The images you select for your website, social media, and printed materials need to reflect your organization. There are many excellent and comprehensive image libraries available to purchase. Many nonprofit organizations do not have the budget to utilize these libraries.
Below are several image websites that we’ve used for client projects and our blog posts. While free images are often generic, these sites offer have a wider variety of available photos. Use these sites to find the images that best express your organization’s work and voice.
If you have a few dollars allocated for this, there are options to make a small contribution to the photographer or the nonprofit organization that organized the photoshoot.
Unsplash
This website is a resource with over 1 million free high-resolution images. The search field is reasonably handy. When you download photos, they ask you to credit the photographer when possible (a recommended practice for free images). They recently announced a partnership with The Library of Congress, British Library, New York Public Library, and several more!
Vice’s Gender Spectrum Collection
This stock photo library features images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond cliché images. It’s well organized and provides images under the subjects, Lifestyle, Relationships, Technology, Work, School, Health, and Moods.
Nappy
This site provides beautiful, high-resolution photos of Black and Brown people. You can search for images or browse collections for Active, Food, People, Places, Things, and Work. Their images have a variety of sizes, which is helpful for website purposes.
Pixabay
Pixaby has over 1.6 million images available to users. You can search by type, orientation, and colors.
Disabled And Here Collection
This collection is a disability-led effort to provide free and inclusive stock photos featuring disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) across the Pacific Northwest. Themes include LGBTQ+, Lifestyle, Social, and Work. This resource was created by a nonprofit organization that works with a fiscal sponsor, Allied Media Projects. Please consider supporting them with a donation.
Pexels
All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which means you can use them for free for any personal and commercial purpose. Pexels has fewer options available but has very high-quality photos. The search functionality is more limited than other options. Attribution is not required, but they do make it easy to attribute photos.
Flickr – WOCinTech Chat
WOCinTech Chat created this image collection to help address the problem of not having visible representations of women of color engaging in stock images’ technical tasks. It’s a great collection that focuses on tech and work.
Gratisography
This website provides free high-resolution pictures that are free of copyright restrictions. The images on Gratisography can be pretty quirky/whimsical, which is helpful for some organizations. They have fewer images than other sites but add new pictures each week.
StockSnap
StockSnap curates their photos from a pool of submissions. The pictures are free to download and help feature the photographer. When you search for photos, the first eight entries are from Shutterstock and link to their paid site. The images below those are free to download.
New Old Stock
These are historical photos that are free of known copyright restrictions. There are nice older photos here, but you have to scroll through them.
Photo Credit: NappyStock
Justin (he, him) is a Principal and Co-Founder of Social Change Consulting. He has over fifteen years of nonprofit experience, with expertise in online fundraising, digital communications, and data management. Justin helps organizations connect their communication strategy to their income development needs. When he’s not on the clock, Justin is exploring Berlin, running, hiking with his dog Tessa, listening to too many podcasts, and drinking too much coffee.
