SWOT analysis

You have to develop a higher-level understanding of your nonprofit and the context in which it operates.

That’s where a SWOT analysis can help. It’s a helpful tool used by many successful for-profit companies and can help most nonprofits.

By examining your nonprofit’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you may find a path to new volunteer and fundraising growth.

Questions that can help you conduct a SWOT analysis:

Strengths

• Does your nonprofit have a unique backstory or mission?
• In what areas does your nonprofit regularly excel?
• What strengths or unique skills do your staff members and volunteers possess?
• Is your nonprofit well-funded, or does it own other helpful resources it can rely on?
• Does your nonprofit have a proprietary focus that can’t be obtained elsewhere?
• In what respects is your brand well-perceived?
• In what ways is your brand aligned with your current mission statement and direction?
• What aspects of your brand are authentic?
• Which elements of your brand image resonate with your target audience?
• What parts of your brand identity are communicated well?

Weaknesses

• In what areas does your nonprofit regularly perform poorly?
• Does your workforce suffer any consistent weaknesses? (poor morale, lack of training, etc.)
• Does your nonprofit lack resources such as time, staff, or funds?
• Are your nonprofit’s goals unfocused?
• Do you lack strategies for moving forward?
• Are there elements of your brand image that are inauthentic?
• Is your nonprofit failing to follow through on any brand promises?
• What parts of your brand identity are poorly communicated?
• Are any brand messages failing to resonate with your target audience?
• What aspects of your brand are perceived poorly?

Opportunities

• Can you fill a niche that is currently empty or under-represented?
• Could you partner with another nonprofit or for-profit organization to gain exposure, financial support, or consumer goodwill?
• Will changes in state or federal legislation help your nonprofit in any way?
• Are improving economic trends likely to impact your nonprofit?
• Can your brand authentically align itself with any popular causes?
• Do any current trends benefit your nonprofit or brand image?
• Is there an existing unsung aspect of your brand image to highlight?

Threats

• What are your competitors offering that you can’t compete with?
• Are your competitors doing exceptionally well engaging the target audience on social media?
• Are downward economic trends likely to impact your nonprofit?
• Will changes in state or federal legislation hinder your nonprofit in any way?
• Are any of your vendors or suppliers unreliable, increasing their prices, or going out of business?
• Are there any cultural shifts that may harm your nonprofit or brand image?
• Will weather changes negatively impact your nonprofit?
• Are there any current events that may cast any elements of your brand in a negative light?
• Is your nonprofit brand aligned with any negative entities, organizations, or ideologies?
• Are any competitors attempting to discredit your brand?

That’s a lot of information to process. To save you some time if you’re in a hurry, look at the bigger picture and ask these three crucial questions to understand your brand better.

1. Does your brand support your nonprofit branding strategy?

Every healthy nonprofit should have a forward-looking strategy.

For your brand to be healthy, it must align with and support that strategy.

A misaligned brand will create cognitive dissonance for your volunteers, donors, and the general public. It will also create a confusing brand image and identity and undermine your efforts to succeed.

A brand image or identity that undermines your strategy does not reflect a healthy nonprofit brand.

2. Is your brand identity consistent?

An inconsistent brand identity is confusing and unreliable. These traits drive people away from your nonprofit, not attract them.

If your brand identity constantly changes, it’s hard for volunteers, donors, and the general public to wrap their minds around what it’s about. And it’s even harder to gain trust, confidence, and loyalty.

Here are some additional questions to help you evaluate your brand identity for consistency:

Is your brand identity design visually consistent?

Visual consistency helps build recognition of your brand.

The colors, visual styles, and fonts on your website should look like your social media accounts, which should look like your logo, which should look like your… you get the idea.

Is your brand message consistent?

Your brand needs a cohesive message. And that message should come from your brand’s core values and strategies.

If your nonprofit tries to be too many things at once, the message becomes scattered, and the brand identity is diluted.

It’s hard to be known for something when you fail to present a consistent message about what your nonprofit should be known for.

Or worse, if your brand messaging contradicts itself, you will lose people’s trust.

Contradicting messages serve as proof that your nonprofit is not to be trusted.

