Every nonprofit has its own mission and goals, but in order to truly make a difference and reach your audience, you need a strong brand and a clear voice. Your brand is what sets you apart from other organizations and helps people recognize the work you do in your community. Your voice is how you communicate your message and connect with your stakeholders who include the beneficiaries of your services and programs, the community impacted by your work, and donors.
But how do you go about finding your brand and voice as a nonprofit? In this post, we’ll explore some key steps you can take to discover and define what makes your organization unique, why it’s important to know your audience, and more about your tone and branding.
Define Your Mission and Vision
Before you can start building a brand and voice, you need to know what your organization is all about. Take some time to clearly define your mission and vision. This will help you understand what kind of messaging will resonate with your audience and what kind of image you want to portray.
Based on years of learning from organizations, we’ve defined mission and vision statements as the following:
Mission Statement: One succinct and somewhat timeless sentence that states what your organization does and for whom
Vision Statement: One succinct, inspirational, and somewhat timeless sentence that describes what the world will look like when your organization succeeds at its mission
Importantly, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the mission and vision. You want to be able to say that “if we succeed at our mission, then our vision is more likely to happen.”
Given this interrelationship, you can’t write a mission and vision statement in isolation from each other. They are two parts of a whole.
Engaging your team members in drafting and reviewing your mission and vision statements is an excellent way to keep them involved with the process. They serve as auditors for the organization.
Action to take now: Think about your mission and vision statement and what words and phrases best capture the essence of your work. Engage your team at your next staff meeting by asking, “What does our organization do? Who does our organization serve? And what will our community/world look like when our organization succeeds?”
Know Your Audience
To communicate effectively, you need to understand who you’re talking to. For nonprofits, you’ll have two audiences– the people you serve and those that fund them (your supporters/donors).
What motivates them? What kind of messaging will resonate with them? Getting to know your audience(s) will help you tailor your brand and voice to their needs and interests.
One tool that we have used to help focus on our main audience is by developing audience personas. Establishing audience personas can help you visualize who your supporters are, what their demographics may be, and what communication style will resonate with them. By narrowing your focus to specific supporters, you can create targeted messaging that speaks directly to their needs. This helps build a relationship with your supporters and fosters greater engagement.
Creating an audience persona doesn't have to be a daunting task, start by pinpointing the unique characteristics of your ideal supporter and build from there. The more detailed and specific your persona, the more effective your messaging will be at resonating with them. Collect as much information as possible for the persona including demographics, behavior patterns, interests, motivations, and pain points. It's also essential to consider your nonprofit's mission and how it relates to your audience's values and concerns.
Action to take now: Consider creating audience personas to help you picture your ideal supporters and constituents and craft messages that speak directly to their needs.
Identify Your Unique Value Proposition
What sets your organization apart from others in your field? What are your strengths? What are you doing that no one else is? These are questions to ask yourself to determine your organization’s unique value proposition, and it’s a key part of your brand. Being able to succinctly tell your nonprofit’s story including your mission, vision, and values, who you serve, and what makes you unique will help people remember you and will make you stand out from the crowd.
Action to take now: Identify your strengths and what makes you different and make sure that comes across in your messaging.
Choose Your Tone of Voice
Once you know what you want to say, you need to figure out how you want to say it. Your tone of voice is the way you convey your message – it’s the emotional and expressive aspect of your brand. Choosing the right tone is important – it will depend on your mission, audience, and unique selling proposition. At the heart of your mission, do you want to be inspiring, authoritative, friendly, or something else?
Action to take now: Think about what kind of voice will best communicate your mission and values and begin using that tone in all of your communications.
Visual Brand
A visual brand is not just about having a fancy logo or a catchy tagline. It's about creating an experience for your target audience. Everything from the typography and colors to the images and layout of your website or marketing materials is an opportunity to communicate your brand message. People remember visuals more easily than words, which is why having a strong and memorable visual brand is crucial. Your brand's visual identity is one of the first things that people see and may play a role in someone remembering what impact your nonprofit makes in your community. So, it's important to invest time and resources in creating a cohesive visual brand that accurately represents your nonprofit.
Action to take now: Design a logo and choose a color scheme that represents your nonprofit's values and mission. Don't underestimate the power of fonts and typography; they can also communicate a lot about your organization's personality and style. Begin using these items in all of your communications.
Be Consistent
Once you’ve figured out your brand and voice, it’s important to be consistent. Whether it’s in your email newsletters, social media posts, or annual report, your messaging should be consistent across all channels. This will help reinforce your brand and make it easier for people to recognize and remember you.
You control your nonprofit’s story and the way you share it. Here are some examples of the way nonprofits inspire others by the stories they tell and how they tell them.
Integrate Branding Into Your Strategic Plan
If all of this seems like a lot to consider, we strongly suggest that you include this work as a component of your strategic plan. It’s not unusual for our clients to include marketing or branding as a “focus area” of their plan, complete with a few key goals. This is what this could look like:
Focus Area: Branding
Three-year Vision: Within three years we will have established a clear brand with stories and marketing collateral to back it up.
One-year Goals
Task Force: Create a small branding task force comprised of two staff members and two board members.
Brand Qualities: Identify the top three qualities of our nonprofit’s brand.
Brand Standards: Establish a set of brand standards and train our staff and board on their use.
Conclusion
Finding your brand and voice as a nonprofit requires some soul-searching and strategy, but it’s worth it in the end. A strong brand and clear voice will cut through the noise and make people take notice of the great work you’re doing. By defining your mission and values, knowing your audience, identifying your unique selling proposition, choosing your tone of voice, and being consistent, you can create a brand and voice that truly represents your organization and helps you make an impact.