Nonprofit brand strategy matters

It's after Giving Tuesday but end-of-year fundraising is still in full force.

We hear many nonprofits saying it is harder and harder to meet their fundraising goals each year. Yet, we also hear that they may not consider their brand name to be all that important to invest in. That couldn't be farther from the truth. A strong nonprofit brand can make fundraising so much easier.

Did you know that many nonprofits don't believe they have a real "brand"? Because nonprofits don't sell products or even traditional services, nonprofits often don’t use the typical definitions of customers, marketing, and profit meant for corporations and businesses. This can make marketing information unrelatable to Executive Directors and Communication Managers.??

However, if you substitute customers for stakeholders, marketing for communications, and profit for impact, then for-profit and nonprofit marketing aren’t so different.

Many nonprofits go through a transition phase.

When the nonprofit is in its early years it is usually funded by the founder’s close network or personal relationships. As the nonprofit gets older, it needs to make the jump to being funded by people who are loyal to the nonprofit, not just the founder. If that founder leaves or retires, the money essentially goes with them, leaving a valuable cause unfunded and unknown. Therefore, the donors need to start becoming loyal to the brand. The sooner that a strong brand strategy can be developed in a nonprofit, the less reliant the nonprofit will be on the founder’s original network.

This matters because nonprofits matter to our world.

We don’t market products that will just end up in a landfill. We’re focused on upleveling service-based businesses and nonprofits for positive change, helping sell the intangibles of expertise and trust for a better world. Learn more about nonprofit brand strategy on our blog .?

As our favorite nonprofits go through their critical end of year giving campaigns, we want to know—how is your organization making a difference? Share with us on Instagram .?

Are you or someone you know a B2B or nonprofit marketing manager with too few resources and not enough prioritization? The Marketing Strategy Intensive could be the right fit.?

Let's promote positive change through conscious marketing.?

- Mikaela Bolling , Emily Trickey , + Caitlin McCoy

Video// Marketing Manager Pain Points + How to Ease Them

Brilliant Marketing co-founder Emily Trickey sat down with Kylie Aberle , marketing manager behind Reverb , to discuss the challenges of being a marketing manager at a growing HR consulting firm and how she’s worked to solve those issues.

Marketing managers often wear many hats: project manager, journalist, designer, event coordinator, business analyst, strategist. The list goes on and on. It's no surprise that with all these hats, a few pain points arise from wearing them. So, what can you do to ease the pain?

Examine what you already know, assess what you don’t, and make a plan. When Brilliant Marketing and Reverb started working together, there were missing pieces in Reverb’s branding that needed to be built. And for Kylie, she wanted to learn how to better communicate ideas with Reverb’s leadership and how to measure the success of their marketing efforts.?

Watch now.

Featured Nonprofit // Lifelong? - Supporting health for all

Our nonprofit client, Lifelong , removes barriers to health with relentless compassion so that no one faces illness and injustice alone.?

We were thrilled to visit their facilities in September and see the kitchens where Lifelong volunteers tirelessly prepare meals as part of their wrap-around model of care. Last year, Lifelong delivered nearly 350,000 medically tailored meals to vulnerable people living with HIV, diabetes, cancer, kidney failure, and other serious diseases.

The need for Lifelong's healthy meals and nutrition counseling continues to grow.?

Have you thought about making this holiday season a little brighter for those in your community??

Learn more about Lifelong.