Since founding your organization, your focus may have been less on brand building and image cultivation and more on raising much-needed funds to have an impact. That makes sense— if you have limited team capacity and resources, as many nonprofits do, you want to allocate those resources to the most pressing issues, like fundraising.
However, it’s hard to understate the importance of your nonprofit’s external image as it relates to all of your operations.
Your image establishes your status as a trustworthy organization that supporters can rely on to use their donations effectively. It also helps spread the word about your nonprofit, building brand awareness and drawing new supporters to your organization. It’s worthwhile to revisit this image and ensure it emphasizes the core values of accessibility, effectiveness, and gratitude.
In this guide, we’ll cover the following three strategies to improve your nonprofit’s external image:
Practice digital accessibility.
Refresh your brand.
Emphasize a culture of gratitude.
Before we get started:
Revamping your nonprofit’s external image can be a major undertaking that implicates a number of systems and processes you use both within and beyond your organization. It can be challenging to carry out such large-scale changes, especially if your team already has limited capacity.
In addition to the following strategies, consider partnering with a nonprofit consulting firm that specializes in branding and overall strategy. This partner can help your team elevate your image and carry the changes cohesively throughout your nonprofit’s fundraising, advocacy, and donor stewardship efforts. To learn more, explore DNL OmniMedia’s comprehensive listing of nonprofit consulting firms.
With that covered, let’s dive into the first tip.
Practice digital accessibility.
Your organization’s office or headquarters is probably accessible for staff members and supporters of all physical abilities, from having wheelchair-accessible doorways and ramps to incorporating both text and braille writing on wayfinding signs. The importance of this is clear — your organization wants (and, may be legally mandated) to ensure that anyone who visits your facilities is able to do so without issue.
But, what about supporters who want to engage with your organization digitally rather than at your physical location? At this point in time, you’re not legally required to have an accessible web presence. However, practicing digital accessibility is one way to elevate your organization’s image.
How can digital accessibility improve your image?
More and more of your supporters are engaging with your nonprofit online, from making online donations to attending virtual events. The internet is now a major avenue for nonprofit engagement. If your digital presence isn’t accessible, it’s likely to be noticed by supporters.
When you prioritize digital accessibility, you can increase digital engagement as you won’t be excluding supporters with disabilities or device limitations. Further, you show that your nonprofit prioritizes a welcoming and inclusive culture.
Tips to Practice Digital Accessibility
Consider the following tips to improve your website’s accessibility:
Provide text alternatives. Offer alternative text and captions for images and graphics, as well as transcriptions for videos.
Create intuitive navigation. Your main website navigation should provide links to all of the major pages on your site.
Optimize your forms. This includes providing text labels for all form fields outside of the field itself (rather than disappearing text within the fields), as well as clearly labeling any fields that are required.
Ensure text size and color contrast are adequate. Text size should be large enough and color should be distinctive enough that viewers who have visual disabilities can still perceive written elements. This can be tested using online tools.
Refresh your brand.
Some people think that nonprofit branding is simply choosing a logo and a few main colors, and therefore they avoid truly investing in it.
However, think of The Red Cross’s signature red cross imagery, or the World Wildlife Fund’s panda logo, or St. Jude’s Research Hospital’s story-led commercials. These nonprofits have successfully broken the code when it comes to nonprofit branding, giving the organizations evocative, clear, and memorable images. By reviving your brand and carrying it through various strategies, you can accomplish the same.
How can a cohesive brand improve your image?
According to Getting Attention’s guide to nonprofit branding strategy, an effective brand can:
Help your nonprofit be more easily recognized.
Improve how supporters respond to your messaging.
Spread awareness of your mission beyond your supporters.
Further, when you establish your brand and carry it throughout your various communications with supporters (email, website, direct mail, donation form, etc.), it helps supporters trust that the various elements of your strategy are associated with your organization.
Tips to Elevate Your Nonprofit’s Brand
Consider the following tips to elevate your nonprofit’s branding:
Ensure your brand is timeless. When you revisit your brand, prioritize timelessness over trendiness. This will prevent you from having to make adjustments again down the line as trends change.
Create digital branding guidelines. These guidelines can be shared across your team to ensure that all communications and design efforts align with your brand. See the example branding guidelines below, which covers the following details:
Mission statement
Color palette
Typography
Logo families
Consider ways to incorporate your brand into your physical space. For example, you could adopt an experiential design philosophy in your office. This essentially involves structuring your offices with the goal of engaging your viewers and communicating the values of your organization as they walk through. Or, you could take it a step further and create a branded environment that brings your brand to life and allows supporters to step inside.
Emphasize a culture of gratitude.
Your nonprofit probably says “thank you” for all gifts as a baseline best practice. Most commonly, this probably means automated emails after an online donation and phone calls to major donors.
However, organizing a concentrated gratitude initiative that goes above and beyond your usual effort can have a powerful impact on your nonprofit’s image.
How can a culture of gratitude improve your image?
All of your supporters want to feel thanked and appreciated. A comprehensive thank-you effort can show supporters that they truly matter and are valuable to you, rather than being just any other person who interacts with your organization. For your image, gratitude shows your supporters that you value the impact that they make.
Further, when you publicly thank those who support your organization, you can display how much your organization has been able to raise and how these funds will drive your mission forward. It’s another way to show that your organization is effective at making a difference.
Tips to Establish a Culture of Gratitude
Consider the following unique strategies to go above and beyond and establish a culture of gratitude at your organization:
Send handwritten and personalized thank-you letters. You already send donor thank-you letters when supporters make a donation. Consider sending additional notes to supporters at random, to acknowledge their ongoing support of your organization. Reference past donations or volunteer hours to personalize the letter. You can even make it a fun project for staff members and volunteers by having them choose anywhere from 1 to 5 (or more) supporters each month to write personalized letters to.
Construct a donor recognition wall or gallery. These are physical installments in your nonprofit’s headquarters that pay homage to supporters who have created an impact. For example, you could build a brick wall, where each brick highlights a supporter’s name. The best thing is that you can continue adding to the wall to honor new supporters as time passes!
Incorporate gratitude into your digital strategy. Your nonprofit’s digital strategy is probably focused on furthering your fundraising or donor acquisition goals. Incorporate gestures of gratitude into that strategy, by highlighting an impactful supporter each week on your social platforms or writing blog posts that do the same.
Your nonprofit’s external image is a crucial factor in your ability to reach your goals. It establishes your organization as trustworthy and builds brand awareness, drawing new supporters to your nonprofit.
There are a number of ways to elevate your nonprofit’s image. Practicing digital accessibility shows that your organization is inclusive and welcoming for all. Refreshing your brand can improve how supporters perceive your strategies and help spread the word about your mission. Finally, emphasizing a culture of gratitude shows that your organization appreciates the supporters you rely on.
With these tips, you should be well on your way to cultivating a strong image for your nonprofit. Good luck!
Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.