Inconsistent messaging is a sign of an unhealthy brand and a weak brand identity.

Does your brand behave consistently?

Your brand promises must be consistent with the reality of the brand experience volunteers, donors, and the general public has with your nonprofit.

Failure to deliver on a brand promise is a sign of an unhealthy brand.

3. Does your brand identity resonate with your target audience?

No matter how well your brand identity supports your nonprofit’s strategies or how consistent it is, if it fails to connect with your audience, your brand identity is not doing its job.

But, measuring your brand’s public reception is a bit trickier than examining it for consistency or internal strategy alignment. You’re going to need some brand health metrics to track.

Marketing intelligence experts at Datorama recommend tracking your branded impressions, internet search volume, and the performance of branded keywords (the use of your brand name on business cards, in messages, posts, etc.).

Understanding your audience

The first step to building a strong brand identity is understanding your audience and what they want and need. This includes volunteers and donors. We recommend you ask the following questions:

1. Who are they? – Are they male, female, or both? Are they Boomers or Millennials? Where are they from?
2. What do they do? – Knowing what your audience does for a living and what they’re interested in is a great way to more precisely target your marketing, primarily when engaged in digital marketing.
3. Why are they donating? – Do you know the reason why they care about your mission? If you do, it’s easier to pair their needs with what you can give them.
4. When are they donating? – Find out when your target audience typically makes this type of donation. That way, you can increase your chances of getting the attention they want to give to you.
5. How are they donating? – Are they donating via a website? Do they prefer a phone call or a paper mail?
6. What’s their donation budget? – Make sure you’re targeting customers whose budgets appropriately align with your needs.
7. What makes them feel good? – Knowing what gives a volunteer or donor that lovely good-feeling glow is key to making sure they become repeat and loyal volunteers or donors.
8. What do they expect? – Understanding expectations is critical to meet those expectations.
9. How do they feel about your nonprofit? – Do your volunteers and donors recognize your brand name and your overall brand identity? Hearing praise about your nonprofit is excellent – it suggests you’ve built a strong brand image. Hearing where the pain points are is even better.
10. How do they feel about your competition? – You know what they say. Keep your friends close – keep your competition closer.

Here are specific questions you can ask your volunteers and donors.

How likely would you be to recommend our nonprofit to others?

If you want a deep insight into a person’s opinion of your nonprofit and brand image, this is the question you need to ask.

The best way to gauge how satisfied a person is with your nonprofit is by learning whether they’d be comfortable telling their mom/brother/best friend/barista to take a look and consider volunteering or supporting your cause.

If you could change just one thing about our nonprofit, what would it be?

Every organization, whether nonprofit or for-profit, has room to improve.

You probably have your roadmap for where you want your nonprofit to go, and that’s great.

But it’s a good idea to involve your volunteers and donors in this process, too. They are an invaluable source of ideas and feedback and often see approaches that you hadn’t imagined.

What other options did you consider before you chose us?

After completing market research and investigation, you may think you know who your competitors are.

But there’s always the possibility you’ve either missed one or passed on one because their offering didn’t seem comparable to yours.

Asking your volunteers and funders what nonprofits they evaluated is a great way to make those unknowns known.

What makes us stand out from the competition?

Asking this question allows your volunteers and donors to tell you what they think makes you unique.

This is more than asking about brand identity design and your visual design. This goes to the unique reasons a person might prefer your nonprofit to other nonprofits.

Anything else you’d like us to know?

It’s always good to leave the floor open to unexpected responses or feedback. You can’t ask every single question, nor can you know in advance what might be top of mind for your volunteers and donors.

Asking this question gives your volunteers and donors the chance to mention anything they feel is essential. It also gives you insight into what’s important to them.

And, it gives your volunteers and donors the last word and makes it clear that you’re not just interested in your questions.

Ways to gather responses from volunteers and donors

There are many different ways to collect answers to these questions.

Which one you choose depends on your goals, who your volunteers and donors are, and how you can reach them, but here are some ideas to consider.

