When it comes to promoting your volunteer program to attract new supporters and retain existing ones, it's important to communicate your organization’s mission and goals through a cohesive brand and marketing strategy. Many great organizations are making a huge difference in communities around the world, which means you need to stand out to attract passionate volunteers and donors to help you execute your programs and mission.
Creating a unified voice, image, and brand is an important step in setting yourself apart from other organizations, enhancing your program’s recognition, and bringing in new support. This is especially important if your program accepts donations. Donors want to feel like their contributions are going to be put to good use, and a professional and unified brand helps boost credibility and trust.
Here are the six steps of building your volunteer program’s brand strategy:
Review your mission, goals, and audience.
Determine your brand’s story and personality.
Choose your design elements.
Bring your audience members into the conversation.
Create a brand style guide.
Start incorporating brand elements into your marketing and communications.
If you’ve had experience with event planning and branding before, you’ll already have a strong foundation to start building your volunteer program’s brand. Both processes require intentional consideration of your mission, goals, and what you want to say with your branding.
The branding process allows you to fully determine the characteristics and feel of your volunteer program. Let’s dive in!
1. Review your mission, goals, and audience.
As an organization, you should already have your mission statement and goals well defined and documented. Using these foundational elements to help build out your volunteer program’s brand will not only help you get started but also ensure that all your communications and marketing materials are consistent with your organization's core message.
To develop your volunteer program’s brand, you must first define for yourself what your program is all about. The following elements should be reflected in your brand:
Your mission statement: What is the purpose of your volunteer program? Consider what large outcomes your volunteer program hopes to accomplish. For example, are you trying to eliminate hunger in your community, increase youth literacy or build enough schools for all children to go to school in X country?
Your goals: What are you hoping to accomplish with your program? What are the tangible goals your volunteer program is trying to achieve? For instance, are you aiming to reduce child hunger by 40%, save 300 endangered animal species, or provide 2,000 children with school supplies? Your goal should be detailed and measurable.
Your audience: Who are you trying to reach with your program? This might include volunteers, donors, community members, or advocates. The more detailed you can get about your program’s target audience, the easier it will be to build a brand that resonates with them.
By clearly defining each of these core branding elements, you can begin further developing your brand’s voice and figuring out how you will communicate your mission and goals to your target audience.
2. determine your brand’s story and personality.
Your brand’s story and personality are increasingly important factors that get the attention of your target audience. A brand personality refers to the human characteristics associated with a brand. For example, a friendly brand will use an informal tone and language and warm and inviting colors.
When establishing your brand story and personality, consider the following:
If your brand was a person, what would they be like?
Would they be warm and friendly or professional and knowledgeable?
Would they be playful or serious?
What would be their passions and motivations?
By clearly answering these questions, you can form the foundation of your program’s brand personality. Defining your brand’s tone upfront allows you to determine how you’ll choose other brand elements such as your colors or fonts. These elements all provide a sensory experience for your target audience members.
The process of using design elements to tell an immersive story is called experiential design. Experiential design takes into account not only what your brand will look like to your target audience, but also what it will feel like to interact with.
3. choose your design elements.
Once you’ve finalized your brand’s tone, you can start choosing the design elements that will be incorporated throughout your volunteer program’s marketing content and other materials like your branded volunteer sign-up page, emails, and even social media posts.
Design elements include:
Color palette - What colors represent your brand and mission the most? For example, if your volunteer program involves environmental cleanups, you will likely want to use green and other colors that relate to the natural environment.
Fonts - Fonts can communicate a lot about a brand’s personality. For example, a serif font communicates a more serious or traditional brand while decorative or handwritten fonts communicate a more playful and distinct brand.
Logo and variations - Your logo is a critical part of your brand identity because it unites your volunteer program’s name, colors palette, and personality all into a single, recognizable graphic. Be sure to determine guidelines for how your logo and its variations should be portrayed. This includes color options, different ways of structuring the graphic, and font details.
Graphic style - What imagery represents your brand? For instance, you can use illustrations, clip art, or photos to promote your brand. The images you choose communicate the personality of your program.
Tagline - A tagline or slogan is an important brand element to use in your communications. It should communicate the mission or goal of your volunteer program in a concise, impactful phrase.
Start thinking about how you can incorporate these elements to create a comprehensive branded environment. This could be a literal, physical environment, like your volunteer program’s office, or a virtual environment, such as your social media pages or website blog.
Remember, it’s important to use consistent branding throughout all of your communication channels. After finalizing your brand guide, start implementing your style elements on all of your marketing materials.
4. Bring your audience members into the conversation.
If you feel uncertain about which direction to take your branding or want some outside input, ask for feedback from your stakeholders. Allow your audience, such as your volunteers, community partners, and donors, to provide feedback on certain design elements. For instance, if you’re deliberating over several different types of logos, invite your audience members to vote on their favorite. You can share design ideas on social media and create a poll.
This is a great way to get instant feedback while creating more awareness and excitement about your new volunteer program. Plus, audience members will feel more engaged in your organization and like they’re true partners in your organization’s operations. Once you receive their feedback, you can take their comments into consideration and craft design elements that excite and engage your audience members.
5. Create a brand style guide.
Once you have finalized all of your brand elements, it’s important to document them in a written style guide. Your style should include all your defined branding elements that your team will need to know when creating any communications on behalf of your organization.
Your brand style guide should include information about your:
Logo - Include your main logo and details for using logo variations, such as black and white versions or different color options.
Fonts - List all your approved fonts, the scenarios in which team members should use each one, and guidelines for using bold, different sizes, and italics.
Tagline - Describe your program’s tagline and any variations.
Colors - List all your brand colors and their hex codes and label primary and secondary colors.
Tone - Provide information on the tone of your volunteer program’s brand. For instance, mention the types of words that team members should use or avoid in communications and describe your brand’s personality.
Graphic - Clearly define the types of graphics that can be used to represent your brand. Provide examples for your team to emulate.
Once you have completed your volunteer program style guide, make it easily accessible. Send the style guide to your full team, include it in your shared folders, and make sure team members know who to contact if they have questions. This ensures everyone is aligned with the new brand guidelines.
6. Start incorporating brand elements into your marketing and communications.
Now that you have a clear idea of your brand elements and personality, it’s time to get to work and start creating your programs’ volunteer recruitment materials and communications to get your program up and running.
Incorporate your brand elements into your:
Social media posts
Email newsletters
Website and volunteer information page
Branded volunteer program sign-up page
Volunteer emails and communications
Every communication or material that is created on behalf of your volunteer program is an opportunity to inspire and bring in new people to join your cause. That is why it is so important to ensure that all your materials and communications promote a consistent and cohesive brand story.
conclusion
Creating a brand that not only represents your volunteer program’s mission well but helps your program stand out from the crowd will set your program above the rest and help you bring in the support you need to accomplish your goals. Whether you need to attract new volunteers or remind your organization’s existing volunteers why they dedicate their time to your organization, investing in a well-thought-out brand will set your program up for success.
This post was contributed by Cassandra Smallman, a passionate content creator dedicated to fostering positive impact through thought leadership in both the nonprofit sector and live events industry. You can find her work at www.initlive.com or on Linkedin and Twitter.