Nonprofit Stock Photos: 9 Free Photography Websites
High-quality, captivating photos can strengthen your nonprofit’s brand, capture potential supporters’ attention, and add a professional touch to your promotional materials or website. However, professional photographers can be costly, especially if your team needs to produce large amounts of content with images. With stock photos, you can get excellent images without needing to spend a substantial amount of time or money.
These nine free stock photo websites can help you find the perfect photos for your nonprofit:
- Unsplash
- Gratisography
- Burst
- Public Domain Archive
- Pexels
- RawPixel
- Barn Images
- Pixabay
- Reshot
Millions of nonprofits exist across the globe, making for a wide range of diverse causes. To stand out in the nonprofit sector, you need high-quality images that align with your mission and reinforce your unique brand. These websites can give you the resources you need to do just that. Let’s get started!
1. Unsplash
Unsplash has over three million high-resolution images to choose from. Its diverse images are sorted into categories like current events, animals, and fashion. Unsplash’s team reviews each image submitted by their community of photographers to ensure each one is high-quality. Once you download a photo from their site, you can use it for marketing or promotional purposes without having to worry about licensing, copyright, or paying a subscription.
2. Gratisography
Gratisography has some of the traditional stock photo weirdness, but in a way that’s attention-grabbing and fun. This website is selective about which images they accept, and they strive to collect images that truly bring something new to the table. You can use all of the photos hosted on Gratisography for free in most projects, including marketing campaigns, websites, blogs, and print media.
3. Burst
Burst by Shopify is a free service that allows photographers to upload their photos to reach wider audiences. Businesses, creators, and mission-driven organizations can then use these high-quality images in their personal and commercial projects. Burst makes it easy for your organization to find the photos you’re looking for with dozens of collections ranging from broad themes like “nature” to specific subjects like “caterpillars.”
4. Public Domain Archive
Public Domain Archive houses collections of images that are a part of the public domain, meaning no person or entity owns exclusive intellectual property rights to them. Once you find the image you’re looking for, your team is free to distribute and edit it as needed. Public Domain Archive also has a list of other useful free stock photo websites your organization can use for future projects.
5. Pexels
Pexels has an extensive range of photographs to choose from and is ideal for nonprofits that have limited time to spend looking for stock photos. With its search function and filtering options, you can quickly find the exact photo you’re looking for, whether you need a banner for your nonprofit website or a feature image in your blog post. Pexels also has a wide variety of photo categories, including images that are sorted by color so you can quickly find stock photos that are relevant to your cause and your branding.
6. RawPixel
RawPixel has over one million free photos, vectors, and PNG elements. It also has a range of free fonts to choose from, so your nonprofit can find almost everything it needs to create compelling graphic design work in one place. RawPixel also has a premium paid account option that offers even more resources.
7. Barn Images
Barn Images offers stock photos of sweeping landscapes, animals, architecture, and cityscapes, making it a great option for more niche causes like nonprofits that advocate for preserving historical landmarks. Your organization can use any of Barn Images’ photos for free without needing permission from the photographer. You can also receive updates about when new photos get added to the site by signing up for their mailing list.
8. Pixabay
Pixabay has over 2.7 million free stock photos, videos, and audio files your nonprofit can download and use at any time. Not only is this a great resource for free, high-quality images, but it also has everything you need to dip your toes into video creation. To find the perfect royalty-free song to pair with your first video, you can search Pixabay’s music library by genre, mood, and theme.
9. Reshot
Reshot offers free icons and illustrations with “no cost, no attribution, and no worries.” This site is quick and convenient to access as you can download files with no paywalls or annoying watermarks without needing to sign up for an account. Plus, each graphic is available in SVG, PNG, and vector file formats so you can download the one that works best for your project.
With these resources, you can step up your nonprofit’s stock photo game without needing to allocate funding to paid image sites. Keep in mind that many of these photos are submitted by real, working photographers, so be sure to donate to them if your budget allows. If your organization is ever in need of more complicated graphic design support, exploring options like paid graphic design services could help meet your needs and deliver elevated graphic design materials.
