In the current economic climate, nonprofits need to focus on ways to stand out from the crowd, win charitable dollars, and survive the downturn. Effective, mission-focused communications can help organizations build strong identities, heightened reputations, and increased fundraising capability. - Sarah Durham

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  In fact, Sarah’s new book, Brandraising, How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications, is the book on nonprofit branding that we wish we had written.  Because Sarah is preaching the sermon we do for our nonprofit and foundation clients every day:  You have a brand whether you think you do or not, and investing in how strong that brand is can mean the difference between the success and failure of your efforts, even your entire mission.

In her book, Sarah makes it easy to understand how to strengthen your organization’s brand and why it’s important. We recommend this as required reading for any nonprofit professional, especially those wise readers trying to convince your colleagues that brand isn’t just a big fancy idea only applicable to large national nonprofits.

Read Sarah’s book and tell us what you think!
http://tinyurl.com/2efb3yu

“A brand is a result, not a tactic” – Lucas Conley

While the process of “brand building“ can be complex, in its simplest form brand is just another word for “reputation.”

In discovering a brand’s essence, determining what factors make up a compelling brand, and working to turn your organization into a great brand, you are articulating how your organization wishes to be perceived—what reputation you wish to have—and then doing everything possible to establish and reinforce that reputation.

Your brand is not your name, logo, or graphic identity.  These are signifiers about what your organization stands for, but your brand is the combination of facts and emotions about your organization and its work that comes to the minds of your audiences when they hear or read about you and your activities.

In his book, A New Brand World, Scott Bedbury, the marketing guru behind Nike and Starbucks, defines branding in expansive terms:

A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the off-strategy.  It is defined by the award-winning [work] and the god-awful [work] that somehow slipped through the cracks….  It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee—the shining star in the [organization] who can do no wrong—as well as by the mishaps of the worst hire you ever made.  It is also defined by your receptionist and the music your [constituents] are subjected to when placed on hold.  For every grand and finely worded public statement by the [executive director], the brand is also defined by derisory comments overheard in the hallway or in a chat room on the Internet.  Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings.  They become physiological concepts held in the mind of the public, where they may stay forever.  As such, you can’t entirely control a brand.  At best you can only guide and influence it.

In short, your brand is all that you are.  It’s the sum total of your organization’s services, behaviors, and signals.

It is far more than just a logo or tagline; it’s how your organization lives its mission and practices its values.  A brand is an organization’s core promise, its identity, and its reputation.  The best brands live in an organization’s DNA.

The best brands are defined by clarity of purpose, rather than a description of an organization’s strategies or programs.

Think of the best-known nonprofit brands—SPCA or Amnesty International, for example.  You may not quite know what these organizations do every day, but you know why they exist.  And that’s the idea: the goal of branding is not to describe comprehensively what your organization does, but to explain compellingly why it matters that you do it.

It’s about articulating your organization’s unique niche in making the world a better place, and claiming the distinctive role that will attract the public support you need to accomplish your goals.  Nonprofit branding persuasively answers the busy public’s inevitable question, “Why should I care?”

Mission Minded founding partner, Jennie Winton, will serve as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco’s Masters in Nonprofit Administration degree program this spring.

The program prepares experienced adults for management and leadership roles in the nonprofit sector.

Winton’s course will focus on nonprofit marketing and branding, giving students real-world knowledge about nonprofit marketing challenges and strategies for success.

More information about the program can be found at http://www.cps.usfca.edu/prospective/MNA.html

Tiger Woods is a brand and his brand is in trouble. For all those who say he’s finished, for all the companies now withdrawing their sponsorships, for all that the media seem so gleeful about his fall, we predict that this unfortunate drama is just a blip on the screen of his long public life.

Though he has engaged in embarrassing activities that hurt his family and fans — all of them real people — the Tiger brand is far more powerful than Tiger the man. Brands aren’t built overnight and they are rarely destroyed overnight either.

The value of a brand is that it stands for something people understand and value. When people love a brand they tend to be loyal to it and that loyalty creates a certain willingness to overlook  facts that fly in the face of the perception one has about the brand.

Tiger’s brand has made mistakes, reflected both in disloyal acts to his family and in how the brand responded publicly to the scandal. Mistakes aside, the people who love and value what the Tiger brand stands for are far more likely to forgive, and maybe even forget, his bad behavior IF he sincerely asks them to forgive him, and then returns to what made his brand great in the first place: the athletic super power that people love to watch and aspire to be.

The Tiger Woods drama should be a reminder to all non-profits to invest heavily in creating a brand that has value to its public.  Why? Because a strong brand builds loyalty among donors, volunteers and other supporters. This loyalty will matter when the inevitable drama — major or minor — befalls your brand.

Say your receptionist calls in sick and the temp is rude to a major donor who calls.  That donor is more likely to forgive this transgression if she already feels a loyalty to your mission and your organization.  What if the media features your organization in a story about non-profit bureaucracy and financial inefficiency? Your donors and volunteers are less likely to believe what they read or hear if it doesn’t match what they already feel about the integrity of your work.

So think deeply about your brand and what it means to those who care about your mission. Make it stand for something simple, authentic and valuable that resonates strongly with those most in a position to ensure the success of your organization.  You’ll need that brand in times of trouble and the investment you made in ensuring a strong brand will pay off in loyalty.  Like Tiger’s fans, your supporters will stay with you if you really mean something to them.