Is It Time for Your Organization to Rebrand Itself?

The sight of towering buildings and wave of yellow taxi cars; the smell of street food; the sound of the busy streets; the feel of shoulders tapping against mine, signaling me to to get out of their way; I know there is only one place I could be—New York City. A girl from Philly, I feel at home in the hustle and bustle of the crowd, but completely lost in the vast sea of skyscrapers.

I’m in the Big Apple for the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Fundraising Day. While there, I attended numerous presentations and met some fabulous fundraisers along the way. One presentation in particular that I enjoyed was titled “Fish or Fowl? Establishing Your Nonprofit’s Brand Personality,” presented by Farra Trompeter, VP of Big Duck, and Nancy Guida, VP of communications and marketing at New York Women’s Foundation.

This presentation caught my attention, because it brought up valid points about creating a rebranding strategy, highlighted an interesting case study and provided participants links to several valuable resources.

So, let’s talk about rebranding your nonprofit organization.

According to the presenters, 92 percent of organizations rebrand to explain their work better, 84 percent rebrand to improve their ability to fundraise, 83 percent rebrand to improve recruitment and 81 percent rebrand to communicate more professionally.

If your organization is looking to rebrand itself, you’re going to need to establish a brand strategy, which comprises of positioning and personality. Trompeter and Guida define positioning as “the single idea you hope to own in the minds of your target audiences—the first thing they should think of when they think of you” and personality as “the tone and style—the overarching feeling you want people to associate with you.”

To identify brand personality, the organization has to ask itself three questions:

1. What would be the organization’s mascot?
2. What would its theme song be?
3. Which actor or actress would play its role if it were in a movie?

A few pointers when establishing a brand personality are to be authentic and aspirational, to aggregate results and to test.

If your organization is still on the fence on whether or not it should rebrand itself, here’s a little graphic that should help:

To learn more about rebranding, click here.