A lot to meow about: See how the Animal Care League uses Issuu + Canva

You might be wondering how organizations are using Issuu and Canva together? We recently caught up with Issuu content creator Jo Skilling — the Volunteer Coordinator for Animal Care League (ACL) in Oak Park, Illinois — to learn how she’s using Issuu and Canva to create better communications for her Volunteer Program and more.

The Animal Care League is committed to providing shelter, medical care, and comfort to animals in need; reducing animal overpopulation, and acting as a community resource. Their work helps to promote the human/animal bond, which is at the heart of their mission to the community. 

Since joining the team this past March, Jo has revamped the volunteer program and communications and is adjusting to the new requirements of operating an active animal shelter during a global pandemic.

Working for a small, but busy non-profit, Jo is always looking for tools to make her job a little easier. For her most important monthly communication — the Animal Care League Volunteer Newsletter — she discovered a winning combination with Canva and Issuu. 

In this blog, we’ll tell you how Jo designs the monthly newsletter in Canva, and then uploads her multi-page document to Issuu to really bring the newsletter to life and let it shine.

Upgrading communications as easy as a walk in the park

Prior to Jo joining the team, the Volunteer Newsletter was only two pages. The team drafted and finalized it in Microsoft Word, and then shared it as a Word doc. The results were often a little underwhelming, failing to showcase their services well (or the pets they were trying to place for adoption) and truly communicate the impact they were making in the community. 

Now Jo drafts and designs the Volunteer Newsletter using Canva. 

Next, she uploads the Canva file to Issuu where she can easily transform it into a dynamic flipbook, which will be optimized for reading on any screen size. 

She adds interactive web links to the newsletter, which can drive readers to more information, virtual events, and of course, important details about donating or getting involved in the pet adoption process. She can also turn the newsletter into mobile- and social media-ready communications that are optimized for the unique specifications of popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram. 

In addition to the improved viewing experience, Jo was able to easily enhance the Newsletter by adding new sections like “In Our Community” or expanding the “Volunteer Spotlights” and “Shelter Pet of the Week” sections. 

Thanks to Issuu, Jo can cross-link and promote local partners, whose involvement is crucial to their organization’s success. And because she’s seeing the success of these improvements, she even began tapping the skills of a volunteer photographer to ensure the animal photography truly shines in Issuu’s fullscreen viewing experience, which goes a long way to encouraging more adoptions, too.

Of course, the Volunteer Newsletter isn’t just for the community of current volunteers and donors. The ACL is always trying to attract new interest in support of their shelter. Now, Jo can produce the Newsletter as a digital flipbook on Issuu, which allows her to easily share it in emails, social media posts, and on their website. And she doesn’t have to worry about attachments, file sizes, or Word conversion challenges.

More pet adoptions, more volunteers, and more success

In just a few short months, the refreshed Volunteer Newsletter has been instrumental to the growth of the Animal Care League community. In fact, the Volunteer Program can’t take any more volunteers — now, they’re at full capacity: 150 people!

Clearly, Jo and her team are doing a great job getting the message out. They’ve also processed a record number of adoptions, helping them achieve their ultimate goal of finding their furry friends forever homes. Thanks to her team’s hard work, the Animal Care League has significantly improved the impact they’re making in the Oak Park community. Cats and dogs — like Penny Bee — are certainly happier, as are their new families.

Connect content to Issuu — your DIY marketing solution

Follow the lead of the Animal Care League. Join Issuu to transform your static Canva, Powerpoint, Adobe InDesign, and more content from flat designs into a dynamic flipbook newsletter, or digital campaign that can be deployed everywhere. Simply upload your Canva assets (or other files, including PDFs, PowerPoint, and InDesign files) to Issuu and publish them to the world. 

To learn more about the Animal Care League, visit their website here. To make a donation and support the Animal Care League, click here.

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Connecting content to people, the Issuu Blog seeks to cover the topics of interest to our community—from tips to trends to best practices. See how Issuu can transform a single PDF into a high-quality campaign that connects on Facebook, Instagram, and across the Web.