6 Branding Strategies to Make Your Nonprofit Stand Out

The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than it processes text. Therefore, when your audience navigates to your website, the first thing they’ll absorb is your visual identity and brand. When they encounter your brand on other marketing materials, they should immediately associate it with your mission. 

Your brand is more than just the association between your logo and your organization; it’s a visual reflection of your mission and everything you stand for.

As you establish your nonprofit’s brand identity, carefully consider each visual element and whether or not it reflects your overarching message. The following six strategies will guide you through key elements of the brand development process: 

1. Consider your nonprofit’s audience. 
2. Reflect your brand message.
3. Get inspired. 
4. Develop your logo. 
5. Carefully choose a color palette.
6. Create a brand guide. 

Effective brands should obviously reflect your mission. If a site visitor browses your site but is surprised by your mission, it shows a misalignment of branding. That leads us to the first strategy for effective branding: analyzing your audience. 

1. Consider your nonprofit’s audience.

Think about the people your nonprofit serves and interacts with on a regular basis. This audience is a central focal point for your design decisions because your choices need to resonate with them. For instance, a women’s shelter in a large city should have a different feel than a school reaching disadvantaged children in a rural town. 

Loop’s branding guide provides an example of how typeface might differ depending on an organization’s audience: 

If your nonprofit speaks with a loud, advocacy-based tone, a strong vertical typeface in bold weights may convey urgency and action. On the other hand, a children’s charity might use a more geometric typeface with a lighter weight to convey a calmer tone.

Always keep in mind, when determining your typeface that the number one priority is ensuring readability.  for your website visitors. It’s an important aspect for your brand, but it should also be legible, and easy to read. Your website, for instance, should provide options to increase or decrease the size for accessibility purposes. 

Similarly, consider your audience in other branding decisions you make. When designing your logo, ask yourself if it caters to the audience you want to reach. Or when choosing your color palette, consider what shades will resonate with your particular audience and the tone they expect to see. 

2. Reflect your brand message. 

An important aspect of your brand is the message you wish to convey to your defined audience. Consider the statements that are core to your organization’s mission and how you want to communicate those to your community.

Your mission and vision statements are the core messages that you should reflect for your audience because these define your organization and its goals. 

When you make brand decisions, consider how they reflect your core message. Use these brand messages as the basis of your organization’s storytelling strategies and opportunities to show your personality. 

3. Get inspired. 

You probably have an idea already about what you want to include in your nonprofit’s brand. However, defining each element individually is incredibly challenging. 

Look for inspiration from other brands across the web to help define each aspect. Research various websites of other nonprofits, especially those with similar missions. Keep track of the ones that you like, then identify the way those brands used the following elements: 

• Images. From stock photos to icons, look for consistent imagery across a website that reflects the brand of the organization. 
• Typography. Typography is a measure of personality on a website. Analyze the font used, its weight, and what other fonts it’s paired with on the sites you prefer. And remember the top priority is readability for your audience. 
• Colors. As we’ll discuss later, every color is naturally associated with certain causes and feelings. See how color palettes impact your opinions of different sites during the research process. 
• Logo. Logos are meant to be simple and are the culmination of your brand elements. See how other organizations use logos with and without taglines to represent their cause. 

As you review various sites, keep in mind that the best nonprofit websites are inclusive and accessible, easily navigable, attractive and well-designed, and engaging and informational. If there are brand elements that do not fit these criteria, keep them in mind as something to avoid. 

This process is not meant to act as the discovery of your brand elements, but an inspiration of what type of brand elements you naturally gravitate towards. Brands are designed to be unique to each organization, so don’t copy another nonprofit’s brand outright. If you’re working with a branding agency, bring them the elements you like so they understand the gist of your brand vision moving forward. 

4. Develop your logo. 

Everyone recognizes the Nike swoosh, Apple logo, and the Golden Arches for Mcdonald’s when they encounter them. That’s because logos are central and foundational to branding. Your logo is the brand element that everyone will remember and associate with your nonprofit’s cause. 

