What nonprofit rebrands actually require (and why most fall short) comes down to whether it is considered a design project or a strategic alignment process in support of the organization’s mission and purpose. Nonprofits working on a rebrand often fall into the trap of treating it as a design project. Here’s why that’s not good…
A nonprofit rebrand is usually prompted by something: a transition, a program that’s outgrown its original framing, a merger, or simply the slow accumulation of years and the strategic changes that have been made along the way. Finally, someone realizes what’s probably been true for a while now: Our branding doesn’t represent us anymore.
Whatever the trigger, the branding decision gets made, a designer is hired, and several months later a new website and visual identity go live, often with great celebration. And then…something feels off. The colors are vibrant and consistent. The logo is cleaner. The messaging is more polished. Check, check, check. Despite all that, serious problems are lurking beneath the surface.
Serious problems are lurking
The organization’s community doesn’t quite recognize itself in the new brand. Staff members are using the new materials inconsistently, defaulting to old messaging in their day-to-day communications. Funders who loved the original identity aren’t sure what changed (or why). The rebrand certainly looks like progress, but it doesn’t feel like it.
After working with several dozen nonprofits through major brand projects, I’ve come to believe that this outcome is almost always traceable to the same root problem: the rebrand was treated as a design project when it was actually an alignment challenge.
The Three Brand Dimensions That Have to Align
Having a strong nonprofit brand means you have alignment across your team and other stakeholders. It works when three distinct things are identified and aligned:
- How your internal team understands the organization
- How your community and audience experience the organization
- Where your organization is headed
Miss any one of the three and you’ll create problems that no logo refresh or website update can hope to solve.
The Internal Dimension
The internal dimension is where most nonprofit rebrands start and often stop.
It’s promising enough at the beginning: Leadership has a solid vision. The executive director has a sense of what the organization stands for. A small working group develops some revamped messaging.
However, if that process doesn’t genuinely reflect how the broader team talks about the work, then what gets produced feels like something handed down from above.
Staff who weren’t part of the conversation often continue using their own language, their own explanations, and their own framings, because those actually match their experience. The new brand becomes simply a pretty document that lives in a folder (rather than a living identity).
It’s taking everyone’s idea of your organization and getting them internally aligned on what that picture looks like. Who are you as an organization, and how can that be conveyed?
The Community Dimension
The community dimension is trickier, and frequently overlooked. You also need your org’s brand to align with your community and the audience you’re trying to reach. Because that’s the goal of a nonprofit brand: to serve as the bridge connecting your community to your org.
A nonprofit’s brand doesn’t simply represent the organization to the world. It also represents the organization to the specific people it exists to serve. That’s almost always a different audience than your board, your major donors, and your corporate partners.
And when organizations design for credibility with funders without considering resonance with the wider community, they often end up with something that signals competence to one group while feeling alien to another.
The Future Dimension
The future dimension is subtler still.
The reality is that organizations evolve over time. The brand that accurately represented who you were five years ago may actually constrain who you’re working to become today.
A scrappy grassroots identity may make it more difficult to attract the institutional partners you now need. Or an identity built around a single program can make it harder to communicate your broader mission.
A rebrand done well accounts for not just who you are currently, but who you’re working toward becoming.
Gaining Alignment: Where the Difficulty Lies
Getting alignment across all three dimensions requires something most design processes don’t build in: real conversation with real stakeholders, including the people who will tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear.
The process of alignment means:
- Asking staff members (not simply core leadership) how they explain the organization’s work when they’re at a coffee shop with a friend
- Talking to program participants and community members about how they perceive your work, not simply how you want them to feel
- Sitting with honest questions about what the organization’s next chapter actually requires, instead of simply what feels comfortable to preserve
It’s clear why this often doesn’t happen. It’s always slower than the standard approach, and it may be uncomfortable for you and your team. It can also surface very real tensions within the organization that a pure design process would never touch. It can also require more investment of both time, money and resources.
However, it’s exactly the type of process that makes the difference between a rebrand that sticks and one that simply looks good in the announcement post.
The organizations I’ve seen build the strongest brands aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated designers. Instead, they’re the ones that approached the process as an opportunity to get clearer about who they actually are, and used the refreshed brand to communicate more fully and authentically their strategic direction.
Treating a rebrand as a strategic alignment process is always a harder project. However, it’s the more useful and sustainable one for organizations seeking to create longer term impact.
About the Author
Austin Hattox is principal of Pixel Lighthouse, an award-winning website agency dedicated to working with nonprofits, built on a decade-plus of experience in content writing, web design, and software development.
Austin began his career at Texas A&M University’s Natural Resources Institute developing websites for conservation organizations and web applications regarding military land use for the Department of Defense. After working for other creative agencies (building sites ranging from large ecommerce stores to international brands), Austin shifted his focus to working with nonprofits that more closely aligned with his values.
In his free time, Austin enjoys learning new languages, reading about world history, and spending time with his daughter.
FOOT NOTE FROM JBL STRATEGIES
Defining your organization’s strategy is key to brand and marketing development. Time and money can be wasted on building a new website or creating other marketing collateral if your positioning, messaging, and branding aren’t clear. A clearly defined strategic direction forms the basis for consistent positioning, messaging, and branding, and should be at the heart of all your marketing and communication, whether internal or external. To learn more read Jane’s blog Strategy key to brand and marketing development – JBL STRATEGIES