The images you select for your website, social media, and printed materials need to reflect your organization. But sometimes, you don’t have a picture from your organization to showcase. Never fear – there are many excellent and comprehensive stock image libraries available.
Unfortunately, some stock image sites require you to purchase the image for use, and many nonprofit organizations don’t have the budget to utilize these libraries.
That’s why we want to share the following collection of image websites that we’ve used for client projects and our blog posts. While free images are often generic, these sites offer a wider variety of available photos. Use these sites to find the images that best express your organization’s work and voice.
And, if you have a few dollars allocated for your design, 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 3 million free high-resolution images from a community of almost 300,000 photographers. 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, and Outdoors.
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, Objects, and Work. Their images have a variety of sizes, which is helpful for website purposes.
Pixabay
Pixaby has over 2.6 million images, illustrations, and videos 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). Themes include Community, LGBTQ+, Living, and Social Justice. This resource was created by a nonprofit organization that works with a fiscal sponsor, Open Collective Foundation. Please consider supporting them with a donation.
Pexels
All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Pexels 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 high-resolution pictures that are free of copyright restrictions. But what sets Gratisography apart from other stock image sites are the quirky and whimsical styles of their photos. The site claims to have the world’s best, most creative pictures. 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.
Vecteezy
Vecteezy offers a nice library of free stock photos (as well as Pro subscription for monthly or yearly fees). Users can use the various filters to search for the perfect photo based on color, orientation, size, number of people, age of people, and/or people composition.
rawpixel
Over 1 million free resources including images, vectors, PSD mockups, and graphic templates can be found on rawpixel through the easy-to-use filter and search tools. Their premium membership fees support Hope for Children.
Burst powered by Shopify
Burst offers a free stock photo platform which you can edit, crop, or modify in order to fit your organization. Signing up for their newsletter gives you first access to new photos added each week.
Style Stock
Style Stock offers free feminine styled images. The site is not as robust as others, and the search function isn’t as helpful, but the pictures offer a feminine perspective.
Canva
Already doing a lot of design work in Canva? Remember that there are free stock images built into the platform you are using!
Photo Credit: Nappy