13 Nonprofits Honored for Outstanding Taglines
Maplewood, NJ, October 20, 2009 — Both large and small nonprofits earned top honors this week for their attention-getting taglines, demonstrating again that an organization of any size can craft a powerful, pithy motto to build awareness and connect with its key audiences.
“A high-impact tagline is an essential tool for any nonprofit fighting to deliver its message in a crowded, competitive world,” says Nancy E. Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company and publisher at GettingAttention.org (http://www.GettingAttention.org), a nonprofit marketing and communications resource website that organizes the annual competition.
The 13 winners were selected from 60 finalists drawn from 1,702 nonprofit taglines submitted to the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards competition. More than 4,800 nonprofit professionals cast votes in the final selection round.
The awards program is designed to encourage nonprofits to effectively use taglines, a high-impact, low-cost marketing tactic often overlooked or under-emphasized by nonprofits, says Schwartz. “A nonprofit’s tagline is hands down the briefest, easiest and most effective way to communicate your organization’s identity,” Schwartz says.
A 2008 survey of nonprofits showed that 7 in 10 nonprofits rated their tagline as poor or didn’t use one at all. Schwartz says the majority of nonprofits not using a tagline indicated that they had not thought about it or couldn’t come up with a good one.
“It’s a huge missed opportunity for nonprofits that don’t implement a tagline,” Schwartz says. “Especially when you consider all the places a tagline appears throughout a nonprofit’s marketing and communications program, and how many people potentially digest an organization’s tagline in any given year.”
Schwartz says that the winning taglines in the 2009 competition demonstrate how powerful taglines can work as a first step in branding or as a highly-effective tool to refresh a nonprofit’s messaging, emphasize its commitment to its work and/or revive tired positioning.
