Rebranding Your Nonprofit to Elevate Your Fundraising Potential

By Kalie VanDewater

A brand is more than just an organization’s logo and name. For nonprofits, a brand can bring in new supporters and pull together their community — if done correctly.

“A strong nonprofit brand really drives growth for the organization from an action perspective, but it also works to reinforce the mission and clarify the mission,” Shawn Lyon, vice president of marketing strategy at Breakthrough T1D, said during a session at the Nonprofit Fundraisers Symposium, hosted by Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW) and The Nonprofit Alliance, in Washington, D.C.

Before its rebranding in 2024, Breakthrough T1D was known as JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). Juvenile diabetes is a former name for Type 1 diabetes, which the “T1D” represents in the nonprofit’s new name.

“Our brand was really playing a role in misperceptions for what we do — and the community that we are welcoming into our organization,” Lyon said during the session, entitled “Changing/Evolving Your Brand.”

To help other nonprofit professionals considering changing their organizations’ brands, Lyon and other nonprofit leaders who have gone through the rebranding process shared insights and tips they learned along the way.

Do Your Research

The first step of any rebranding effort is to evaluate how your constituents see your nonprofit and how they fit into the puzzle.

For instance, Scouting America — formerly Boy Scouts of America — began accepting girls into its affiliate Exploring programs in 1969, and allowed them to join the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts programs starting in 2018. Today, girls make up 20% of the membership, Michael Ramsey, the organization’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said. However, he pointed out that the former name implies that the organization only accepts boys.

Additionally, as the nonprofit discovered through focus groups consisting of Scout-aged youth who were not in the program and the parents of elementary and middle school children who were not in Scouts, 60% of people said they had never thought about joining.

“The good news was when they did think about the brand, they thought about the rank of the Eagle Scout; they thought about camping and character and leadership,” Ramsey said. “We literally had moms in sessions go, ‘Maybe if my daughter makes the rank of Eagle Scout, it'll be easier for her to get into college’ — beautiful insights that just kept coming out. It was really great.”

With those insights in hand, Scouting America put together a plan to refresh its brand to reintroduce people to and reinforce its mission.

Similarly, Breakthrough T1D’s research found that people who should have been part of its community felt excluded or didn’t know about the organization’s mission, partly because of the “juvenile” piece of JDRF’s name.

“Our name, JDRF, was really confusing to people,” Lyon said. “For people with Type 1 [diabetes] and their caregivers — our core audience that we were trying to work with, on behalf of, and target for donations and advocacy actions, community events, that sort of thing — 63% of people with [Type 1 diabetes] and their caregivers told us that our old name gave them less confidence in our mission.”

Be Confident in Your Rebrand

Of course, you may encounter some resistance to your rebrand. Because your mission and brand are so ingrained, internal stakeholders may see this as a shift away from the mission.

“Change management is hard,” Lyon said. “When you're changing the foundation of how an organization sees and talks about itself, it's really, really difficult, so that confidence and humility, being able to listen but also stand firm in the data, what we know was right for the organization, is really important.”

Additionally, it can be helpful to remind stakeholders that changing your branding doesn’t necessarily mean everything about your organization. Take Corus International, for example. The organization has roots in two longstanding international non-governmental organizations — Lutheran World Relief and IMA World Health — that decided to merge into one.

However, creating the brand was complicated by the fact that Lutheran World Relief had two subsidiaries — an impact investing firm and a consumer-facing brand — and IMA World Health had acquired a for-profit technology consultancy. With the wide array of missions, the new organization chose to continue using the names of each individual organization while tying them together under the umbrella of Corus International. To keep things cohesive, Lutheran World Relief, IMA World Health and the other brands adopted the new Corus International logo.

“A rebrand doesn't have to be all or nothing,” Lauren Bauer, senior director of marketing and communications at Corus International, said. “It can be a new name, a new logo, a new personality for your brand, if that's needed, or a new restructure.”

Communicate and Connect With Supporters

While it’s important to have your internal stakeholders buy into your nonprofit’s new brand, it’s just as critical to connect with your donors and other supporters about it to make sure their voices are being heard.

“Every aspect of our fundraising, from peer-to-peer through major gifts, really leveraged this brand change opportunity as a way to reconnect with supporters, to re-engage and to inspire,” said Susan Carter, senior vice president of philanthropic engagement at Breakthrough T1D. “We even extended it through our direct response program, where we were able to do a one-click survey digitally to learn more about what people look to us for, what stories they heard, what breakthrough they are most excited about.”

As the nonprofit looks ahead to the next fiscal year, Carter and her team have revisited these surveys to help the organization re-engage. Communicating with constituents about a rebrand is not a one-and-done situation, she explained, but an ongoing need.

“Just keep explaining it,” she said. “It's a process leading up, it's a process after; it's not an event. The whole marketing [idea] that you have to see something 10 times before you're ready to take action — well, people are going to have to see this repeatedly. So, here we are several months out from our brand launch, and we're still reinforcing it in our communications.”

Consider Hiring a Consultant

A final consideration for starting the rebranding process is whether to hire a consultant. While not a necessity, it can be helpful to get input from experts outside of your organization to ensure your decisions make sense.

“It's great to have that objective perspective,” Bauer said. “Oftentimes, your consultants will tell you what you already know, but it's good to have those people that are a few hundred miles away with a briefcase helping you influence your board and your executive team.”