Successful branding requires targeting all your nonprofit’s audiences with the right messages.

Most nonprofits make the mistake of focusing on a limited number of audiences: donors, members, or clients. But every nonprofit has a wide array of audiences that can help it succeed. Consider them all when crafting marketing messages and choosing which media to use.

To focus your brand messages, explore the values of the audiences you want to reach and the ways in which they interact with your organization. Be sure to look ahead, at the audiences you want to reach going forward, not just those you now reach.

TYPES OF AUDIENCES

Staff

Executive staff, department heads, and front-line staff must be able to speak cogently about your organization. They are all brand ambassadors. When developing your brand, assess what staff knows about your organization’s mission, services, and success. You’ll also want to find out what keeps them working with you so you know how to attract qualified new employees.

Board

Board members are your key brand emissaries. Give them messages that help them articulate why your nonprofit matters and eases their fundraising efforts. Most important, keep them engaged and interested in the organization.

Partners

People and organizations will be much more willing to work with your organization if it is known as professional and responsible. Find out what characteristics of your organization are most valuable to those you are likely to partner with and whether you have communicated those values and common interests clearly.

Affiliates

If yours is a national organization with chapters or affiliates, others may be looking to you for guidance on how to best present your organizational story. Depending upon your relationship, involving other parties in the message development or branding process may be crucial to maintaining allegiance among these groups. For some organizations, it’s just a matter of clearly communicating brand guidelines to those on the front lines. For others, engagement in the branding process by affiliates may be required.

Clients

Clients are the reason most nonprofits exist.  If clients have a choice of service providers, they want to know why they should chose your organization. They want to know what your organization offers that similar organizations do not offer and whether your services fill their particular needs. This information guides not only outreach but also may show you how to improve services. Perhaps some programs should be expanded and others dropped.

Members

Membership organizations need to know what motivates people to join and why others choose not to. Which membership benefits attract people and which are not meaningful? To keep your recruitment and renewal rates up, make sure you assess your members’ needs on an ongoing basis and communicate the value that your organization provides.

Volunteers

Whether individual volunteers or groups of volunteers (such as classes or businesses), you must ensure that the volunteer experience with your organization is a good one and that it generates the positive word of mouth you desire. Volunteers can become long-term donors and encourage others to do so as well.

Referrers

Organizations that depend on other agencies or even other people within their own agency to refer clients to its programs, must make clear what services are offered and what distinguishes  them from those offered by similar nonprofits. You want to know people choose one organization over another when referring clients.

Vendors

Have you considered that the people and companies your organization deals with everyday can be crucial allies in your cause? Your vendors may be talking to thousands of other companies this year. Make sure that they know your mission and involve them in your cause. They can spread the word, donate their goods or services, support your events, or introduce you to potential partners, funders, volunteers or supporters.

Neighbors

Good relationships with neighbors — the people who live near your service sites but do not use your services — can be critical. If they don’t understand what you are doing, they may complain to elected officials or block expansion plans. This is especially true for shelters, halfway houses, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. But neighbors are important to all nonprofits. From their ranks, you can get volunteers, in-kind donations, monetary or other support. Neighbors also make good partners-whether a restaurant donating surplus food to your organization or a retail store with a point of purchase display promoting your cause or hanging your flyer in their window.

Media

Media coverage is important, particularly when there is breaking news about your issue. To get media attention when you need it, you must be proactive: Make sure that key media — print, broadcast and online — know about your organization before you need publicity. Maintain lists of journalists you want to reach and cultivate ongoing relationships with them.

Legislators

If you are an issue-based organization that relies on regulation, legislation or funding at the local, state, or federal levels, then legislators will be on the top of the list of audiences you’ll want to communicate with regularly. But all nonprofits need good relations with government. You never know when funding legislation will be proposed or new rules enacted that affect your clients. Nonprofits have more leeway to lobby than they realize, so don’t take this group for granted. You can lobby on an issue but you just can’t advocate for a political candidate. Include key public officials (whether elected officials or their staff) on your email lists, send print newsletters, issue briefings, and annual reports, and make time to meet with key contacts in person on a periodic basis.

Donors 

Donor audiences — a key audience for nonprofits — can vary greatly, from someone donating $1 to a food pantry at grocery store checkout to a philanthropist leaving a $10 million bequest. Make sure that you fully understand your donors, their values, and interests as well as their motivations for donating to your organization. Explore new ways to engage them in supporting your organization, such as planned giving programs.

Businesses

Whether large corporations or local businesses, the for-profit world can be an effective partner for your organization. But you need to know how to speak their language and appeal to their interests. Businesses want to know how they can leverage your goodwill to reach more potential customers, so it’s essential that partnering and sponsorship opportunities be presented as marketing opportunities for them.

Sponsors 

What attracts sponsors to your organization? Crafting messages that demonstrate shared values and interests is more powerful than simply asking for support based on tiered dollar amounts. Knowing how to appeal to sponsors’ interests will be critical for building long-term support.

