GUEST POST // What Goes Into an Effective Nonprofit Branding Strategy?
By Ryan Felix of Loop
Many people believe a nonprofit’s brand is simply their visual identity. Although visuals play a key part in your brand, it’s important to recognize that your branding strategy goes deeper. It impacts your fundraising strategy, internal and external communications, and overarching identity.
At its core, your nonprofit brand strategy plays a role in how your organisation expresses your purpose and values.
For example, on your nonprofit website, you’re likely making a conscious effort to use your brand to communicate with your audience about your mission and programs. But when you send an email to your coworker, you probably don’t notice how your brand is incorporated. The reality is that, no matter what channels or forms of outreach you use, your brand shines through everything you do because you are essential to the brand.
For those with a previously narrow view of nonprofit branding, this idea naturally leads to the question: What is a nonprofit brand?
What is a nonprofit brand?
Essentially, your nonprofit branding is what your organisation uses to express who you are and what you stand for. Loop’s nonprofit branding guide defines it as: “Nonprofit branding is the way an organisation communicates who they are and the heart of their work. It’s a promise to participants, partners, and supporters and encapsulates why these people should believe in them.”
What does this mean?
It means that when you send an email to your coworker supporting a new program your organisation is rolling out, you’re building on the brand values of support and teamwork. Similarly, when you email a supporter to inform them of your new guidelines on inclusivity in programming, you’re supporting a brand value of inclusivity.
To make sure your branding is communicated across your department and teams use it consistently, we recommend creating a living brand guide as the basis of your strategy. This will include details about your brand and make it easy to incorporate those guidelines across your various activities and communications.
Overarching Message
Every aspect of your nonprofit’s brand should be tied back to your overarching message. Your overarching message includes details about your organisation’s mission and vision statements as well as the audience you serve.
Including your mission and vision statements in your brand guidelines will help keep the focus on the core or your organisation.
When you define the other elements of your brand, make sure to consider every aspect of your audience as well. Define your audience up front, including the various segments and variations of audience members. Then, you can be sure your brand not only reflects your organisation and mission, but will also engage your target audience.
Visual Branding Elements
We mentioned that visual branding, while not the only aspect of your brand strategy, is still an important part of your organisation’s brand. It helps establish trust among your audience when they come across your materials.
For example, imagine a donor receives an email from your organisation and visits your website with the intention of making a donation. Everything they’ve seen so far shares the same font, colours, and message. However, when they navigate to your donation page, they see something different. That donor may think they’ve been hoodwinked and hesitate before entering their payment information. You’re likely to lose this donor!
Consistent visuals make it easy for supporters to immediately recognize your materials as a part of your strategy.
Define the following visual brand elements in your living brand guide:
Logo. Your logo is the summary of your visual identity. Include all variations of your logo in your brand guide such as those with and without taglines, featured in different colours (coloured, greyscale, and black and white), and with different orientations. Be sure to also discuss how you should use these different versions of the logo.
Colours. You probably have a few different colours that represent your organisation. Include a visual of each colour along with the RGB and HTML codes so they can be replicated by anyone creating marketing materials.
Typography. Define the standard fonts that you use on your nonprofit’s materials along with the weight and spacing specifications. If you use a couple different fonts, discuss in your branding guide the hierarchy of these fonts for different materials.
If you’re just starting to incorproate your brand, start with your website. Visit the other best nonprofit websites in the space to gain inspiration from the way they incorporate visual elements. Then, consider how you can best represent your own mission using your visuals on your website and across other marketing materials.
Nonprofit Messaging
When you read a written message, you can usually associate some type of personality to it. For example, consider the following two sentences:
The animal shelter requires two trainers to socialize new rescue animals to rehabilitate them for adoption. Contact our volunteer coordinator if interested.
We need your help. The best part? You get to play with puppies! If you’re interested in helping socialize dogs, please contact our volunteer coordinator to help get these adorable animals ready for their new homes.
While these calls-to-action are both saying the same general message, they say it in two completely different ways. The first uses a formal, professional tone while the second uses more casual, friendly language.
Consider the adjectives you’d use to describe your organisation’s personality and tone, then think about how that would translate into your communication style.
Communicate this information in your brand guide so that people understand what type of messaging style your organisation uses.
Also in the messaging section of your brand guide, you should note information about what makes your nonprofit unique. A lot of organisations have very similar missions and work toward the same goals (just think about the number of animal shelters out there!). This can make relations tricky because while you should work together to accomplish the larger cause, you are also in competition for donors. So, from a donor’s perspective, why should they give to your nonprofit insead of another one with a similar mission?
The elements that make you unique in your sector are what make up your nonprofit’s positioning.
Consider your nonprofit’s positioning and what you’d like to highlight as your standout features that differentiate you from other organisations. Then, lean into this idea. Let’s return to the animal shelter example. You’ll find some organisations that focus specifically on rescuing and finding homes for certain breeds while other organisations advertise that they’re “no-kill” shelters. While they all have the mission to help animals, their positioning brings a unique aspect of the mission to the surface.
Branding Tips
When you’ve developed your nonprofit brand guide, you’ll have the basis for your organisation’s branding strategy. Now, you’ll need to put that brand into action, representing your nonprofit and marketing your cause.
Some tips for strategising with your brand include the following:
Maintain consistency. Consistency across channels is key for an effective brand strategy. Especially as virtual experiences became more popular in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, your organisation needs to be sure any new technology adopted or templates created also incorporate your branding guidelines.
Update your brand guide as necessary. Brands can evolve over time! As your brand expands or updates, you may find it necessary to update your existing brand guide. Large changes (like updating your logo) shouldn’t be taken lightly, but you may decide that your message has incorporated a new adjective over time.
Tell stories in your brand voice. Remember, your brand represents your organisation as a whole and what better represents your brand than success stories? Getting Attention’s nonprofit storytelling guide explains that storytelling is one of the best ways to connect with others. They even cite a Standford study claiming that people are much more likely to remember stories (65%) than statistics (5%).
Work with a branding agency. If you’re creating your nonprofit’s brand from scratch, it can take a lot of hard work and resources that your organisation likely needs for other things. Working with experts at a branding agency can help you get the job done faster while keeping your focus on your programs and helping your community.
Creating a brand is challenging. Keeping with it to ensure consistency requires dedication as well. That’s why your brand guide is such an important document. You can lean on it as a training resource when hiring new employees or when communicating with a freelancer. Be sure your guide is always up-to-date and being utilized on a regular basis.
Too many people believe their logo is the most important aspect of their nonprofit branding. In reality, your mission is the most important part as it’s what everything else points back to. Reflect on your own nonprofit mission and how you can represent it through your organization’s brand. Then, develop your brand guide, including all of the necessary elements outlined in this article as the cornerstone of your brand strategy.
This guest post was written by Ryan Felix.
Ryan is a co-founder of Loop: Design for Social Good who brings a strong intuition and insight to create bold, creative & impactful websites. Ryan has led design studios in Toronto and New York using his knowledge of Human Centred Design to increase meaningful conversions and design enjoyable web experiences.
