Launching a campaign or rebrand? Start with vision.

Frequently, during a branding or capital campaign project, someone in the organization will pause a discussion and ask, “Why are we doing this now?” 

Sometimes this person, often a member of the board or leadership team, hasn’t been looped into major conversations and they need to catch up. Other times, however, by asking, “Why?” this person is surfacing larger issues around alignment at your organization.

Maybe you started a branding process because your logo feels dated or your name is causing confusion. Perhaps you decided to launch a capital campaign to raise general operating support.

These aren’t necessarily bad reasons, but there are likely bigger visions behind those reasons. If your logo looks stale, you might feel that it doesn’t express your vision for the organization. If you need unrestricted funds, you probably have a vision for the future of your organization that these funds will help you achieve.

It’s around those visions that you need to make sure you have alignment with your staff and board members.

We are using vision broadly here. It’s true that defining everything that makes up your vision for the organization—from where you’d like to see your organization in the next 5–10 years to the values that drive your work to your programmatic goals to alignment around your actual mission and so much more—is the stuff of strategic planning.

At Big Duck, we’ve found that our work is most successful after an organization has gone through a strategic planning process. But for both branding and capital campaigns, alignment around why you’re investing in this work right now is the most important thing.

If you are not sure, start by asking these questions and make sure that your staff and board agree and can answer these questions the same way–or at least with enough consensus that the path forward is clear:

• What does the next phase of our organization look like that a new brand can help express?
• Where are we going as an organization that this capital campaign will help us fund?

Investing in new brand assets or all of the identity and materials required for a capital campaign is expensive. Align your team around your vision first, so that it’s completely clear why now is the time to make that investment. Not only will you have more buy-in for these initiatives, but the result will be much more compelling.