1. Feedback surveys. Surveys are tried and tested, but they can be challenging to run in ways that won’t annoy people. Companies like SurveyMonkey or TypeForm make running surveys easy. Make sure you keep surveys as short and easy to respond to as possible. Every question on a survey will reduce the number of people who respond to the survey.
2. Email and feedback forms. Having a form on your nonprofit website gives people a recognizable way to get their feedback. These tend to work best as either wide open (“How can we improve?”) or more targeted with one or two quick questions.
3. Direct contact. Forms and surveys may be easy to use, but they are poor at gathering the greater context or circumstances your volunteers and donors find themselves in. One of the best ways to get helpful feedback is to reach out directly to people and talk to them. Bonus points if it’s in person, but if that’s impossible for you, even a phone call or a video chat can be a great way to form that connection.
4. Social media. Asking people who follow your nonprofit on sites like Facebook or Twitter is a great way to gather candid feedback quickly. Many social media sites offer integrated polling as well.

No matter what method you use, make sure that you’re engaging with your audience in a conversation. As we mentioned earlier, let your volunteers and donors know that you’re talking with them, not just at them.

User personas

Once you’ve surveyed your volunteers and donors, create user personas.

Personas are not just valuable for for-profit marketing. Personas can help your nonprofit figure out:

• Who your volunteers and donors are,
• What their goals and frustrations are,
• Where they spend their time,
• When they’re the most active or available,
• Why they make certain decisions, and
• How they interact with your nonprofit.

Persona-based marketing can help you target the messaging for each unique group of volunteers and donors.

Start with 3 to 5 user personas.

How to define user personas

Start with interviews.

Interviews will help you identify your volunteers’ and donors’ wants, needs, and motivations. They’ll also help you understand whether volunteers and donors connect with your brand identity and brand.

Be sure you interview a broad group of volunteers and donors.

• Existing Volunteers and donors – Be sure to contact people who have had both positive and negative experiences with your nonprofit. Speaking with people who have only glowing reviews is great but does not paint the entire picture. You’ll want to understand the experience from all sides to create useful user personas set.
• Prospects – It’s important to talk to people who have no experience with your nonprofit. You’re going to want someone without any “baggage” to give a fresh take on things, and a prospect can provide precisely that kind of unbiased perspective. Your current prospects and leads are a super resource for creating an impartial user persona – you already have contact information, so making use of that information is accessible, cost-effective, and all-around a smart idea.
• Referrals – Ask anyone you know who may have valuable points of contact for you – your co-workers, friendly customers, your social media network – they may be able to connect you with perfect interview candidates.

Start with at least 3 to 5 interviews for each persona you’re creating (volunteers, donors, prospects, people who don’t know your nonprofit).

What information do you need to create personas?

After you’ve spoken with volunteers and donors and crunched the numbers, you must turn the data into actual personas.

The people personas represent may be made-up, but you still need to assign each one enough information to flesh them out.

The documentation you create for your personas should be detailed. Anyone in your organization should read it and get a good idea of who they are.

The basics

Every persona should have at least the following information:

• First name – You can provide the last name, but a first name is usually sufficient.
• Age – Age can affect many things, so choose wisely and qualify your decision with actual data.
• Photo – How a persona looks can influence decisions (e.g., if they’re physically attractive or not). Some valuable resources: Random User, UIFaces, or User Personas.
• Job – Does this person work? Go to school? Or are they stay-at-home parents?
• Location – Where does this person live?
• Goals – What are this person’s goals? What do they need or want? How do their goals relate to your company or products?
• Frustrations – What kind of problems does this person have? How do those problems affect their goals and needs?
• Biography – Write a short bio that describes this person’s background and how your products or services can help this person. Don’t forget to base this on actual data – don’t create an idealized background.

