The false economy of DIY for nonprofits
“This seems simple enough, can we do it internally?” If you’re part of a nonprofit communications team, that’s a question you have likely asked yourself many times when working with a consultant or freelancer.
You’re constantly looking for ways to conserve resources and find efficiencies, and sometimes it feels silly to spend the limited resources you have on things that look easy.
This was the exact situation that one of my clients found themself in this week. They have an event logo that needs the year updated on an annual basis. It feels inefficient to make this request to a designer year after year, and on paper it looks like a project where they could cut costs by doing the work themselves. They asked me for a working file in InDesign so they could handle this update moving forward.
I always want to empower my clients to have ownership over their design work, so this would normally be a simple “Yes!” However, as I was thinking through the logistics of handing this work back to them, a particular anecdote came to mind:
A man receives a quote from a contractor to build a cabinet for him. He believes the quote is high, and decides to build the cabinet himself. He ends up investing extra time in research, extra money on specialized tools, and ultimately ends up spending the same amount as the contractor quoted him, for a poorly made cabinet.
When it comes to design, how can nonprofits avoid falling into the same trap?
When to DIY and when to Delegate?
Most nonprofits have restricted budgets for creative and that includes creative software. As a result they may be selective about their subscriptions, perhaps limiting themselves to a single Adobe program instead of the entire suite.
In my client’s case they only had a subscription for InDesign, in order to take on production of some of their more text-heavy projects like annual reports.
The request was logical: if InDesign can be used to edit text, why can’t it be used to update the text in a logo?
The answer was more complicated.
A communications staff member might be familiar with how to use Adobe programs, but there’s another level of thinking that comes first: deciding which program is right based on your technical needs. InDesign can be used to update text, yes, but it cannot be used to export a logo file that is scaleable, or a logo file with a transparent background. Those are necessary but technical details that a person without expertise may miss, resulting in time spent going down the wrong road.
This is grossly simplifying things, but as a rule of thumb, if you’re missing either:
Awareness of which program you need
The program you need
Then outsourcing is probably the right decision.
If you’re still worried about the expense, think of it this way: Would you rather invest in a year-long subscription to a program you’re not an expert in, or an hour of design time from a professional? It may take a professional less time to execute your task than it would take you to research it.
An outside-the-box solution
So how did we solve this problem together? My client ultimately invested in a small amount of design time in order to create the annual event logos for the next ten years. Now the assets are on-hand when they’re needed, and my client doesn’t feel silly or waste admin time making the same simple request every year.