Crafting your Non-Profit's Brand Voice

We’ve spent the last few weeks chatting about some practical tips for getting your social media foundation built up, so, I hope that by now you’ve built up a ferarri of a social media machine :)  But, as we all know, the best vehicle in the world is nothing without the right kind of fuel.  And that’s what we’re talking about today: the fuel that will ignite your social media presence.

What is that fuel?  It’s the ‘voice’ you use to communicate with the world.  In the business world, they call this your ‘brand personality’. It really is a great concept because people nowadays don’t want to get involved with organizations, they want to get involved with people (remember how the majority of people volunteer because friends ask them to?).  Today, let’s chat about how you develop the voice that your non-profit will speak with in all channels.

The best way for us to do this is to check out a few examples of some social movements that are really rocking it on this front to see what we can learn. Here we go:

1.) Yellow Leaf Hammocks - Yellow Leaf is one of my favorite social ventures. They’ve devoted themselves to transforming the lives of one community in Thailand by connecting their one of a kind hammocks with the world. The thing I love most about Yellow Leaf is the way they communicate this mission.  Let’s check some examples:

• Do good. Relax. That’s their motto. (awesome - short, fun, to the point, and it has pizazz.)
• ‘Share the love!’ - that’s their call to action for people to tweet out stories.  Doesn’t that sound better than ‘please like our page!’
• Their Tweets have got sauce: ?

• Stories. Remember our article on the power of storytelling?  Yellow Leaf does this beautifully by telling and sharing the stories of the artisans who have had their lives transformed by Yellow Leaf’s work. 

2.) Charity Water - This is a big dog non-profit, but don’t let their flashy website intimidate you. They use brand voice strategies that can be implemented by social ventures of all sizes:

• They recruit donors via experiential events (e.g. people actually walk around events with large water pots on their head to put themselves in the shoes of people who have to walk great distances for clean drinking water).
• They empower others. Rather than filling their site with stories about how great they are, charity: water does nothing but highlight the volunteers who run campaigns to bring clean drinking water to the world.
• They keep it simple. You don’t have to divine what ‘charity: water’ does or how they do it. Their name alone makes that very clear.  The best brand voices are simple and clear.

3.) Pencils of Promise - I love these guys.  While they walk like a traditional non-profit, they don’t talk like one. In fact, part of their voice involves shifting the entire nonprofit conversation. They believe that nonprofits should be defined by what they do rather than what they don’t, so they refer to themselves as a for-purpose organization. This has become a huge part of their voice and the conversations they create. It’s making some major waves in our industry and has earned them a lot of praise.  Moral of the story? Be a trendsetter with your voice and you’ll make waves. (Side note: if you haven’t read their founder’s book, The Promise of a Pencil, pick it up now, it’s a must read for anyone in the social change space).

Establishing your brand personality is a process and it takes time to get it right.  Use these above examples to help guide you, and from here, I’d strongly recommend getting your team together to help build your voice.

Please comment on the following below: how have you worked on crafting your organization’s voice?

Photo Cred:  B Corp. , Maidologie & CommonBond