Generally, there are several types of logos you can choose to represent your organization’s brand, including: 

• Lettermark. These logos are essentially acronyms for the name of the organization, designed in a creative way. HBO or NASA’s logos are examples. 
• Wordmark. Wordmark logos are similar to lettermark logos, but they use the full brand name. Examples include Google’s logo or the classic Coca-Cola logo. 
• Pictorial mark. Pictorial logos are graphics that are well-known and represent a brand, like the Twitter bird or Apple logo. 
• Abstract logos. Abstract logos are a type of pictorial mark, made of an abstract geographic form rather than a picture. Pepsi is an example. 
• Mascot logos. Mascots are fun cartoon representations of brands. They can be used as a part of or in place of a logo. The Kool-Aid man or KFC’s logo are examples. 
• Emblem logo. Emblems look similar to seals or crests, consisting of an image inside of a shape. Consider the Starbucks logo as an example. 
• Combination logo. Some logos use a combination of all of the above. For example, the Doritos logo uses a wordmark inside of an abstract shape. 

Whatever type of logo you choose, you will use several other brand elements as a part of your logo. You might use your name as a part of a wordmark or your colors in an abstract image. As a part of your brand pack, you can include a tagline as a part of your logo or omit it for certain uses. 

Remember, audience members should immediately associate your logo with your cause and brand, so you need to spread it around. Include your logo on all of your marketing materials, from direct mail letters to email signatures, event invitations, and more. 

5. Carefully choose a color palette.

Imagine a supporter navigates from your home page to your donation page and the color palette changes from green and white to red and black. Chances are, they’ll be confused and feel that they’ve left your website. In this example, the dissimilar design of your giving page broke the seamless experience you want to create for your supporters when they navigate through your marketing materials. 

The colors you use to represent your brand should be uniform across your marketing platforms and materials and accurately reflect the cause you stand for. 

Every color is naturally associated with certain feelings and types of causes, so use the already established associations when you choose your organization’s brand colors. Here are examples of a few colors and the feelings they evoke:  

• Red. Red is a bold color, used to represent strong emotions like strength and health.
• Yellow. Yellow is associated with feelings of warmth and happiness like the sun.
• Green. Green is often linked to prosperity and growth, often in terms of the environment. 
• Blue. Blue has a wide range of representations, from tranquility to professionalism.
• Pink. Pink is often associated with creativity and innovation, frequently representing causes in the LGBTQ+ space. 

Consider the emotions you want to evoke in your audience when you choose your color palette, then choose colors that naturally stir up those emotions. 

The color palette you choose will not only be on your website but should also be spread across all of your various communication platforms to create a seamless experience for your audience. 

6. Create a brand guide. 

After you’ve defined the elements of your brand, design a brand guide for your team to follow when making design decisions. Your brand guide will be a living document, constantly referenced when anyone is making decisions for marketing materials, website design, or other official public-facing documentation. 

Here are some examples of ways to incorporate your brand across a number of channels using your brand guide: 

• Use the visual elements of your brand guide to design your website, creating a consistent experience between web pages for your audience. 
• Use the personality defined in your brand guide to write letters for your supporters. Personalize each letter, ensuring it lines up with your mission as well as the needs of the supporter who will be reading it.
• Use the imagery and logo defined in your brand guide to create and continuously update your social media accounts. Use your logo for your profile picture and image guidelines for future updates. 

Consistency for your brand helps create a seamless experience for your audience as they navigate from channel to channel. If a supporter finds your organization on Facebook, then clicks through to visit your website, they should instantly recognize your brand across every channel. 

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Creating a nonprofit brand is more than designing a logo for your organization. You must analyze your audience and your cause, then make decisions about how you’ll communicate your core message to the world. Ultimately, your brand should be memorable, emotional, and resonate with your audience.