Funders

These days, you can’t expect foundations or other funders to see the value in your organization or expect them to renew their grants automatically. You need to demonstrate your organization’s impact. Funders want measurement, accountability, and transparency. You need to communicate your success in a way that they can appreciate. And for organizations seeking foundation support, it’s important to develop relationships with the foundations years before applying to grants. Start paving the way with clear messages about what your organization stands for.

What audiences have you overlooked in developing a marketing strategy for your nonprofit? The more you learn about them, the more effectively you can build your brand and inspire the support your nonprofit needs.

Whether online or offline make sure your marketing materials further your nonprofit’s goals, by making people aware of its mission, willing to donate, interested in joining or eager to participate in its fundraising event.

An e-newsletter, like all points of contact with your organization’s stakeholders, should bring your organization closer to meeting its goals and keep its mission clear in people’s minds. Make sure outreach materials reflect what your organization does as well as what it hopes to achieve.

Your nonprofit may be facing big changes: a new location or program, a merger or change of focus. Or your main funding sources may be drying up as government fundings shrivels or donors age out so replacement funders are needed. Just as likely, the organization has experienced “mission creep” so what it does now is not fully reflected in its current name, tagline, and logo. In any of these instances, your marketing messages may not be catching the attention of the people your organization now needs to engage.

Part of building your brand is ensuring that outreach is conveying the right messages to the right audiences. Building such a brand requires a clear understanding of just what your organization’s mission and goals are.

Define Your Needs

What do you want your outreach to accomplish? That’s the first question you need to answer, and doing so may require input from your development department and your program heads as well as from your board and staff.

Is funding needed for a specific goal or project? Have programs changed but clients don’t yet know about the changes? Are there opportunities for new revenue sources, such as partnerships or sponsorships? Is your advocacy organization gearing up to support specific legislation? Does your nonprofit school want to attract more students or a more diverse student population?

A fresh look at the goals your marketing materials are designed to attain can be prompted by any of these. Goals can be categories in many ways and the categories often overlap. Here, we’ve used four categories as a guide for establishing what your nonprofit’s goals are.

Organizational Goals

Goals derived from your strategic plan and your organization’s mission determine where your organization is going in the future. Organizational goals have to do with your agency’s services and facilities, staffing and board, major initiatives, and partnerships — essentially, the overall direction and operations of your organization, such as:

• The demographics of the neighborhood served by a social service agency is changing and with that change, new services are needed. The agency wants to introduce new programs and make the community aware of its the change in focus.
• A senior center wants to leverage its reputation and experience with seniors to start a fee-for-service consulting service.

Fundraising Goals

Fundraising goals may be short-term — money for a special project — or long-term — establishing new revenue sources to ensure sustainability, for example:

• Diversifying your fundraising base
• Starting an individual donor campaign
• Attracting corporate sponsors
• Starting a planned giving program
• Raising the money for the new location

Marketing Goals

These goals are about reaching your audiences and change as you organizational needs change. They are as varied as the mission of nonprofits and include:

• Attracting new members
• Encouraging people to use your services
• Creating goodwill for your organization
• An organization with an aging membership and board wants to attract younger members to its performances and its board
• A civic organization wants to galvanize more businesses to participate in its programs

Branding Goals

Branding goals define your organization in the public eye and make sure its mission and value are recognized. Most branding goals incorporate several areas, meeting both organizational and fundraising goals, such as:

• A community organization known for one signature program wants to create awareness of the parent organization so overall fundraising is more effective.
• An international relief organization wants to create a more seamless connection between all of its chapters and affiliates so its full reach is recognized.

Once you know what your marketing should accomplish, your next step is determining who your audiences are and how best to reach them. We’ll address that next.

A strong brand can make the difference between achieving your nonprofit’s mission and tilting at windmills.

To some nonprofit leaders, the idea of branding is anathema. It sounds so commercial, so businesslike, so focused on advertising instead of outreach. But just as nonprofits must adhere to the business rules of positive cash flow and accurate accounting, they must also accept the business concept of branding. A strong brand means your nonprofit is known for the success of its efforts to address a social problem. Branding can bring both external and internal benefits that improve your organization’s ability to do the good it set out to accomplish.

A strong brand carries your  organization’s message and the importance of its mission to all the audiences you may want to reach. It sets you apart from other nonprofits by conveying the value your organization adds to its community and its clients.

Fundraising

• Facilitates fundraising by making your organization recognized and trusted.
• Positions the organization to attract foundation or corporate support as well as individual donors.
• Diversifies the donor base so you have many, strong, individual supporters rather than relying on a few large donors or government grants.

Mission

• Eases delivery of services and attracts clients
• Appeals to partner organizations, both other nonprofits with whom you want to affiliate and for-profits partners for cause-marketing campaigns.
• Attracts donors, community leaders, and potential partners, all of whom are critical to a nonprofit’s sustainability.
• Clarifies the relationship between your organization and its programs so all aspects of your mission are visible and supported.

