Behind the scenes: nonprofit rebrands

Rebranding an organization is a journey we know well and we’ve had the pleasure of working with hundreds of organizations over 30 years. Branding processes often represent times of significant change for an organization, with lots of ups and downs along the way.  In the spirit of helping more nonprofits benefit from each other’s experiences, we’ve gathered a selection of interviews and reflections from several organizations about their rebranding processes.

What do you do when your name no longer represents your mission or community?

While Big Duck has assisted in renaming several organizations, the journey is unique to each. Understanding what’s involved in changing your nonprofit’s name, including thoughts about why to do it and how to craft an inclusive process is a great place to start. As shared by the John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity, a thoughtful and inclusive process makes sure your name resonates with diverse audiences and truly reflects your mission.  

You also need to expect the unexpected. You may go into the rebranding process standing firmly in the belief that your organization will not be changing its name and during the brand strategy process determine that to reach key audiences, a name change is essential. Camp Havaya found they needed a new name as they were focusing more on their future and wanted to lead with their core values as they were growing.

Should our organization fully rebrand or refresh?

We talk about brand strategy a lot here at Big Duck. We believe conducting research and defining your communication goals, audience priorities, positioning (the main idea you want to be associated with you), and personality (the ideal tone and style) are how you should start any branding process. This clarity guides necessary changes to your visuals and messaging, including a full rebrand or opting for an evolution, as was the case with the National Council of Nonprofits.

Many organizations are also actively committed to justice, antiracism, or pursuing anti-colonialism. These organization and community-wide practices are also important to integrate early in the process. RefugePoint benefited greatly from refining its visual identity and developing new messaging to reflect its mission and renewed commitments.

Should branding be centralized and controlled or distributed and shared?

Beyond Brandraising®, our team incorporates concepts from other branding frameworks, including brand democracy, from The Brand IDEA, which involves creating a brand that represents everyone. It ensures all stakeholders feel included, share power, and make communications genuinely reflect the communities served. This approach felt particularly relevant as we worked with Ipas on developing a brand and suite of tools that can be used and customized by field offices around the world. 

Branding goes even further when you engage your staff in the journey. Shriver Center on Poverty Law designed its branding process with deep participation from staff, board, donors, and other partners which led to a more authentic and unified brand. Beyond an inclusive branding process, Community Change also launched a team-based “brand challenge” to motivate their passionate staff to become effective ambassadors. Once completed, they found that their staff had a deeper understanding of the brand, where to go for more information, and who to engage with questions.  

What kind of results can we expect from branding?

A nonprofit’s brand should advance its mission and everyone on the team should be trained on what’s in the brand guide and how to use it. The Chinese-American Planning Council recognized the value of providing tools their staff could use, across many different programs and neighborhoods, and soon saw that when staff are set up as brand ambassadors they could reach new participants and funders. Similarly, when Blue Engine updated its brand strategy, messaging, and visuals, day-to-day communication about the organization was easier.

Is it time to update our brand?

Branding takes significant time and resources–and it’s important to have clear reasons for doing it. Some of the top reasons we see are nonprofits exploring a rebrand or refresh include:

• You want to shake off an old image.
• You want to connect with new audiences or are failing to engage current ones.
• Your language and/or visuals are outdated and not inclusive.
• You’re failing to differentiate yourself from your peers.
• You’ve moved or expanded beyond your original geography.
• You’ve merged with another organization.
• You are known for the wrong things or not at all (aka “best kept secret”).

If you are unsure or want to learn more about how we approach this work, please contact us.