Why is Branding Important for Nonprofits?
Studies show that people perceive brands the same way they perceive other people. These perceptions shade their feelings, both good and bad, towards a product or an organization. This includes nonprofits. Nonprofits should promote a positive brand identity in order to build trust and confidence in the mission. A brand book (or brand guidelines or brand style guide) ensures that your brand communication, both internal and external, is consistent and cohesive.
What is a Brand Book?
It is a comprehensive document that outlines the essential elements and rules for maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand identity for a company, organization, or product. It serves as a reference and instructional manual for internal and external stakeholders to ensure that the brand is presented consistently across all communications and marketing materials.
There’s no right way to build a brand book. Depending on the organization, a brand book could include visual identity, verbal communication guidelines, written communication guidelines and more.
Internal Brand Book
An internal brand style guide is critical to ensuring that every staff member has the resources and guidance they need to communicate your nonprofit’s brand correctly. You can’t leave this stuff to chance. That’s how stretched and pixelated logos end up on donor websites and incorrect program names end up in press releases. Don’t let bad branding happen!
Lutheran Social Services’ (LSS) internal brand guidelines lists the visual identity standards including logo usage, approved fonts and their usage, approved brand color rules, and image or photo guidelines. This also includes examples of how not to use important visual elements. It also includes a communication style guide in terms of verbal and written communication guidelines. This is the brand tone, approved program names and the rules when writing them, rules on words that are highly sensitive, other writing guidelines, email signature and voice mail guidelines and approved press release boiler plate.
This internal brand guidelines should be readily available to every staff member who may be asked to communicate about an organization to an external interested party. That could be donors, volunteers, a vendor, a member of a neighborhood or community group, a member of the media, or a lawmaker. With these tools, they are better equipped to stay on brand when communicating with these important partners.
External Brand Guidelines
An external brand book is a great resource to give to partners who might need to use parts of your brand in their marketing or promotional materials. The LSS book is a small printed book that includes a listing of the mission, values, boilerplate, logo, and Pantone and CMK colors. The marketing team gives it to marketing partners who use the logo on posters or writing about the organization in a collaborative press release. Of course, the team always asks for final approval on everything, just in case. I’ll post an image of the book below so you have a visual example.
A well-constructed brand book is a valuable resource for both in-house and external marketing and design teams, as well as any third-party vendors or partners involved in promoting a brand. It ensures that the brand remains recognizable, trustworthy, and cohesive, which is essential for building a strong brand identity, maintaining trust, and staying viable during market and economic changes.
It’s helpful to think about a brand (nonprofit or otherwise) like a child. It is important that you build it up until it is strong, but then let it make its way out in the world. Brand guidelines for a nonprofit can help you make sure it is protected from harm.
If you need support building your brand (nonprofit, B2B, or any other!), please contact me today. I’d love to help!
