Buliding Your Brand

Unfortunately, I've found over the years that most of the non-profits I work with don't think too much about their own brand. Most are too focused on the day-to-day tasks associated with their agencies to worry about whether their organization's brand is where it should be. Branding, they assume, is for people that sell things - not people that are trying to make the world a better place.

In my experience, the opposite is true. Your organization's brand is your only asset. It's the only thing that matters. Without a strong brand, non-profits have nothing else to offer. Your brand is the only reason for anyone to ever donate money or time or effort to your cause. Without a strong brand – one that effectively communicates what your organization does and why it does it – there's simply no point.

This is an opportunity to take a lesson from the for-profit sector. As tastes, norms and expectations shift, companies are scrambling to find ways to keep up with their own consumers. Marketers and brand managers are gravitating to a new definition of brand. Paul Isakson over at Space150 has recently offered this definition of brand in a recent presentation:

Brand = What people say, feel, or think about your product, service or company

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The key takeaway from his presentation is that your brand is earned by making your audience's life better. For-profit companies do this by creating products that make people's lives more efficient, or more fun. Non-profit organizations can do this by making people's lives richer, more rewarding, and more connected.

It seems like an obvious idea, but don't make the mistake of taking it for granted. It requires that your organization examine the entire experience of being a donor, a supporter, or a recipient of your services. Is the donation experience simple and straightforward? Is the impact of each donation clearly explained? Is the community created by your organization's services able to connect to one another?

Does each person who interacts with your organization leave with a clear sense of brand? To find out, take the time to draw a map of each experience noted above. If it's not ideal, what steps are needed to make it better? And is there really anything more important your organization should be doing right now?

Putting Your Best Brand Forward

Many of the non-profit organizations I encounter don't believe they need to worry about public relations, marketing or branding. Many of them get great press from time to time without really trying, and many of them rely on active supporters to spread their message to new people.

The problem with this organic approach is that it's unlikely to result in a consistent experience for those who happen to encounter any or all of its disparate pieces. Each person walks away with a different impression of the organization, and the cycle continues.

The face of the organization - its brand - is worth deliberate and conscious maintenance at the very highest levels of both board and executive management. Consistent messaging, accessible materials, and clear presentation are the responsibility of the organization - not the press, and not its supporters. The better an organization's public relations efforts are, the more credibility it will have in the long run with the media and with the public in general.

Many organizations are concerned that by looking too polished - too branded - supporters may begin to believe that the organization has become successful and is no longer in need of donations. This, of course, is belied by the fact that the organizations that raise the most money are usually high-visibility brands. The fact that projecting an appearance of success leads to success - and projecting an appearance of scarcity leads to scarcity - is counter-intuitive for many non-profit managers.

Two excellent posts - one from Katya Andresen and one from Michele Martin (h/t Beth Kanter) - came to my attention today that explore how a mindset of scarcity generates more scarcity. Michele Martin explains it this way in her post:

From what I can see, most nonprofits operate from a scarcity mentality. We are constantly talking about what we lack--money, information, staff, resources. There's a strong feeling that there isn't enough to go around and so the focus is on grabbing the largest share possible for your organization and holding onto that share for dear life. In a scarcity mentality, the impulse is to hoard, not to share--at least when it comes to anything of value. And the focus is on the individual organization, on survival and limits, not on the collective social mission and on growth.

While non-profit managers must be prudent about how an organization's resources are allocated, failing to invest in the organization's brand has long-term consequences that shouldn't be ignored. An organization's brand strategy speaks volumes about its ability to both project, and attract, success.

Brand vs. Tribe

An absolutely brilliant post today by Seth Godin (the author of the book Permission Marketing, among others) about moving away from the concept of brand, and towards the concept of tribe.


I've copied what I think is the key section of his post below -

Brand management was top down, internally focused, political and money based. It involved an MBA managing the brand, the ads, the shelf space, etc. The MBA argued with product development and manufacturing to get decent stuff, and with the CFO to get more cash to spend on ads.

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

This is a wonderful way for non-profits to internalize the idea of branding - something that is often considered foreign at best, and superfluous at worst.

By focusing on the idea of tribe instead of brand, it becomes much clearer that an organization first connects people around an idea - and that idea then creates community. The organization is a means to create connections. Once the connections are made, and the tribe is formed, the organization has a responsibility to act in the best interests of the tribe as a whole.

More from Seth's post:

...product development and manufacturing and the CFO work for the tribal manager. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe. Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe.

What have you done for your tribe lately? And what does your organization do every day that has nothing to do with the tribe? Your answers to both questions are critically important.

Party with a Purpose

For a lot of us, the holidays bring with them a hectic social calendar. Company parties, holiday parties hosted by friends and other types of gatherings fill our schedules.

Your organization might be able to take advantage of this idea by partnering with board members, volunteers, or other supporters to turn an existing event into a fund raising party for you.

Author Morrie Warshawski contacted me recently about about his book "The Fund Raising Houseparty" (now in its 2nd edition) on this topic. It's certainly not a new idea (I've been to several parties like this myself), but it's good to know there's a straightforward how-to available as a reference for organizations looking to raise funds this way. Events can be tricky things, and one can never be too prepared. (For those of you in the Bay Area, he's also doing a workshop through CompassPoint on February 29th).


