Branding Success:

Between Mind and Heart

In the realities and challenges we, together, face as individuals, as family and as a community, it is important for nonprofit organizations to establish a well-defined emotional public awareness. Without high emotional awareness, donors aren’t as likely to open their pocketbooks. Here are a few thoughts to ponder in your marketing efforts…

1. Follow the Leaders: Why reinvent the wheel when a proven template is already at hand? Red Cross, Salvation Army and United Way have emotional awareness strategies working in every name recognition, marketing campaign, and call-to-action when situations call for immediate monetary response. Why reinvent the wheel when it can be simply tailored to your mission?
2. Emotional Branding Strategies: Your mission activates a conscious/unconscious response in viewers who come in contact with your mission message no matter what form in which it is delivered. Today anyone can become a major ally and contributor for your organization and they respond best when they are moved by powerful stories of how your work affects the lives of those you serve.
3. Mission Statement Clarity: It all starts here. Three paragraphs at maximum, which can be distilled down to a two sentence elevator speech. Not only does it need to be clear and concise, it also should focus on what you do, believe in and it must reflect or imply an end result. From this foundation statement, all your other communications and messages evolve.
4. Image & Identity: Simply put, a cool logo or icon alone won’t get you effectively well-branded. Your name, your identity, your uniqueness must evolve from your mission statement and be reflected in color, typography, and ease of reproduction. An important cornerstone of your branding strategy, it must illustrate the essence of your organization, so your identity becomes as familiar as a well-worn pair of shoes.
5. Successful Copy Writing: The way you write and the tone you use re-enforce your mission statement. This is especially evident in fund-raising efforts where the temptation is to overstate and plead for funding. Success-oriented copy will drive the appropriate call-to-action when overlaid over a well thought out emotion-provoking mission statement.
6. Global Web Strategies: Think and visualize beyond your physical location. Today’s web presence calls out to like-minded people and their missions in unexpected places. Building mission digital partnerships between people and cultures, is another way both missions will benefit.
7. Effective Presentations: While, an effective presentation should revolve around a slide show that effectively reinforces brand, remember that the shorter slide show is generally better, giving your presenter the time and freedom to express themselves! Your message will be not just heard, but remembered when the presenter offers personal and emotional from-the-heart content laced with concise bullet points and heartrending images.
8. Fundraising - Friends, Partners & Supporters: A friend may identify with your mission and seasonally volunteer for community programs, but show no inclination to financially support your efforts. A partner may financially support you, but be unresponsive when larger financial amounts are needed. Supporters may send in contributions based on personal fulfillment for one’s soul but still have no connection, or understanding of your mission. Avoid the typical nonprofit for funds approach. Make your fundraising efforts educational, as well as, call-to-action driven. Keep it short, specific and to single-mission topics.
9. Mission, Family & Foundation: From mission staff, board members, volunteers, contributors, to partners you are one big family with the same mission mind-set going out into the world to spread the mission unto all. Make sure you are all on the same page, with a consistent message that is easily turned into a mantra that gets others involved.
10. Mission Fortitude: Your mission is more than a 2, or 5, or 10-year business plan and is much more than the mission statement itself. The mission is a way of life and of mind. You are not alone in experiencing the effects of your mission. Keep the mission alive; live and breathe the mission and promote it.