Branding 1, 2, 3

Don’t be afraid to be strategic. Simmons says he often sees nonprofit clients concerned about how slick or polished their brand is because they don’t want to appear to be corporate or look as though they aren’t managing their funds properly. It’s about striking a balance.

“There should be no shame for a nonprofit organization to act and present themselves professionally,” Simmons says. “The last hurdle often seems to be either design, advertising, marketing, PR, branding, those sort of creative services tend to be viewed for some reason in a slightly different light. There’s a fear that the perception will be that they’re either spending too much arbitrarily or not allocating resources in terms of their time and energy appropriately — putting too much towards image, not enough towards substance.”