If you haven’t reviewed your organization’s brand recently, do so. You can find out what people think your organization stands for, if it is living up to its promises, and how it can move forward. By reviewing your organization’s brand with staff and other stakeholders, you gather useful information and build consensus around future changes.
Brand review can re-energize staff and revitalize your organization’s messaging. Asking those who know your organization best — front-line staff, clients, and executive-level staff — can bring surprising information about your brand to light, information that can guide future outreach and services. Brand workshops are one very effective way of doing this. In these workshops, you can discuss challenges, find out if your nonprofit’s image is misaligned with its mission, and generate new “big ideas” about possibilities for the future. For nonprofits at all stages of organizational maturity, workshops help refine what the brand stands for and clarify what’s needed to keep going forward. Workshops can also bring people together around the vision and mission of the organization.
Open Forum
Be sure the ambiance and arrangement of your workshop encourages brainstorming and the exchange of ideas. Welcome all comments. The purpose of workshops is to come up with the “Big Ideas” that define your organization as well as the factors that may affect its future success. In a workshop, you can elicit general feedback on your brand — who you are, who you want to be — and how your organization can reach its goals. You can discuss negative perceptions that need to be overcome as well as the aspects of your programs that should be showcased. All members of your staff serve as ambassadors for your organization. They spread the word about what your organization does to clients, family, friends, and vendors. Brand workshops are a very good way to get your staff energized about the organization’s brand and to feel valued. After all, you are asking their opinion and listening to their experience, which is good for morale.
The Big Questions
A brand workshop can be a full-day session to allow time to discuss the three big questions you want to answer:
- Where we are now? What does our current brand mean to us and to the outside world? How is it perceived?
- Where do we want to go, that is, how do we want the organization to be perceived and how do we want to grow?
- How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?
To be productive, the workshop must be viewed as a safe space in which to speak frankly. If the discussion is truly open — unfettered by fear of blowback for making critical comments — the exchange of ideas can uncover insights that lead to breakthroughs for your organization.
Getting the Best Answers
Workshops are best done with the help of a professional facilitator, for several reasons:
- An outsider will be able to create a comfortable, open session and minimize the “fear factor.”
- A professional facilitator will know how to encourage creative brainstorming while keeping the discussion from going too far afield.
- Experienced facilitators know how to encourage everyone to speak and how to ensure that no one dominates the discussion.
- A branding facilitator will have exercises and techniques for maximizing results from the session.
Tips for Conducting a Successful Workshop
If you chose to run your own workshops, make the most of your time by:
- If possible — and it may not be for small organizations — have multiple workshops for executive staff and line staff. This can encourage more genuine communication.
- Let participants know in advance what you want to accomplish and what the questions will be so they can arrive prepared.
- Help people relax. Greet them as they come in, have refreshments on hand.
- Stress that this is an open brainstorming session in which constructive criticism is welcome.
- Give examples of constructive criticism, such as “Don’t say ‘That idea stinks.’ Instead say, ‘I think we need something more evocative’ or ‘That doesn’t describe all our programs.’”
- Have group members interact in a variety of ways. If the overall group is large enough, break up into smaller groups. This tactic gives more people a chance to talk and is less intimidating to the shy. Mix groups up a bit so people get a chance to exchange ideas with people they might not otherwise work with.
- Be sure everyone has had a chance to speak.
- Listen! You may hear things you didn’t expect to. Be open to new ideas and new directions.
- Assign someone to take detailed notes.
- Provide everyone with a short follow-up report on the major outcomes and a “thank you” for their contribution.
Obviously, a full day workshop is costly in terms of staff time but finding a narrative that runs through your entire organization is invaluable to communication, both within the organization and with outside stakeholders. Such a narrative fosters collective ownership of the brand and the shared message. In addition, workshops can be the first step in building consensus around changes in your brand. If you plan to conduct additional research, such as interviews or surveys, workshops can guide the creation of those tools so they ask the right questions and give you useful information with which to develop messages.
