'Tis the Season
Over the years, Paragraph has been privileged to work in one of the fastest growing "business sectors" around today — nonprofits.
With the calendar year nearing its end, it’s an important time for these organizations. Many are in the midst of year-end giving drives, attempting to raise operating dollars to strengthen their organization for the coming year. Of course, our individual values are in part what compel us to support these organizations, but is there more to the story? What role does a nonprofit’s brand play? And further, how does a nonprofit establish an effective brand story?
The question of the role of branding is easy to answer. Branding is essential to operating a successful and sustainable nonprofit for many reasons, among them effective, consistent, and compelling appeals; enhanced marketplace perceptions; and most important, elevated position and greater reasons for donor and partner support.
To their benefit, corporate and consumer brands can rely on revenue derived from goods and services provided and sold. However, for nonprofit organizations, operating dollars are often subsidized by institutional and foundational grants, public funding, and/or corporate and private contributions. To secure these funding streams, nonprofits must compete, traditionally with slim resources, against a growing number of similar organizations, making a compelling brand even more essential.
The best place to begin building an effective nonprofit brand is by asking the right questions. For starters, "What business are you in?" Sure, it sounds like a question for for-profit companies, but when you think about it, we all have a purpose. If you are a nonprofit, how do you define yours?
Your mission should answer that question. However, the challenge in the nonprofit world, particularly when it comes to mission statements, is that they’re often subjective, value-based, and open to interpretation. Comparatively, commercial companies’ mission statements are generally direct, profit-based statements that focus on business goals and revenue.
Successful mission statements are imperatives for nonprofits for many reasons. Not only do they allow an organization to promote its value, they also lay the foundation for all organizational activities. They can paint a clear picture of an organization, define its activities and purpose, inspire audiences and constituents (both internal and external), and most important, serve as the baseline for measuring success and understanding the outcomes of its efforts.
Further, a strong mission empowers nonprofit organizations to gain internal consensus and establish commitments, recruit new members and donors, elevate an organization among its direct and indirect competitors, and begin to lay the foundation for its promise.
Another question that should not be overlooked is "How do donors see your organization?" For profit-driven companies, the focus is clearly on the consumer. But in the nonprofit world, especially service-driven nonprofits, the consumers’ need is often defined by an organization’s very existence. To be effective, a nonprofit’s message must focus on presenting a clear, compelling, and contextualized picture of an organization and its mission that resonates with donors on an ongoing basis.
Of course, communication is key. Still, communication remains the most complicated aspects of nonprofit branding.
The truth is, many nonprofits are eager to get the word out about their organization and its services or programs. But before the focus shifts to pushing out inconsistent messages, nonprofits must make sure that their core story is aligned internally, and further, that it is tailored to specific audiences before being translated into tactics.
At Paragraph, we always start by creating consensus among internal audiences. After all, that’s where a brand originates. Additionally, consistent verbal messages — especially among internal audiences — are critical to the success or failure of many nonprofits. Consider the Board. As an extension of a nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, it is important that Board Members share a common dialogue about the value of the organization to inspire a greater number of donors.
Throughout our nonprofit branding work, we’ve seen, heard, and experienced many instances where we’ve asked various internal constituents to define their nonprofit’s difference. Surprisingly, or not, the answers have been as diverse as the people who have provided them.
The good news is that inconsistencies are not impossible to overcome. To get to the root of a brand’s story, we speak with various members of an organization across all levels including board, staff, and executive-level leadership. We listen for the commonalities among diverse groups and distill them into a vernacular that provides validity and instills trust both internally and externally throughout an organization’s constituent base.
As the focus shifts to external audiences, we always ask "Who needs to hear what?" After speaking with these many audiences and understanding their perceptions, we develop messages that define and differentiate an organization in context, while delivering on their constituents’ expectations, desires, and needs.
Visual consistency is equally important. Of course, when the term visual consistency comes up in the brand world, many tend to think of brand standards guidelines that specify brand mark placement, pantone swatches, and type treatments. All of these aspects are important, especially considering the size and scope of some large organizations that must maintain consistency from the national level down to local chapters. But branding guidelines can often overlook the big picture. Sure, they can be great tools for designers, but when it comes to what’s at the heart of the brand, the story, they fail to deliver. Instead of simply saying put your brand here and use this typeface, at Paragraph, we make sure that brand guidelines include key messages to various constituents to empower those who are maintaining the brand to consistently communicate the value of an organization and deliver on its promise.
As we all know, an empowered brand is more likely to be a successful brand. With a clearly defined and consistently developed verbal and visual brand story, it becomes easier to evangelize your mission. When others can see your value, appeals become more compelling, the press becomes poised to share your story, and donors are eager to lend their support.
With that said, and before we give out all our secrets, we encourage you to read about, see the value, and hopefully support some of the many nonprofit organizations whose brands we’ve helped define, refine, manage, and evolve over the past year.
Happy Holidays, from your friends at Paragraph.