Your brand is your organization’s identity. It’s what your audiences encounter, think, and feel as a result of their experiences with you. Your nonprofit’s visuals and messaging can be unclear and disjointed or clear and powerful.
Big Duck builds strong brands for the long haul to help you communicate in more compelling ways. A rebrand expresses a new strategic plan, the vision of a new leader, an audacious theory of change, or other seismic organizational shifts. A brand refresh may focus on changing just a few key aspects of your brand, such as evolving your logo or creating a new tagline, and can help ensure your communications reflect who you are. Updating your brand, whether you’re making small or large changes, should advance your mission and help you grow.
Our branding services include:
Audience research and profiles
Brand strategy (goals, audiences, positioning, and personality)
Naming and tagline
Logo, visual system, and brand guides
Brand architecture strategy
Messaging (vision, mission, values, elevator pitch)
Rollout plan and launch materials
Website strategy, copy, and design consulting
Big Duck has been developing brand strategies and nonprofit identities since 1994. We tailor our branding process to your organization and build on the work you’ve already done by seamlessly combining elements of strategic planning, rebranding, and communications. Our founder, Sarah Durham, even wrote the sector’s most widely regarded book on nonprofit branding (it’s called Brandraising).
Our step-by-step brandraising process clarifies and activates your organization’s identity. We’ll craft your brand strategy, messaging, and visuals and provide a comprehensive brand guide and training so that everyone on your team has tools to manage and market your brand.
In addition to producing stellar strategic and creative work, Big Duck’s staff of strategists, designers, writers, and account managers will help you manage other variables that influence the success of your branding project. That includes leading an inclusive process, navigating buy-in, managing your board’s participation, prioritizing multiple audiences, and more.
Big Duck gets to the core of what your organization’s communications must accomplish to advance your mission.
We intended to blow the roof off our communications. Big Duck has helped us do that and more. Our voice is clear, direct, and rings true to the work we do every day to dismantle oppression. Everyone on our team has the tools to tell our story, and together, we’re connecting with and inspiring the next generation to get involved in our cases.
Audience research and profiles
What motivates community members to donate, join, or act–and what are the best ways to reach them? Big Duck’s strategists can conduct research to understand how your audiences perceive your brand, what values or beliefs they share, and generate ideas for where and how to engage them. After conducting research, we’ll create profiles or summaries you can use to inform decisions related to branding, communications, fundraising, or membership.
Brand strategy
Brand strategy includes positioning (the primary idea you want people to associate with your organization) and personality (the ideal tone and style for all communications). Big Duck develops your organization’s brand strategy by conducting comprehensive research and facilitating workshops where we help teams align around goals and audiences and define what makes your organization unique. A clear brand strategy helps identify what elements of your brand need to change and offers direction to inform those changes.
Naming and tagline
Our writers create names and taglines for your organization and/or programs to help audiences identify you and better understand your work. Our naming and tagline processes involve several iterations as we gather and integrate feedback.
Logo, visual system, and brand guides
Big Duck’s in-house designers expertly craft logos and visual assets that express your nonprofit’s brand strategy clearly and powerfully. Beyond logos, we consider color palettes, type choices, approach to imagery/illustration, and real-world applications as we develop your brand expression. We also develop editable and accessible brand guides and conduct trainings to ensure your team can use the brand across communications channels and everyday situations.
Brand architecture strategy
Big Duck examines and redefines the relationships between your programs, events, initiatives, and your primary brand. We develop guidelines to inform future sub-brands and can develop new names or logo systems.
Messaging
Effective messaging can help your staff and board members write and speak with greater clarity, consistency, and impact. Big Duck develops overarching messaging that helps your team explain your organization, persuasive messaging to motivate a particular audience to take a specific action (for instance, to make a significant gift), and interim messaging during a period of change or transition (for example, when there’s a change in leadership). We can also facilitate deep research and/or craft new ways to express your vision, mission, and values statements to better align with your new brand strategy.
Rollout plan and launch materials
We’ll work with your staff to develop a plan to launch your new brand, scaled to match your resources (budget, staff time, and more). The rollout plan will detail the channels, tools, and timing, and help you navigate the challenges of phasing out old materials and going “live.” We can also create new templates or write and design new collateral (brochures, presentations, reports, fact sheets, etc.) to bring your new brand to life.
Website strategy, copy, and design consulting
Once we have an approved identity, we’ll assess the initial website designs to confirm that the brand is translating well as it is applied to the website. We can also support copywriting by training your team to write for the web, editing existing language, or drafing key pages. For some organizations, we also provide deeper feedback on content strategy, copy, or design.
Models, movements, and coalitions
Big Duck regularly works with coalitions and groups of nonprofits to define the messaging, marks, and other elements that unite and represent the voice of their collaboration or movement. We also help organizations visualize and explain unique programmatic models and frameworks in simple, clear terms that make them easier to explain, share, and scale.
Over the years, Big Duck has helped us shape the voice of our organization. We’ve leveraged that brand in our programs, fundraising, and advocacy efforts, establishing our leadership and engaging people to join our cause. We’ve more than doubled our annual budget, funded life-saving research, and passed legislation along the way. Big Duck has helped us refine and shape our identity at every stage.
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