Time for a Brand Check-Up
You know exactly what your organization is all about. What it does, why it exists, who it serves. You know its vibe, its personality, its point of view. If someone asked three of your team members about the organization, they’d all say the same thing as you, right?
Hmmm. Maybe not. In fact, if three different people asked you about the organization, would you say the same thing each time?
Could be time for a brand check-up.
The Six Segment System offers a short list of annual tasks for each of the segments, Administration, Community, Development, Finance, Marketing and Programming. “Revisit Branding” is an annual task that falls under the Marketing Segment. It’s worth doing once a year to ensure all of your messaging is aligned on and on-brand.
Your brand is the emotional covenant you have with your stakeholders. It is the feeling people associate with your product, logo, written content, images on social, and website. Your brand has a personality, a persona even. It should have a very specific tone of voice. Brand is way more than the logo - it is speaks to the heart and soul of who you are, and how others see you.
Nonprofits are hard to describe. You probably have a bunch of programs and, at least in your mind, you are serving a diverse set of clients. When someone asks you about your organization, the temptation is to say as much as you can as fast as you can, hoping that all the good work you rattle off will impress.
That’s a mistake.
In a blink of an eye, you have to communicate who you are and more importantly WHY you are. You have to offer an emotional connection to the work. Maybe you want to get the person all riled up because of the injustice you battle. Maybe you want to communicate the sense of power and agency you are providing the underserved. Maybe you want to connect to people’s need to find beauty and meaning in the world. Hope. Dignity. Trust. Opportunity. Security. Safety. Fairness.
It may be hard to put a finger on what exactly your brand is at first, but spend some time journaling and thinking if you can’t describe your it right away. It’s there, even if you have to dig deep. This is what differentiates you; this is at the core of who you are as an organization.
If you can’t quite describe your brand yet, don’t despair. There are plenty of online tools to help you, and we’ll be adding more content to The Nonprofit Planner toolkit.
But once you do have it down, audit all of your external facing content to see if it fits within the context of the brand. Ideally, you’ll write down everything you expect in a single “Brand Guidelines” document. This includes how to use the trifecta of visual assets: logo, font and color scheme. It includes standards for the graphics, videos and photos that you will use in your marketing materials and on social. It includes the way you talk about the organization and the people you serve: tone, choice of words, voice. For example, are you formal and professional? Or perhaps playful? Humorous?
Do a check. Look at your social media posts and any blogs you may have written. Are they consistent and telling the same brand story? Check the website. If you create flyers or programs, compare them to your brand guidelines. Have you been interviewed? Is what you said “on brand”? Are all of your board members speaking about the organization in the same way? They should be. They don’t have to say the exact same thing, but they should be communicating a singular brand covenant.
Now’s the time to sort through everything you did last year. See where you need some tweaks, and get after it. Making sure everything conforms to a single message, a single brand, is critical.
With attention spans getting shorter and shorter, you have all but a brief moment to connect with someone. Your brand is the shortcut you need to making that emotional connection.
