What is it about your organization that sets it apart from all the others? How can you show donors and potential donors that you are unique — even irreplaceable because you are doing something that no one else is doing? If you can’t show why you are different from everyone else, you’re going to have a hard time proving that someone should donate to you instead of another organization that does what seems to be the same thing.
I strongly suggest you constantly attempt to control the perception and reality of your organization through reinforcement of education, information and communication.
City Harvest will be featured at the second annual Engage Conference. Read about City Harvest's expanded offerings in the July 2013 FundRaising Success cover story, "Full Course."
Joie Fuentes, senior director of sales and marketing for Branders.com, recently spoke with FundRaising Success about the "Give a Way" campaign in which the company provides merchandise to national and regional nonprofit organizations to help them brand their causes.
In an interview with Nathalie Laidler-Kylander, co-author of a new book titled "The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands With Integrity, Democracy, and Affinity," Forbes explores the origins of the book, key themes and insights, and how best to apply this new framework to your own nonprofit organization.
Way too many folks who work in the nonprofit world limit themselves with how they look at their organizations. They see them as little. Stop for a minute and think about what that means. If I believe my organization is little, I see it as not having the resources it needs or the opportunities it deserves. Subsequently, I may believe that everything is hard because of that. I may start evaluating things from the standpoint of what's appropriate for a little nonprofit, and I may miss opportunities that could propel the organization forward.
Lutheran Social Services of Mid-America had a problem: Its name confused people. The Ohio-based organization works with people of all faiths, not just Lutherans, offering services from credit counseling to senior-living facilities. The “mid-America” was unclear, too. What to do?
Every charity I have ever worked with has invested time and resources in branding, rebranding or refocusing the brand. The challenge with all of this is the understanding of branding in the not-for-profit sector and what drivers the charity has behind wanting to put energy into the brand. This is a key area where silo structures and internal divisions come to the fore, as fundraising is very rarely the department or discipline that leads on branding.
Underwhelming leadership, a reactive approach to technology and a communications strategy that hasn’t evolved since 1999. This is the sorry state most nonprofits find themselves in. Leadership’s difficult to change, technology changes too much to understand and marketing teams with a bad case of the “but it’s what we’ve always done!’s” syndrome.
You’re worse off than you thought if you don’t admit to having a problem.
The good news is that there is hope for you. Change isn’t fatal; not adapting is. Below are three thoughts on why I think many nonprofits are becoming obsolete.
Here's how it goes: The brand expert says the fundraising campaigns that generate most of your organization's revenue are "undermining the brand." More precisely, fundraising messages don't use the right fonts, aren't faithful to the color pallet and fail to focus on the Statement of Brand Personality.
