looks unique because of the crossed branches of an olive tree in a conventional way. The olive tree branches are from the UN logo for brand consistency. The sans serif fonts used for the organization’s name expresses the friendliness and helpful environment that it wishes to create for the needy people.
03. WWF
WWF logo is one of the most admired nonprofit logos and it has been a logo design inspiration for many designers. The World Wild Fund works to arrange funds in order to save the endangered animal species. The Panda is the representative animal that the designer used to convey the message of protecting all the species from the wild.
The pictorial mark has just one color to keep the design simple. One black color also is useful to make it adaptive to different platforms. You can notice that the positive space in black lets viewers imagine the rest of the contours of the panda in an instant.
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04. Free The Slave
Free The Slave nonprofit organization works for freeing people from forced labor and very low wages. The logo has two strong elements that speak to us about the evil of labor bondage and insufficient money they get. Right from child labor to women, the organization covers many modern forms of slavery.
The logo has a determined fist as a symbol of protest against the atrocities against weaker sections of a population. Then, the unlocked lock is a powerful symbol of a freed person from slavery. The symbol also conveys the message that the organization is committed to uplift poor people’s life by freeing them from their servitude.
05. Feeding America
Feeding America is considered as the largest hunger-relief organization in the USA. It works for providing food to hungry people by contacting people for food. A prominent feature of its logo is the two ‘i’s are stacked in such a way that they form an ear of wheat. This design conveys the message of feeding and food.
Both the words in the charity logo have the same letters and the I letter comes at the same number. This coincidence gave the designer the idea to stack them for designing the ear of wheat.
Note also that the colors brown and green are earthy colors. These colors are a perfect choice to represent the hungry people whom we should feed.
06. Oxfam
Oxfam is a global nonprofit organization. It works to tackle and eradicate the conditions that lead to poverty. So, rather than distributing the goods, it wants to strike at the root cause of the problem.
Its logo is one of the finest logo examples. It is a beautiful design made of letters O and X. But these letters create a person the need of help as if raising hands and the other giving a helping hand.
07. Handicap International
Handicap International works for people with disabilities. Its logo is amongst the most memorable nonprofit logos. The designer smartly created a welcoming hand symbol design to express the organization’s mission of helping these people. There is the acronym ‘’HI’’ shaped like the hand.
This logo is a combination of pictorial and letterform logos. The hand makes the picture while the organization’s name and its mission statement complete the logo in the text. Notice that the letters ‘HI’ also give the hint of a disabled person. So, when you hire a freelance graphic designer, ensure that your logo has some uniquely designed elements to draw the target audience’s attentzion.
08. One Drop
One Drop is the foundation working towards providing access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. The organization wishes to ensure sustainable access to safe conditions to vulnerable communities. Amongst the great logo examples, Its logo perfectly conveys this mission through a clean design.
The One Drop logo has number 1 prominently designed as a drop of water. The nonprofit’s name appears bold by the side of the number. This is a clean and simple logo with a memorable and unique design.
09. Mind
Mind is an organization that works for empowering people facing mental challenges. It helps such people tackle the daily problems of their life. The organization covers all aspects of many mental challenges that these people so often confront. Its logo is an expression of the nonprofit’s mission.
The Mind logo is extraordinary and surely one of the memorable nonprofit logos. The logo is in the handwritten style that illustrates the health issues these people face in their everyday life.
There is an abstract shape of a badly entangled thread that is harder to resolve, which is symbolic of a difficult challenge that mentally challenged people face. This shape evokes the chaos and confusion of a lost mind. Then, the logo has a well balanced and smoothened lettering. It conveys that the organization help clears the confusion.
10. Amnesty International
Amnesty International stands up for human rights. The organization is known for raising its voice whenever there is a violation of the rights in any country. Its logo is a well-recognized symbol of people protesting against any impeachment of the rights. The logo beautifully shows a candle, which stands for the oppressed people who want to be treated like humans with equal rights.
The burning little candle is the hope for getting justice. But the Chinese proverb “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness’’ is the inspiration behind the logo design. There is barbed wire around the candle, which symbolizes the darkness and hopelessness of those who are locked in prison unfairly.
11. Human Appeal
Human Appeal provides humanitarian aid. It also works towards transforming the lives of people in need of help. Its logo design comes in the shape of a person due to the ‘H’ letter with the dot, which also stands for the nonprofit’s name Human Appeal.
The logo tilts 45 degrees in order to visualize a person who is in urgent need of help. There is a sense of urgency evoked in this logo.
12. The Mentoring Project
The Mentoring Project is a nonprofit organization that aims at training experts who want to play the role of mentors. They want to share their expertise in a field with the new generation of young people.
The project logo has an elephant mother with her baby. The baby is imitating the action of a mother, conveying the message of mentoring. The elephant baby in the logo is in negative white space, created out of the black colored elephant.
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13. The Water Trust
The Water Trust provides clean water to poor communities. This nonprofit’s logo is one of the simple but unique nonprofit logos. To convey the message and mission, most companies in the water-related field use drop illustration and imagery in the logo. This logo also uses drop but in its own unique way.
The logo designer created the drop shape with the letters A and U. Such shaping of letters makes the logo unique and memorable. There is also a little bit of contrast playing its own role for better visibility. The drop shape has a bright blue color as against the navy dark blue of the rest of the letters.
14. Doctors Of The World
Doctors of the World is an international human rights organization. It provides long term medical care and emergency services to people who are vulnerable to diseases. This logo cleanly gives the message of the doctors helping the people.
The plus sign of Red Cross is the inspiration behind this design. But the plus symbol takes the shape of a bird in flight mode. This conveys that the nonprofits reach to the people where ever they are to give them emergency aid.
15. Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an organization of volunteers run by the United States government. It helps people outside of the US and its mission is to help the world have a better understanding of American culture. In this way, Americans also come to know about different cultures of the world.
The Peace Crops logo has an American flag and a dove. The dove stands for an American volunteer who works abroad to help people. The bird is also a universal symbol of peace.
These are the major nonprofit logos from our list. Take inspiration from these unique and simple designs that efficiently convey their message of helping the needy people.
If you also are looking forward to creating one such logo for your nonprofit, Designhill is the right place to outsource the logo. This site has thousands of talented designers. Many of them will work on your logo project and you can choose one suitable logo for your social cause at the right prices.
Wrapping Up…
Nonprofit organizations help poor people and provide them a host of essential services. Nonprofit logos play a crucial role to promote the mission and make people aware of it. These logos from such organizations are inspirational designs due to the strategic use of colors and symbols.