In an increasingly crowded marketplace charities have to appeal to a more discerning supporter base than ever before. Hannah Gannagé-Stewart uncovers the key to successful branding
Historically, charities have had strong brands. Most people can reel off a list of reputable and identifiable charities within seconds. It is the nature of charity to encourage a sense of belonging among its supporters. If you are willing to support a cause that is close to your heart, with the exception of some stigmatised causal areas, being overtly associated with it is deemed to be positive. That’s why big appeals are regularly promoted by the wearing of symbols: poppies, red noses, daffodils or a myriad of coloured ribbons are all worn to symbolise support for various causes.
In recent years the wearing of wristbands to demonstrate support for a cause has also become popular and as corporate partnerships increase in prevalence, it isn’t just individuals that seek to align their identity with that of a charity brand, businesses do too. For the most part, the strength of branding is just as crucial in the non-profit sector as it is to profit-making businesses. Arguably, the only difference between the two is that whereas corporates have to work hard to establish an emotional link between their product and the consumer, charities are appealing to emotion as a fundamental part of what they do.
Chicken or egg?
It’s hard to know what came first in long-established charities. Was a brand conceived to attract support, or did the cause give rise to the brand? After all, a strong brand should include a mission; a unique selling point that differentiates it from competitors and gives it an exclusive identity. Charities should be established on the basis of a proposition – they exist to achieve or change something, what better foundation for a brand?
In the case of the NSPCC, the Full-Stop campaign became the brand. The charity had been working to prevent cruelty to children for more than a century when, in 1995, they began thinking of a new campaign to celebrate the millennium. Giles Pegram, who was director of fundraising at the charity from 1979 until last year, said that the team where “bowled over” when Jim Harding, the then chief executive, proposed that they launch a campaign to stop cruelty to children completely.
It was a monumental proposition. Could it even be done? Because they fully intended it to become their brand going forward, it was vital that they tested the reaction of their supporters. “We did a lot of work in terms of research, and people told us, ‘surely you couldn’t have a smaller aspiration as the NSPCC. It’s the obvious thing you should be doing. Of course you’re not going to succeed, or at least not in anybodies lifetime, but it is the right aspiration’.” Pegram explains. That aspiration launched one of the most successful campaigns in history, taking the charity’s income from £50m to £150m per year and establishing a brand with a completely unique mission.
Marian Rose recently became the head of fundraising and communications at Tree Aid, a small charity working to alleviate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to that she worked at major brands including the NSPCC, where she helped to launch the Full-Stop Campaign. She remembers the focus groups that the charity ran during the development of the campaign to reveal the external perception of the charity. Rose said: “We asked people to imagine they were walking down a corridor and each room was a different children’s charity, and asked ‘how do you react as you walk past those rooms?’. They said Childline had women on the phone, they were really friendly, and you wanted to go in there, pick up the phone and help them. When it came to NSPCC, they said they wanted to put some money under the door because they were frightened of the issues that were being dealt with.”
Like many of the issues that charities deal with, child abuse is a dark and painful subject to bring to people’s attention. It is human nature to reject notions that cause emotional pain, and that is something that charities working in these areas must find ways round when creating a brand identity. According to Rose, the NSPCC was perceived not only as frightening but as cold and institutional. In order to devise a brand that the public would choose to support it had to become more appealing, so they decided to retain the authority that an institutional perception gave them, and enlisted the Full-Stop campaign as a solution to the painful issues the charity sought to address.
Solution not need
Donors know that there is a beneficiary, they know that there is a need, and they know that you are appealing to them for help. What is less known is how that help will make a difference. In today’s climate, impact is arguably the most pivotal element of your brand. Whether it is communicating with grant-makers, philanthropists or individual donors, the likely question will be ‘why should I give to you?’, and why should they? Despite the many challenges the sector faces, there is a great deal of choice for donors. Not only must they choose which cause to support, they have to decide who is doing the best job of addressing the need within that cause.
Steven Dodds is a branding expert at United, a creative agency for non-profits. He has witnessed an increasing number of charities seeking help to reposition their brands as competition for funding and differentiation has become fiercer. “If you look at the successful brands in the charity arena, they tend to focus on solutions rather than a need”, Dodds says. “People want to know the difference that their money is going to make and you need to wrap that up in the brand. For local charities, their locality is a big part of that and they should not be shy about using that to create points of difference from charities that are larger.”
