What is nonprofit branding?
Branding! Oh, what a word! People have strong feelings about branding. Too many of us conflate branding with our worst perceptions of brands selling unhelpful items. It’s just one step from branding our nonprofit to selling sugary drinks, right?
The basic idea of branding is very helpful: Branding is just thinking through your nonprofit’s identity. How do you want to be perceived by the public? This is more straightforward for an individual than for an organization, because an organization has multiple people involved. That’s why you need organized branding.
Let’s be clear: your nonprofit is perceived by the public, and you only have some control over that.
At Capital Hope Media, we often think the process of reflecting on your nonprofit’s brand is as valuable as the Branding Guide it creates. When your team asks the basic questions of who you are, it can bring tremendous clarity to your work. It can empower your team.
The end of a branding process creates a document called a Branding Guide. A Branding Guide has lots of information about colors, typefaces and logos. Sure. A more robust branding guide will give direction to the feel and tone of your brand. For example, one nonprofit we worked with recently had a great branding guide that described the “journalistic tone” of the nonprofit. This branding guide, along with a few other helpful documents, really guides the specific content your nonprofit will create.
Psst…What’s a Branding Guide?
Here are a few great branding guides from sector-leading nonprofits:
Greenpeace
International Rescue Committee
Here are a few helpful questions as you consider your nonprofit’s brand:
How should people feel about your nonprofit? Are you warm and nurturing? Are you authoritative in an academic way? Are you authoritative in some other way? One helpful way to begin wrestling with this question is the 12 Branding Archetypes from Jungian psychology. Iconic Fox in Australia has a great post about this.
As you’re wrestling with this, you’ll want to articulate your brand’s “story,” as well. Who are you, what do you do in the world, and who do you do it for? As this gets more robust, you’ll want to turn it into a helpful document called a “Master Narrative.”
What colors, typefaces and logos define you? Most nonprofits have made decisions here, but if you haven’t….get specific! These decisions should be made based on the previous question. Your fonts and typefaces, for example, should reinforce the way you want people to feel about your organization. Then, expect your entire team to abide by them. Your typefaces should be used in donor letters, your website, social media posts…almost everywhere your nonprofit communicates.
What tone do you want to use in your communications? This should be a natural outgrowth of the first questions: “how should people feel about your nonprofit?”
We love branding at Capital Hope Media. It’s the foundation of all communications that your nonprofit will do, if you’re communicating well. Let us help you with that by contacting us.
