To:

OA Service Bodies

From:

Public Awareness/Professional Tradeshows Committee of the OA Board of Trustees

Re:

Free licensed images, translation, and graphic design platform for intergroups and service boards
registered as nonprofits/charities

In the past year, OA service bodies, including the Board of Trustees, have responded to new challenges to manage how stock photography images are used by the Fellowship. In one instance, a legal claim for monetary damages was made against OA, Inc. for an unlicensed image that an intergroup used on their website. Resolving this issue took time and money to discuss, research, and resolve. We also appreciate the diligence of our service bodies to ensure the images they use are licensed and to work with OA trustees to review their websites.

The board has received requests for guidance on this topic, and we are pleased to notify you of one solution that is free for most service bodies that are registered as nonprofits or charities in their respective countries. This solution has already been vetted and adopted by the World Service Office to facilitate production of materials, social media, and website content.

Canva is not endorsed by OA, and service bodies may opt for other solutions. What is offered at canva.com is a free Canva Pro account, which gives access to 75 million free licensed images, document translation, and graphic design tools to create public information and recovery materials, such as event flyers. Groups that do not qualify for a free Pro account can sign up for a free basic account, buy a Pro account, or search for an alternative service.

An important copyright warning regarding Canva: Images, elements, and text generated by Canva’s artificial-intelligence features: Magic Write, Magic Design, Magic Edit, Magic Media, and AI-powered assistant are not licensed to Canva users. OA strongly recommends that members who use Canva for local OA projects disable or limit these features. See Disable Canva’s “Magic and AI” Settings to Protect OA for instructions.

Another important copyright warning: OA grants permission to registered OA groups and service bodies to translate and distribute OA-owned material currently posted on oa.org and lifeline.oa.org without written
permission. To translate and distribute all other OA-owned material, groups and service bodies must receive written permission. For more information, see Copyright Requests on oa.org. To apply to translate, find the
Translation License 1 agreement in the document library on oa.org.

Each OA group and service body is autonomous and legally responsible for its own print and digital media content.

Please see these instructional videos for more information:

Thank you for your diligence in protecting OA from copyright infringement and for your service.