The book outlines five basic steps for a successful party:

• people receive an invitation to come to a private home.
• the invitation makes it clear that the evening will be a fundraising event for a specific nonprofit organization.
• participants arrive and are served some refreshments.
• participants sit through a brief presentation.
• a peer--someone articulate, respected and enthusiastic--steps up and asks everyone present to make a contribution.

Both large and small organizations can benefit from a successful event because it serves as both a fund raising, as well as a branding, opportunity. Not only does the organization have the opportunity to walk away with funds it probably would have missed, it also has a chance to tell its story to a captive, and pre-screened, audience. Better still, it's a relatively painless way to get Board Members to participate in the organization's fund raising efforts.

If your organization is considering a house party, I would add these ideas to the book's suggestions:

• Start with storytelling. Your stories are your main assets - if there's a way to have them displayed around the space so attendees can absorb them throughout the evening, do so. Incorporate them into your live presentation. Create small take-away items that attendees can share with others after the event.
• Discourage anonymity. Peer pressure is a powerful tool in these types of settings. If each donation is publicly visible (donors might get a sticker on their lapel, or may be asked to stand for applause), those who have not yet committed to donate will feel pressure to do so.
• Identify new donors. The room will likely be filled with some who are familiar with your organization and some who are not. Create a visual way to distinguish between these two groups so newcomers know who to ask if they have questions, and staff can easily engage new prospects.
  

Have other suggestions, ideas or success stories on this topic? Add a comment to this post to share your ideas with other readers.

Your brand is not cosmetic

This week's Non-Profit Times Newsletter includes an insightful article about the power of branding. I've found in my experience with non-profits that many discount the value of branding - or worse, many non-profits actually believe that bad branding makes them look more "authentic" or somehow more "grassroots" than more slickly branded counterparts.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In 2002, a national survey asked 2,600 people to rate 18 factors that make a web site credible. 46.1% percentage of respondents said the site's "design look" influenced their belief in how credible the site was and, of the 18 factors cited in the survey (including site functionality, information clarity, customer service, et. al.) "design look" ranked 1st in overall importance.

These results come from the report, "How Do People Evaluate a Web Site's Credibility," by B.J. Fogg, Ph.D., Cathy Soohoo, David Danielson, et. al., (2002). Here's an excerpt from the authors' analysis of these results:

"Our result about the prominence of design look was not what we had hoped to find; we had hoped to see that people used more rigorous evaluation strategies. However, our result is consonant with findings of other research (Cockburn and McKenzie, 2001) that describes typical Web-navigation behavior as "rapidly interactive," meaning that Web users typically spend small amounts of time at any given page, moving from page to page quickly. If such rapid navigation is indeed the norm for most types of Web use, then it makes sense that Web users have developed efficient strategies, such as focusing on the design look, for evaluating whether a Web site is worthwhile."

This focus on design speaks to the value of branding - while web-design and branding are not interchangeable concepts, a well-designed web-site is a key element in an organization's brand strategy. A well-branded site is a key output of a good brand strategy. A poorly-branded organization will, by definition, have a poorly designed site.

It's always worth the effort to invest time, energy, and sometimes money, into an organization's brand. Without it, an organization risks missing countless opportunities to connect with its donors, constituents and volunteers.

I've copied the article from the NPT Newsletter below in its entirety since I can't find an online version to link to:

Branding ...
It's not marketing. It's everything.

Some might claim marketing and branding are one and the same. That isn't the case, according to branding consultant Larry Checco, who called the statement a myth.

"Branding is a reflection of everything associated with your organization," said Checco, president of Washington, D.C.-based Checco Communications. Good branding, he added, is far less about marketing, advertising and public relations, and far more about the quality of leadership and staff, accountable and ethical behavior, and a willingness, ability and commitment to fulfill whatever brand expectations your organization creates.

"In short, good branding is nothing less than your organization's DNA," said Checco.

According to Checco, it's common for organizations to fall victim to the idea that once the organization has an attractive logo and a catchy tagline, it has its brand. Again, that's not the case. "Your logo and tagline are the banners for your brand," said Checco. "Your brand drills much deeper into your organization's core values."

Checco advised not to succumb to the argument that your organization has no branding budget. "Your brand is not cosmetic," said Checco, reiterating that branding is "truly who you are and what you do." He suggested, "If you effectively leverage your current resources, you may not need much of a budget to better brand your organization."

The most devilish of myths, added Checco, is the idea that branding is the responsibility of your organization's communications and/or marketing folks. "Branding is the responsibility of everyone," said Checco, "everyone: from your board members down to your support staff, everyone."

Checco offered the following three keys to good branding:

• Clearly define your brand. Use the right language, broaden your message, and include benefits to the entire community.

• Actively promote your brand. Start with your board, staff and members, and make them educated ambassadors for your brand. Create a hero's journey for those you seek to lead, and make branding a part of your organization's performance review.

• Diligently protect your brand. Hire or recruit well -- affluence and influence are worthless without integrity and wisdom. Know what's at risk, and educate others. Speak truthfully to authority, be transparent with your finances, and know that whether it's legal or not is not the litmus test of what's acceptable. Finally, expectations, expectations, expectations.