Public Relations

• Creates awareness and increased visibility around your issue, which can bring about new laws or services to benefit your clients.
• Clarifies mission to critical audiences, including government officials and the media.
• Develops positive public relations in your town or local area so that your organization is welcome, which is particularly valuable for organizations with not-in-my-backyard missions, such as clinics and homeless shelters.
• Helps the organization withstand negative publicity.

Overall Brand Benefits

A strong brand with a carefully chosen name and consistent visual image benefits everyone associated with the organization, including your staff and clients.

• Facilitates communications because staff and board are clear about what the organization stands for and can articulate the mission and services.
• Helps board be more effective as brand ambassadors because they may better articulate the organization’s mission and impact more clearly.
• Attracts higher quality staff at all levels.
• Contributes to higher morale and dedication among employees because the organization is perceived as professional and credible.
• Facilitates development of fundraising and marketing materials because colors, typefaces, and templates are fixed.

In this era when donors and funders are looking for an immediate impact from their donations, it’s important to understand that investing in your brand builds long-term viability for your organization. The value is cumulative over time as recognition builds up and the brand becomes better known. While there is no guarantee about results, think about the major nonprofits that have invested in their brands.

Ready to Refresh Your Brand?

What do you do you feel when you look at the logos above or when you see a yellow gel wristband or a picture of Smokey the Bear? The reaction you just had is the result of branding. Successful nonprofits have invested in it for years. Is it time for your nonprofit to do the same?

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:

1. Where we are now? What does our current brand mean to us and to the outside world? How is it perceived?
2. Where do we want to go, that is, how do we want the organization to be perceived and how do we want to grow?
3. 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.

• Read more about Red Rooster Group’s Marketing Strategy services.

Nonprofit organizations are more sophisticated about cutting through the media clutter and positioning themselves to be heard by  potential donors. Even small nonprofits recognize the need for a strong, recognizable brand that can be heard above the din.

Here’s a quick guide to the four basics of building and maintaining nonprofit brand equity.

PRODUCE: Define Your Identity

Whether you are a new nonprofit or a mature organization trying to keep up with the competition, you’ll need to define what your organization stands for, craft your messages so they resonate with your audiences, and design your logo/visual identity so that your organization stands out,

PROJECT: Communicate Your Value

Get the word out about your organization. Consider all forms of print, interactive, and in-person communication when planning how to reach your audiences in the most effective way. Let them know what you’ve accomplished and why it matters to them.

PROTECT: Guard Against Misuse

Shield your organization’s brand from both internal and external threats. The internal threats come from inconsistency in how you present your brand. Failure to establish and follow guidelines can erode your brand’s strength and recognition over time. The external threat is infringement on the name, logo, or tagline by another entity seeking to feed off of your organization’s brand recognition.

PARLAY: Leverage Your Brand

Once you have built a strong brand with a positive reputation and good will — brand equity — you can attract donors, businesses for cause-marketing partnerships that bring additional resources and visibility to your cause, produce marque events, and even sell merchandise to generate revenue.

If you are ready to improve or create your brand, the 4 P’s provide a great outline to use if you want to master the fundamentals of brand success. Remember, building your organization’s brand is an investment in your organization that can pay dividends in the future if done right.

The Case for Support document is exactly what its name says: a written statement that explains why people should support your organization.

Your nonprofit’s Case for Support can be as short as one page or as long as a booklet. It may be mailed to potential donors or made into a video for your website. No matter what form it takes, it should incorporate the following elements:

The Problem Your Organization Addresses

Describe the problem your organization is trying to solve, both statistically — number of people affected, dollar cost to society — and anecdotally — stories of individuals affected by the problem. Whenever possible, use photography to convey emotional appeal and use graphs or infographics to make numbers easy to understand by making the problem come to life.

What Your Organization Does to Solve the Problem

From direct services to advocacy, explain what your organization is doing to solve the problem. This is your opportunity to point out your organization’s unique approach to the problem whether it be method of delivering services or a focus on a specific population in need. Donors and funders are increasingly looking for organizations that have unique models and approaches —utilizing crowdsourcing, technology, or market forces — to scale quickly and to create greater impact.

The Impact Your Organization Has Had

Show the effectiveness of your program with measurements and with anecdotes. Substantiate the value of your organization’s work by stating how many people you have helped and tell the story of individuals whose lives your organizations has improved. Include progress on your issue, advocacy wins, new treatments developed, etc. Discuss your lessons learned from programs that were not as successful.

How People Can Get Involved with Your Organization’s Good Work

Lay out the different levels of support (one-time donation to planned giving), ways of donating (by mail, donate button, etc.), getting involved in volunteer committees, and how donations are used. In this section, you can your organization’s credibility as a worthwhile charity by listing your Charity Navigator rating, awards, or respected foundations that support your organization. But add these things judiciously so that you don’t distract too much from the “ask”.

How to Use Your Case for Support

The Case for Support is the keystone of your organization’s fundraising efforts. In writing the Case for Support, you have examined your mission, vision, what makes your organization different, your values, and your approach to services. It can be used as a presentation at a gala or a brochure to hand out at your events or a guide to designing your website or to inspire staff.