Six Proven Ways to Strengthen Your Organization through Building Your Brand
If you think brands are only for Starbucks and Oreos, think
again. Every single organization – including your nonprofit
– has its own personality, its own identity, its own set of
characteristics.
As the nonprofit landscape gets increasingly competitive,
it's more important than ever to brand yourself by clearly
conveying your organization's focus, credibility, and unique
contributions. The benefits are many:
BENEFITS FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION
- Branding makes it possible for you to differentiate
your organization in the minds of your audiences.
This differentiation is the basis of enduring
relationships with multiple publics.
- Branding makes it possible for your organization to
convey a consistent overall positioning while tailoring
offerings for donors, volunteers, funders and other
audiences.
- With the rise of the Web, branding is more important
than ever. Since information can be provided quickly
and immediately to any location, traditional advantages
of size and location lose importance. Brands – the
values, skills, and differentiators of your organization
– become more important than ever.
- The marketplace has changed. Our audiences will talk
about us whether we like it or not.
It's time that nonprofits join the conversation.
Developing a brand is a proactive strategy. For
example, a well-established brand can help your
organization carve out a unique position for itself
in the public mindset, preventing negative images of
other organizations (e.g., United Way scandal) from
spilling over to your nonprofit.
BENEFITS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS
- Your brand serves as a simple and effective vehicle to
convey the benefits provided by the programs, goods,
and services your organization offers.
Think Red Cross – the symbol and the tagline,
"Together, we can save a life." The Red Cross vigilantly
reinforces its brand in every marketing vehicle with
the inclusion of its logo and this tagline.
Click here to review the Red Cross branding campaign,
as applied in print advertisements:
http://www.redcross.org/press/psa.html#print
- Your brand provides an assurance of quality and
consistency.
HOWEVER, for a brand to provide these benefits, it must
offer more than a recognizable name and image. There must
be a corresponding organizational commitment to deliver
products (goods, services, or programs) that are consistent
with the brand's positioning.
© 2002-2008 Nancy E. Schwartz. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Nancy E. Schwartz helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing and communications. As President of Nancy Schwartz & Company (www.nancyschwartz.com), Nancy and her team provide marketing planning and implementation services to organizations as varied as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, and Wake County (NC) Health Services.
Subscribe to her free e-newsletter "Getting Attention", (http://www.nancyschwartz.com/getting_attention.html) and read her blog at http://www.gettingattention.org for more insights, ideas and great tips on attracting the attention your organization deserves.
NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the copyright and "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint.
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© 2002-2008, Nancy Schwartz & Company
Revised April 12, 2008
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