What if your organization is lucky (or prescient) enough to have thousands of great photos depicting your mission? What creative ways could you use them to advance your charity’s voice and connect with people in a real way?

Last September, as it was adopting a new look to reinforce the organization’s identity, Conservation International’s creative-services team brainstormed an innovative approach. Because the group did not have much money to spend to publicize its new look, it needed a simple tool to help tell its story in a different way.

Selecting 33 stunning images of wildlife and natural settings from its archives, the charity now features them on employees’ business cards.

“It’s now fun to give out my business cards; people always say, ‘Wow!’ ” says Heather Luca, the organization’s creative-services senior director. “I flip them over, splay the…

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Liao Xiang and Michael McGonegal dance atop the Houston Ballet's new facility (Photographs by Jim Caldwell.)

When the Houston Ballet conducted an endowment campaign for its new Center for Dance, which opened in April, its public-relations team turned the traditional topping-off ceremony into an exciting event with a simple idea:

Put dancers at the construction site! Put hard hats on their heads!

“Buildings are built every day,” notes Shauna Tysor, the ballet’s public-relations manager. Instead, she says, the organization decided to emphasize its mission. “Go with what’s unique about your organization,” she urges. “With your photo, you can remind people what it’s for: ‘Oh, it’s for dance,’ not ‘Oh, it’s a building under construction.’ ”

The dancers and entire…

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