Chances are, you regularly recognize logos of brands you see in everyday life. For example, most people recognize the golden arch of McDonald’s or the iconic Apple logo. Their branding is strong and distinctive enough that you may even instinctively trust those brands. After all, you know them, they’re familiar, and you just may be more likely to pick something with their brand than the one you’ve never heard of.
Although you may think this brand recognition is only for big companies, the truth of the matter is that it’s just as important to your nonprofit.
After all, you likely recognize the colors and fonts used by the Red Cross and PBS, and to your audience, your materials need to be just as recognizable.
In an increasingly crowded sector, using your brain to tell the best story about yourself is the easiest way to differentiate yourself from other organizations to attract donations and even talent.
In both cases, if they feel inspired by your story, they’re more likely to support you, just the way they would do any business.
Here are some of the important steps you can take to identify your brand:
Determine the story you want to tell
When developing your nonprofit branding strategy, the first step you have to take is to write down the specifics of what your brand is. This is how you come to understand the story that you want your brand to convey.
You need to ask yourself what you want your organization to be known for. Try to rely on descriptive and factual language.
For example, you may want to be known for being a warm and compassionate nonprofit that helps families in need. Perhaps on the other spectrum, you may want to be seen as a forward-thinking, no-nonsense nonprofit determined to fight for families in their time of need.
Both of these represent the same cause, but the language related describes each in a very different way. This is where you can begin to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Pick colours and fonts for your brand
Once you understand how you want your nonprofit to come across, you can begin picking brand colours and fonts that reflect who you are as a brand.
Different colours can have different connotations, so you have to pick something that is in line with the descriptive words you’re using.
For example, blues and greens could be perceived as cold, clinical, and clean. They’re also very authoritative colours that work well for medical settings. Reds and oranges are seen as warm and friendly colours. If your nonprofit is trying to be seen as “caring”, then blue may not be the best option.
It’s a similar story when it comes to fonts. Fonts with harsh lines and pointed edges aren’t seen as “open” or “friendly” in comparison to fonts that use smooth corners and flowing lines. Once you have a firm grasp on what story you want to tell with your brand, picking the appropriate colours and fonts will be easy.
Build your brand guidelines
Once you know how to talk about your nonprofit, you can start pulling together your branding guidelines. You can use a nonprofit branding template to help organize yourself.
At a minimum, you want to include your company mission statement, what fonts and brand colours to use, acceptable uses of your logo, and some key descriptive words. These can be the ones you initially outlined when you developed your brand.
You also have to consider how your brand will translate to different platforms. For events, you want to have high-quality versions of your logo to make them available for banners or another stall branding. On your nonprofit’s website, you have more room to add information and design than you would on a social media post.
When creating your brand guidelines, you can mind map off the possible touch points you’re likely to have with your audience and make sure each medium of application is accounted for. Events, websites, social media, and various print materials are the main ones, but you may find other uses.