Getting specific

Some specific data points that can help you figure out where this person fits in your strategy include:

• Keywords – Words that summarize key traits about this person. E.g., “friendly”; “curious,”; “technophile,”; “late adopter.”
• Character – Using a character helps contrast this person with your other personas. For example, if you were dividing your personas based on technical ability, you could have characters like “The Nerd,” “The Skeptic,” “The Newbie,” etc.
• Myers-Briggs Type – The Myers-Briggs personality indicator is a well-known way to represent something as complex as a person’s personality.
• Favorite brands – What brands does this person like or interact with frequently? What nonprofits do they regularly support?
• Quote – Use actual quotes from people you’ve interviewed to give a quick insight into this person, their needs, fears, and goals.
• Preferred channels – How does this person get their information, and what’s the best way to reach them with marketing messaging? By leveraging digital marketing? By leveraging social media? Or through traditional print advertising in newspapers or magazines?

If you need a starting point, several good persona templates and creation resources are available online, many of which are free.

HubSpot has the appropriately named “Make My Persona,” which uses a customized TypeForm questionnaire to help you fill in the blanks for a basic persona. They also have a persona template that may be useful.

You can also look at UXPressia, a paid service with some free persona creation tools, and UserForge, which offers free persona creation tools.

How to leverage user personas

Once you’ve done all of the hard work of creating personas based on accurate data and actual customer behavior and needs, it’s time to put them to work.

A critical part of using personas effectively is empathy. You need to put yourself in the mind (or shoes) of your personas so you can weigh decisions and strategies against their needs.

A simple but effective way to do this is to ask yourself, “would [persona name] do [action]?”

For example, if one of your personas is named Amy, you’re trying to determine if a particular marketing strategy makes sense with the group of donors Amy represents.

Asking “Would Amy find this message compelling and donate $50?” is an excellent way to vet and confirm your ideas.

Does Amy spend time on social media, and if so, would she interact with your brand there?

Think of your personas like characters in a story. Would they identify with and like your brand image?

Personas are a powerful tool to help rally the various parts of your nonprofit around a cohesive whole.

Things to avoid when creating and using personas

Personas are helpful, but they are not a substitute for talking to your actual volunteers and donors.

Your volunteers and donors are more than a set of facts, and the things that motivate them and cause them grief can’t always be gleaned from distilling a section of volunteers and donors down to a single “person” for each group.

Understanding your competition

There are three components to an excellent competitive analysis:

1. defining the metrics and identifying the competitors you’re comparing,
2. gathering the data and,
3. the analysis.

How do you begin? What are the relevant factors that you should be comparing? And what conclusions can/should you draw from the data?

Start by defining what metrics are important

Before looking at data, you must understand what metrics are essential.

Are you interested in comparing fundraising? Volunteers? Total visits to a website? Traffic rank?

Pick a set of metrics that are important to you and measure the data based on those metrics.

If you pick the wrong metrics, you can still make a competitive analysis – but it will not be significant.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure whether you’ve defined all of the relevant metrics. As you start looking at the data, you’ll see other good comparisons.

Look at recent trends

Recent trends are significant because they paint a picture of what’s happening now.

This is particularly important if your nonprofit is brand new – since you won’t have any historical data for comparison.

Evaluate historical trends

Historical trends help you understand the speed of growth and see if the same events impacted your competitors and your nonprofit equally.

Dig deeper

Don’t settle for basic information.

Look at all available information to confirm or disprove your conclusions.

Try using any or all of the following:

• SpyFu: This is a great way to discover keywords and Adwords other nonprofits might be using when fundraising.
• Google Trends: Want to stay on top of the latest trends? Need to know where customers go after they leave your site? Try Google Trends.
• Google Alerts: Set up alerts so you know what volunteers, donors, and the general public are saying about your competition. Set one up for yourself and get easy access to the water cooler gossip on your nonprofit.

Brand identity design involves a combination of research, understanding, and essential branding elements.

Brand identity building blocks include typography, color palette, forms and shapes, and composition.

How do you choose appropriate nonprofit branding elements?

