Skip to main content

Five Nonprofit Branding Tips


How do you establish a distinct identity in the minds of potential supporters? I’m glad you asked.  The Fundraising Fundamentals blog at http://www.andrewolsen.net/mark-cubans-advice-for-your-nonprofit/blog)  offered branding tips from entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Here are the tips(My comments are in parentheses):
1. Don’t make educating your donors the focus of your communications. Meet them where they are – not where you want them to be. (Don’t tell them what you want or what your mission is or what you need. Concentrate on explaining how donations or volunteering will benefit them in some way. The most obvious way to do that is to show people how their support will reduce domestic violence or clean up the river.)
 2. Forget the witty, brainy, philosophical branding campaigns that are designed to “make donors think.” They don’t want to think. They want to help. Show them in simple terms how they can help. (Take the direct approach. If you are the only nonprofit supporting microfinance programs in Jannu and Kasmir India, say you need money for that.)
 3. Focus your fundraising on the most urgent, tangible and solvable problems faced by those you serve. (Keep your “sales pitch” positive – “The money will help a widow start a business and provide for her three children.”)
 4. Ensure your brand communicates your value proposition – what your impact is on the community – not the programs and services you provide. (Again, keep it simple and concrete – “empowering  Nepalese women entrepreneurs” is a decent start.)
 5. Tell stories that are emotionally engaging and easy to digest. (All of our decisions tend to be based on emotion. Facts and logic do help out. Try to get people to feel  a certain action is right, sensible, or consistent with their values. X)

How is your organization doing in each of those five areas? Pick one thing that needs work and  start improving it this month.
Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 9, 2013 at 10:48 AM

    I think your first point is an excellent point. Something very obvious and straightforward but also something so rare to see in modern advertising campaigns. I was around the office when synergyagency.co.uk were working with a large NFP and they had it spot on. It's so uncommon to see branding executed well in the modern climate, too many corporate cultures creeping in!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Think About Social Problems, Part I

Whenever a problem like gun violence or illegal immigration gains traction in the media, you'll find people misrepresenting the problem. The world is full of uninformed people, but the world is also full of dishonest actors trying to "sell" an idea. This post is the first of several where I will try to help the curious reader defend themselves from the fools and con artists and understand social problems, for real.  Confirmation bias is just the tendency to look for information that confirms what we already know or think. Everyone wants to be right, and the more important the subject is, the more the person wants to continue being right. Information that shows we're right gets more weight than information showing we are wrong. So, with that psychological note in mind, let's look at the outline of a formula for thinking about social problems.  Abusing Statistics - Raw Numbers A real thinker always gives numbers a context and always uses the right kind of numbers. A...
Post a Comment
Read more

Strategic Thinking and the Bandwagon Effect: Or Why the Effort Doesn't Always Match the Need

Unless things have changed in recent years, teen boys commit suicide and engage in high-risk behaviors at much higher rates than teen girls. For purposes of this strategic thinking post it doesn't matter why. Good strategic thinking only requires that those concerned about addressing the needs of troubled teens are really put most of their resources where most of the resources are needed. This isn't always how things work out, and not only when it comes to preventing teen suicide and drug use. The bandwagon effect is dangerous tendency to do what other people are doing, because that's what people are doing. I don't mean to imply that copying other organizations is a bad practice. Funding organizations like programs that seemed to have worked in other places at other times. Want to help keep kids out of trouble? Use the self-esteem and decision-making lessons that have been used in 255 other schools in recent years. Even in such cases, copying isn't always a go...
Post a Comment
Read more