Branding for non-profits and why its so important

With so many non-profits and charities competing with each other for attention and contributions, understanding what branding is and how to effectively use it is absolutely crucial for every non-profit organisation.

Alongside the barrage of junk mail through my front door every day I get a lot of solicitations from various charities.  And the reality is that more often than not I don’t have the time or energy to distinguish between the junk mail and an important message unless it stands out.

Unfortunately a lot of the time branding is viewed by non-profits as a luxury or something big companies do, rather than absolutely critical to their mission. They don’t have the budgets or time. What money and resources they do have need to be spent in other areas; helping their service users, fundraising, or any number of other jobs screaming for their attention. But the irony is that without a strong and consistent brand all these tasks become much harder.

But we already have a logo

A common misconception is that branding is simply having a logo and colours defined. Frequently doing some basic brand identity will be given to a volunteer or staff member, or done by a third party pro-bono. With no real guidelines and working on their own the result is invariably disjointed and unprofessional.

While a logo can often be the key element in a branding program, the reality is brand goes beyond tangible design elements. Branding creates expectations and makes promises to your audiences. Promises about who you are, what you’re doing, what your goals are, how you behave in different situations, what you would do if given the trust of your intended audience.

A successful brand strategy delivers on these promises in a clear, understandable way that creates brand loyalty. The key word here is ‘understandable’. Too many times non-profits lament apathy in their messages, a decline in their supporters and drops in fundraising. More often than not these problems stem two things; a lack of clarity in what the organisation is doing and inconsistency in the organisation's image or message.

Branding focuses on developing a clear identity for the messenger, as opposed to marketing which focuses on the message.

Where do I start?

Invest time in understanding your brand.

If you’re working for a while within a charity organisation you’ll probably know off the top of your head your organisation’s stance on relevant issues, what its policies are, what you would or would not say in a magazine, to a service user, on radio, etc. Build up a picture of your organisation as a person and try and slip into the role of being that person. Like a good actor understand the background of your character, understand its motivations for action, its likes and dislikes, how it dresses and behaves in public. And most importantly how does it want the world to see it?

Get the essence of your brand into all your communications.

People need to be continually reminded of what your organisation stands for. Look for ways to interact with your audience in ways that reinforce this. Develop your advertising or marketing campaigns with this in mind and the underlying essence of who you are will shine through.

Be consistent.

It’s vitally important to remain consistent in the approach you’ve taken. The perception of integrity is formed over time, if you’re not constant then you’re hard to identity and even harder to trust. Your messages must feel like they come from the same messenger. For example the tone of your print campaigns needs to be translated into online campaigns. It’s not enough to have beautifully designed print material which is just uploaded as a pdf or image to your website. Time needs to be spent ensuring the tone and theme of the print campaign is properly translated to the online medium. Same is true of tv campaigns and ads placed in the newspaper. The presentation of your campaigns may differ from medium to medium but the overall experience should be the same.

Understand the value of design.

Design is how the world experiences your message. Non-profits need to understand design, because good design establishes structure and meaning to the organisation. Whereas mediocre and inconsistent design leaves the viewer feeling detached and uninspired. It’s important to work with professional designers you trust, who understand your brand, and can develop your ideas into a finished package.

With ever increasing pressures on non-profits to make themselves heard its vitally important to realise the importance of branding. Although its no substitution for professional help, theres a lot you can do yourself. Try and read up as much as possible, check out this great book for starters, and get inspiration from other strong brand campaigns that have worked well.

Related tags: Non Profits, Design, Branding