Circumstances requiring rebranding may have crept up on your nonprofit over time. Has your mission evolved over the years? Have your main funding sources changed? Have you added or eliminated programs? Rebranding should be seriously considered when any of these changes have occurred.
As I’ve said in a previous post, branding is an investment, not a cost. It can increase revenue, energize, staff, attract clients, and increase your organization’s visibility. To see that branding brings return, take a look at the overall goals of your organization. By doing so, you may discover strengths your organization hasn’t fully leveraged and ways in which investing in its brand can facilitate achieving many of your organization’s goals and contribute to its sustainability for the long term.
Setting Your Goals
The many goals nonprofit organization can be categorized in a number of ways. Whatever way you choose to categorize goals, be alert to the ways in which your goals interact and support each other.
The list that follows is a prompt to identify needs or goals that rebranding might help your organization address. Of course, your organization won’t have all these challenges but looking at the list may help you identify other issues that do apply.
Examples of Strategic Goals
- An organization wants to leverage its reputation and experience to start a fee-for-service consulting venture.
- Aging membership and board necessitates attracting younger members and revitalizing the board.
- A new facility will be opened, making it necessary to establish positive relations with the community to ensure acceptance of the organization and its clients within the community.
Examples of Fundraising Goals
- A key funder (or government contract) has been lost. The organization must demonstrate how effective it is in order to attract new funding.
- An organization known for one signature program wants to create awareness of the parent organization to make the overall organization more effective in raising funds.
- Medical research is no longer the focus of the organization. It wants to be viewed as the source of reliable information for patients so it can raise more money.
Examples of Marketing Goals
- A multi-service agency has expanded its programs/services, and wants its own staff and other agencies to refer clients to the new programs.
- A health clinic wants to encourage more people from a new demographic to use its services.
- A civic organization wants to galvanize more businesses to participate in its programs.
Examples of Branding Goals
- A community center wants to shore up its brand to prepare for an upcoming capital campaign.
- A membership organization wants to improve its website to provide a better experience for its members.
- A school, once the only one of its kind, is now beset by competition and must differentiate itself to increase enrollment.
Obviously, some of these goals fit into multiple categories or affect one another. Once you see how they interact, you’ll also begin to see how revitalizing your organization’s brand can help you achieve many of them.
Considerations
Like any investment, branding requires an upfront outlay of money and time. To determine how much, start by considering your organization’s capacity to rebrand. Ask:
- Does your staff have the creative, research, and marketing expertise to do the work in-house? These skills are not the same as those that make them competent program managers or administrators.
- Does your staff have time to provide input to the process? Brand development will require input from all departments, from clients, staff, and board members. Time needs to be set aside in work schedules in to provide that input. Co-ordinating the overall effort requires a good project manager. Do you have one?
- Do you have the money or can you get the grants or in-kind services to do the job well? Whether you use in-house staff or hire an outside branding agency, you will be spending money on the branding project. Some funders specifically give grants for branding (causepopuli and Taproot are two).
- Is your organization open to change? This can be a major stumbling block, especially in small organizations built on the willpower and dedication of a founder who is still active. Change can also frighten long-time staff and board members, whose buy-in is necessary to implement the new brand.
Once you have determined in-house capacity, you are ready to decide whether you will hire outside help. Our next post will help you with that task.