Rose agrees that being a smaller organisation is beneficial. After several years working in national charities she welcomes the opportunity to get closer to the cause and explains that brand realignment strategies employed by large charities are easily scaled down for smaller organisations. “The advantage of being smaller is you’re in much closer contact with your supporters. It’s not such a mission to go out and ask them what they think because you talk to them everyday and you can do it more informally. Map what your current brand position is, then look at your desired brand position and whether there is a difference, and if there are attributes or features that you want to change.”
One of Rose’s main objectives at Tree Aid is to increase the current donor base. In order to identify the sub-sector of the UK population that is likely to support the charity, she has consulted generally published information on giving trends and donor behaviour. The charity also uses student volunteers to research branding methods. Rose explains that there is no shame in approaching experts for pro bono advice. She says that experts in larger charities are often willing to help, and although agencies are primarily looking to be paid for their services, if you’ve already done the bulk of the thinking yourself they may be willing to help out on technical advice.
Dodds agrees, but warns about cutting corners. “It’s easier to get it wrong than to get it right. That doesn’t mean that you have to go out and recruit a big swanky branding agency, but you do need some good advice from people that know what they’re talking about”, he said. Rebranding is not something that should be done on a regular basis. If the brand is to remain constant in the minds of stakeholders it should only rebrand when a charities’ objectives diversify, or when so much time has elapsed that it has become outdated. Dodds suggests every decade or so is probably about right for the average organisation.
One of the techniques that Dodds has employed for the charities he works with is semiotics. It isn’t cheap, but as it doesn’t need to be done often, he believes it is worth the outlay. In literal terms semiotics, is the analysis of the signs, symbols and lexicon within a particular sector. It identifies less conscious messages that brands are sending out in the area that an organisation operates within, so that the brand can associate with those recognisable properties while identifying its unique differences.
Brand raising
In smaller charities branding is an integral part of the fundraising department. As Rose and Dodds point out, it is the fundraisers that have the most contact with external perceptions. Dodds believes that the fact that these two functions are often more divorced in larger charities is actually a disadvantage.
Family Resource Centre UK is a Berkshire charity that works to support families. Historically a family information service, it worked closely with local authorities and was heavily reliant on government funding. When Heather Hunter took over as CEO 18 months ago, the charity was about to have almost all of its statutory funding cut. Hunter knew that it would have to diversify to survive, but was concerned that in doing so it might appear to be deviating from its established identity.
She decided to drive the organisation forward by operating within four strands that tie into the charity’s family support remit: information, education, health and sport. The charity partnered with the School of Hoops youth sports initiative and in doing so came into contact with the projects brand manager, Luke Bowler.
“I had to bring somebody like Luke in because he knew what he was doing on branding”, explains Hunter. “Even six months ago, if I had gone to Reading Borough Council, who have funded us for years, and said ‘we want to move into sport’, they would have said ‘what do you know about sport?’.” With Luke on board, she says the organisation has been able to demonstrate to external stakeholders how its new operations meet its expertise.
With Bowler’s branding expertise, it is now easier for the charity to identify projects that suit its brand. Strategically threading a consistent brand message through everything the organisation does has increased staff engagement, opened channels of communication with potential funders and is leading the charity towards its next goal of reaching out to individual donors – something it has never tried to do before.
“It would have been more difficult to approach an individual donor base with something that was in the pipeline or something that might happen six months from now” said Bowler. “With the advent of social media, if you’re not doing what you say you’re doing, it is going to get heard. And it’s going to get heard in a timeframe that you can’t do anything about.”
Bowler sums up what is possibly the root importance of brand consistency – put simply, organisations can’t keep up with the rate at which consumers move. What they can do is adapt. If a charity’s identity is strong and present in everything that they do, then spotting the windows of opportunity to embrace change will be easier. Decisions will not be delayed by queries over whether or not a move into a new area, project or funding model, will threaten a charities’ external perception. Staff will be engaged, donors will be proud advocates and the impact will speak for itself.
This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 9, September 2011
