Branding can be difficult for a single nonprofit chapter. And when a national brand undergoes changes that need to be implemented at the regional level, it can create even more difficulties. This was the task faced by this week’s guest, Jeff Stanger, as Development Director at the Salvation Army. He explains that top-level boards and management must be fully committed to rebranding, which can be difficult when faced with resistance to change. It is important to educate regional management on the bigger picture of the organization to get them to understand why changes are necessary. Jeff explains that tweaking a logo or rewriting a mission statement are important elements, but rebranding is really about finding out what your brand experience is and devoting all of your organization’s resources towards it. When a new mission was written for the Salvation Army, Jeff posted it where every employee swiped into work every day to reinforce its core concepts.
Jeff and Beth discuss:
- How to match social media strategies with your mission
- Putting a dollar figure on your volunteers’ efforts to emphasize their impact
- Writing an audience-focused mission rather than an organization-focused one
- How to convince regional management to get behind a national initiative
- How having inconsistent branding between chapters could be losing donations
- Getting everyone in every department in an organization behind a mission
Resources:
- Email Jeff or connect on Twitter or LinkedIn
- Salvation Army’s “Doing the Most Good” Manifesto
- Red Shield Toolkit
- Salvation Army logo through the years
- Measuring the Value of Volunteer Time – Independent Sector
- Suggested Books: “Tribes,” “Purple Cow,” “Outliers,” “The Long Tail,” “Moneyball“
- Episode 30 of Driving Participation: Grantwriting to Fund Your Marketing with Amanda Pierce
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