A strong brand garners support when it stands out and resonates with its target audience. This is why your not-for-profit should craft a compelling case for support through its branding.
Not-for-profit branding refers to the process of creating a unique identity that helps people recognize and understand your organization and its mission. It involves defining your vision, mission, and values, and designing a logo, color scheme, typography, and other visual elements that communicate the organization’s goals. Effective not-for-profit branding builds trust and attracts supporters, donors, and volunteers to the cause.
In this guide, we’ll explore how to engage your donors through the following branding strategies:
- Establish your mission and values.
- Create compelling brand messaging.
- Engage donors on social media.
- Track your branding impact.
As you read through these best practices, keep in mind that your not-for-profit’s brand elements should be recognizable, emulate your mission, and encourage involvement. Go a step beyond branding basics by leveraging the following representations of your not-for-profit to engage your donors.
Establish your mission and values.
To engage donors, you’ll need to communicate your organization’s mission and values in a way that inspires involvement. Establishing a clear-cut strategic plan is the first step to having successful communications. After all, donors want to contribute to an organization that knows exactly what needs to be done and how they’ll use their resources to accomplish that mission.
Snowball Fundraising suggests using your organization’s mission statement as the hook to a donation request letter. By immediately establishing your organization’s goal, donors will be drawn into your work and the actionable steps they can take to contribute.
To define your organization’s mission statement and how it should be explained to donors, you might answer the following questions:
- Who benefits from your organization’s work?
- How is the community impacted?
- What strategy does your not-for-profit employ to meet its goal?
- How does your organization approach decision-making?
- How could donor involvement help?
Explain why your mission and values align with your prospective donors. For example, if you’re looking for support from the local community, craft a mission statement that clearly defines how your organization works to better the lives of community members. Donors will be urged to act, feeding two birds with one scone by funding your organization that sustains their community.
Create compelling brand messaging.
Motivational speeches often include unique metaphors and memorable takeaways, and for good reason. Plainly, the way you communicate a message greatly impacts how that message is received. For not-for-profits, this means sharing your organization’s needs in a way that spurs a response.
To create compelling content, consider leveraging the following strategies:
- Tell a story. Make your case for support through a story that encourages action. For example, you might highlight the need by telling the story of a person or animal that your organization aims to help (with their consent, of course). Explain the situation and how your audience’s contributions make a difference.
- Make an emotional appeal. Shift your audience’s perspective when you make an appeal for support. For example, you might promote happiness in messaging for your animal shelter to show audiences that animals’ lives are better because of your shelter’s work.
- Present the message uniquely. Establishing a noteworthy approach will make your brand recognizable whenever your audience sees your message. Depending on your brand, try playing around with humor or shocking stories that will make donors remember you!
Collect data on your audience in order to really pin down the messages that resonate with them. You might learn more about your donors by speaking to them directly at events or conducting prospect research through surveys and your own examination. This information will lead you to develop a messaging strategy that inspires and strikes a chord.
Once you’ve established your overall messaging strategy, develop a brand messaging guide to standardize communications across platforms. For example, consider the tone and storytelling approach your not-for-profit will use in its communications. Use the same approach on all platforms to keep your not-for-profit’s messaging consistent.
Engage donors on social media.
Social media is an effective platform for reinforcing your not-for-profit’s brand identity, but posting is only the first step in reaching your audience. To encourage responses, involvement, and donor retention, your not-for-profit should directly engage with donors on social media.
Most platforms provide several outlets for communicating directly with donors, followers, or visitors to your social media profile, allowing you to:
- Respond to their activity. If a follower comments on your photos or shares your post, always respond to them with gratitude.
- Share hashtags. Hashtags can be an effective way to brand social media posts and increase organic reach. Use a branded hashtag that reflects your not-for-profit’s mission and encourage followers to use it in their own posts.
- Use direct messages. Invite followers to reach out via direct messages to get answers to their questions or learn more about your organization. Respond to these messages in a timely manner and be sure to use the same tone established in your brand messaging.
- Ask for feedback. Leverage story polls or other voting methods to ask your followers for their feedback. You might ask what type of content they’d like to see, what volunteer opportunities they’d be interested in, or anything else related to your not-for-profit’s activities.
Response from your not-for-profit’s social media account directly connects supporters with your not-for-profit’s brand. Consistent social media activity will boost engagement and build brand awareness as supporters engage with your not-for-profit on these platforms. Furthermore, engaging donors on social media can lead to their exploration of your fundraising website or other platforms.
Track your branding impact.
As you adjust your organization’s branding strategies, it’s important to track the impact of your messaging and promotion to measure the effectiveness of your methods. Kwala’s guide to donor communications recommends tracking donor data to create a tailored messaging strategy that meets your donors’ specific preferences. Then, observe how this targeted approach affects their responses.
Begin by tracking the following metrics:
- Social media engagement (likes, comments, shares)
- Number of beneficiaries served and program attendance
- Donor retention rate
- Donor and donation growth
Compare this data to your branding efforts to see which strategies were effective or ineffective. Some data might be collected using automated fundraising tools, which can streamline the process of data collection and analysis.
For example, if social media engagement for an animal shelter increased after the shelter began posting pictures of animals with their rescue stories, the organization might decide that storytelling is the most effective strategy for its messaging and standardize that as part of its brand messaging.
Donor engagement goes beyond your organization’s direct outreach—remember that any representation of your not-for-profit can influence the way donors choose to interact with your organization. Investing in not-for-profit branding and engagement strategies will lead to greater donor loyalty and, ultimately, more support for your cause.
Analyze each element of your not-for-profit’s branding and leverage digital tools that can help you adjust your approach. Then, determine how you can adjust your strategy to better resonate with supporters.
