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Rebranding your Not-For-Profit – 5 Key Considerations

Did you know? On average, most businesses need rebranding, or a brand refresh every 7 – 10 years during the organisation’s lifespan.

Having a clear brand identity allows you to reposition your brand in the ever-changing marketplace. Adjusting to those changes allows you to differentiate and stand out from the crowd.

Rebranding will help your not-for-profit to redefine itself and clearly articulate your position in the market, so you can better serve your target audience.

Build a Strong Foundation

It sets the foundation for all your marketing activities and decisions. And it ensures a cohesive brand presence from every possible brand touch point (the first step to a successful refresh).

Even though it’s a crucial step in the right direction, a rebrand can be a costly process, particularly for not-for-profit organisations who have limited marketing budgets. That’s why it is important to know where to start and exactly what to ask a design agency to quote for.

We’ve put together the 5 key essential considerations for rebranding your NFP organisation. These elements can be leveraged by in-house staff and interpreted by external creative suppliers as the new brand rolls out. Use these elements to keep brand consistency and integrity, and to keep costs down.

1. Establish the new brand mark

This is the process of designing a logo. If it is developed from scratch, time can be spent researching competition and gathering feedback from existing clients, staff, donors and stakeholders. If modern tweaks are being made to the existing logo, this usually involves updating fonts, shapes and the colour palette.

2. Develop a style guide

This all-important document is the reference point for all aspects of how your brand is presented visually. This can start with just a couple of pieces and be built on over time as new pieces are required. It includes the:

revised logo and the dos and don’ts of its use
font library, including headings, body copy, accent fonts and their sizes for use
colour palette, including CMYK, RGB and PMS colour breakdown
visual examples of use, e.g. brochure cover and inside pages, pull up banners and stationery

3. Suite of templates for internal use

As a branding and graphic design studio that serves many not-for-profit organisations, we often get asked to create templates for internal design documents. A designer can incorporate in-house communication pieces such as fact sheets, or A5 and A4 brochures for staff to update internally. Having a branded template document is a cost-saving exercise and makes good sense if an NFP needs to consistently update information to send out to their stakeholders on a regular basis. The results will not be as high-end as a professionally designed piece, but it is still a marked improvement for the overall brand output.

4. Universal assets folders

It is important to make sure staff can access logos and communication pieces from a central folder. The designer should provide all variations of the brand mark, i.e., jpg, png and eps files for use in different forms. More information on file types can be found in our quick facts guide. Note: Staff should be advised that these files should not be re-saved and altered in any way.

5. Brand colour calibration

Finally, we recommend choosing one printing supplier for all your printing requirements. Your chosen printer can then calibrate your printed material to ensure colour consistency and assign specific stock finishes which helps with this. The future benefit of using one chosen printer is that they can prioritise you as a regular and familiar client. Most design studios, like ours, have a solid and long-lasting relationship with printers so that we can facilitate all of this on your behalf.

We hope these 5 considerations are a helpful guide. Keep them in mind when you’re thinking about embarking on rebranding for your NFP organisation.

We can help rebrand your not-for-profit

We hope these 5 considerations are a helpful guide. Keep them in mind when you’re thinking about embarking on rebranding for your NFP organisation. If you’d like to learn more about our experience in rebranding for the not-for-profit sector, take a look at this case study. We also specialise in designing annual reports for not-for-profits and have prepared a handy guide to help you through the process.