The Fractional Designer

Ongoing creative support, without another full-time hire.

graphic design

An extension of your communications team

Your team already has plenty of ideas. The challenge is finding the time (and the capacity) to actually bring them to life.

The Fractional Designer gives nonprofits reliable, monthly graphic design support. Whether you need a few months of dedicated design help for an upcoming event or campaign, or you want to refresh your organization's existing materials, or you could simply use an extra creative hand throughout the year.

there’s a lot to communicate to your audience.

Does keeping up with design feel like another full-time job?

Your comms person is doing everything.

Writing emails, managing social media, updating the website, planning campaigns, coordinating events—and somehow designing all the graphics, too.
Branding feels a little all over the place

Canva templates and existing materials help keep things moving, but they don't always stand out or feel like they belong to the same organization. Over time, your visual identity starts to feel inconsistent.
Good ideas sit on the back burner.

You know what you could be creating, but urgent priorities keep pushing those projects down the list. Campaign ideas, creative improvements, and long-overdue updates never seem to get the attention they deserve.
Your materials don’t reflect your organization.

Your nonprofit has grown, but presentations, reports, campaign graphics, and other materials haven’t always grown with it.
You're constantly chasing freelancers

Finding someone, explaining the project, getting a quote, onboarding them, waiting for availability...and then doing it all over again next month.
Hiring a designer doesn’t make sense.

You need professional creative support regularly—but not enough to justify another salary, benefits, software, and full-time position.

The Fractional Designer

Design support that actually becomes part of your team.

There’s a big gap between doing everything yourself and hiring another employee.

That’s why we created the Fractional Designer subscription.

Instead of finding a new freelancer every time something needs to be professionally designed, you get ongoing access to a creative partner who learns your brand, understands your organization, and becomes familiar with how your team works. Simply think of us as an extension of your communications team.

16 dedicated design hours | $2,500 / month

From our clients:

“They’ve become a true partner in telling our story.”

“Working with Story Squire has been one of the best decisions we’ve made — they’ve become a true partner in telling our story. Their subscription/retainer model gives us dependable access to creative support without surprises, which is priceless for a small nonprofit like the Oregon Cancer Foundation.

They consistently deliver high-quality work — our print newsletter, event collateral, campaign branding — everything looks polished, cohesive, and on-mission. What we love most is how responsive, thoughtful, and invested they are. They feel like an extension of our team, not just a vendor. We can’t recommend them enough.”

Amy Johnston, Oregon Cancer Foundation

Ways to utilize this subscription

One designer. Plenty of possibilities.

Your organization's creative needs change throughout the year. The Fractional Designer gives you flexible support for the campaigns, communications, and everyday projects that keep your mission moving forward.

Fundraising & Campaigns

Appeal letters, campaign graphics, sponsorship packets, and donor communications.
Event Materials

Invitations, signage, programs, sponsor recognition, and event graphics.
Reports & Publications

Annual reports, impact reports, newsletters, brochures, and one-pagers.
Digital Graphics

Social media content, digital ads, email graphics, and website assets.
Presentations & Outreach

Slide decks, informational handouts, partner materials, and outreach collateral.
Brand Consistency

Updated templates, refreshed materials, and a cohesive visual presence across your organization.

no long-term strings attached

Let's see what we can accomplish in three months.

Great creative partnerships take a little time to find their rhythm. That's why we start with a three-month commitment.

This provides us enough time to get familiar with your organization, understand your needs, and show you what having a dedicated designer can do for your team.

After those first three months, your partnership continues month-to-month. No lengthy contracts or pressure to stay. Just consistent creative support for as long as it's useful to you.

So what’s the process?

01

Get Acquainted
We start by learning your organization, your brand, your existing materials, and how design requests typically flow through your team.
02

Set Your Monthly Priorities
We’ll meet at the beginning of each month to outline goals and projects. We’ll clarify the scope, priorities and timeline before jumping into the work.
03

Keep the Creative Moving
With your priorities in place, we'll get to work. As we get to know your organization, collaboration becomes easier, requests become simpler, and your creative stays consistent across everything you do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your Fractional Designer subscription includes up to 16 hours of design support each month for $2,500/month. This does not include the 1 hour monthly meeting to align our priorities and determine goals and projects.
Most everyday graphic design needs are fair game: fundraising campaigns, social graphics, reports, event materials, presentations, advertisements, print collateral, templates, website graphics, and more.
For unusually large projects like a complete rebrand or website build, we’ll talk with you about whether they make more sense as a separate project.
We utilize a project management system called Kitchen which allows us to manage projects, share updates with clients, organize files and documents easily and safely.
This system also integrates easily with the Google Suite (Docs, Slides, Sheets) so the tools you’re already familiar with are available.
We know there’s usually multiple projects running at once. We’ll prioritize work with your team based on deadlines and available monthly hours. Small requests can often move alongside larger projects, while major deliverables may require us to dedicate more concentrated time. The good news? We work fast and can turnaround creative quicker than you may expect.
Some months are packed with projects. Others are a little quieter. That's normal! Our goal is to make sure your design hours are put to good use, even when there aren't pressing deadlines.
During our monthly planning meetings, we'll identify opportunities to tackle those projects that tend to sit on the back burner. That might mean creating evergreen social media graphics, preparing newsletter imagery, refreshing outdated brochures, or building reusable templates that make future projects easier.
There's almost always something we can take off your plate or help you get ahead of. The key is planning ahead so your creative capacity never goes to waste.
Absolutely! We believe you should have full ownership and flexibility over your creative materials. After the initial three-month commitment, we're happy to provide editable project files upon request, so your team can make updates and put those resources to work in the future.
We also retain project files for three years, just in case you need to revisit something down the road.
We primarily work with Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, to create professional, high-quality designs.
We can also create templates and graphics in Canva when it makes sense for your team, particularly for social media, everyday communications, and materials you'd like to update in-house. Our goal is to give you designs that look great and are practical for your organization to use long after we've created them.