Here are six things you should consider as part of your nonprofit branding process when choosing the brand elements for your nonprofit organization to create a brand identity:

1. Memorability – The brand identity elements you choose should be memorable and attract attention to help people remember and recognize them.
2. Meaningfulness – It’s essential that the elements you choose meaningfully communicate your brand identity. Brand identity elements should give people information about your brand, service, or product that furthers their positioning and image.
3. Likability – Do people find the brand identity element appealing? Is it likable, pleasing, and fun? You want elements that leave a positive impression.
4. Transferability – Does the element work across all market segments and mediums (business cards, social media, website, etc.)? Does it translate well across geographic boundaries and languages? Avoid brand identity elements constrained to a specific medium (like mobile or print) or don’t translate well across your volunteers’ and donors’ languages and cultures.
5. Adaptability – Adaptability is all about flexibility and longevity. Choose brand identity elements that can stand the test of time and the fickle nature of trends and tastes. Always be willing to change things up when necessary.
6. Protectability – No matter what you choose, if you can’t protect it legally and competitively, you’re in trouble before you’ve started. It’s expensive to overhaul your brand identity later – this is the time to get it right. Do your due diligence early and avoid legal and trademark issues further down the road.

Let’s look at each brand identity design building block in detail.

Typography

Typography impacts how people perceive your brand identity, brand, and messaging.

A recent study conducted by MIT psychologist Kevin Larson showed subjects two different print layouts: one designed with poor typography and another designed with good typography.

Larson found that the document with better font choice took less time to read and led to increased cognitive focus and a “stronger sense of clarity.”

Different fonts have different personalities

Fonts have a psychological impact on people.

When using fonts for your nonprofit, choose a font with the right “personality.” As we wrote,

Typography is an effective way to convey more than just the words involved in written communication. It showcases personality by visually representing the tenor and tone of what it is you’re talking about. You may find that your purpose is best met by using a font with a vibrant personality throughout your website or using an amalgamation of sans and serif typefaces.

Different fonts are used for various purposes, depending on the tone and aesthetic you’re trying to create.

Some people are familiar with Serif and Sans Serif fonts (you’ve seen them even if you don’t know how to tell them apart).

They were designed to make it easier for people to read words, which makes most Serif and Sans Serif fonts a good fit for many different kinds of organizations.

Some fonts are meant to be a little quirkier and make a bolder statement – those are more suitable for niche nonprofits with a very targeted audience.

So how do you know which font style will work best for your brand identity and your nonprofit organization?

Are you better off with something conventional, like Arial or Helvetica?

Maybe you’ll find a stronger fit with an offbeat choice like Kirsten or Papyrus?

Whatever your font choice, it should align with your volunteers’ and donors’ expectations when they encounter your nonprofit brand.

The Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University ran a study that examined the traits people associate with varying fonts.

Traditional fonts, including Arial or Times New Roman, were categorized as “stable” and “mature” but were also considered “unimaginative” and “conformist.”

In contrast, “youthful” and “casual” fonts like Comic Sans were also considered “happy” and “casual.”

Ensure you consider these feelings and perceptions when you select a font for your nonprofit to attract your target consumer better. But please – never use Comic Sans.

And, be sure to license any font you use correctly.

Make sure the visual tone makes sense

Fonts can be evocative and provoke a wide range of responses from the people viewing them.

The emotion generated from font choice is directly tied to the letters’ shape and our psychological response to those shapes.

Choosing a font that has associations with something counter to what your brand represents will create a confusing experience for people.

You want to pick a font that emphasizes and supports peoples’ underlying feelings about your nonprofit – and avoid one that will throw everything off.

Fonts for a nonprofit logo, for example, should work to be traditional and clean. You need to be sure anything with your font on it – letters, emails, business cards – reinforces the message that you’re a trustworthy, credible organization.

The four major categories of fonts

There are four major categories of fonts:

• Serif – Letters that have short lines coming off the edges. Serif fonts are considered formal and traditional, and well-suited for print design.
• Sans-serif – These letters are created without serifs. They are viewed as casual and playful. They work well in digital designs.
• Handwritten – Anything that mimics handwriting is considered a handwritten font. Cursive fonts, for example, are often used in formal invitations.
• Decorative – These are informal fonts that are entirely original. These fonts are interpreted as quirky, creative, and fun.

When choosing from one of these categories, your preferred style must work with the brand identity you are trying to create for your nonprofit.

If you’re not sure the fonts you are drawn to work for your nonprofit, have your designer create several different styled fonts. Then run a focus group with your favorite choices! (crowdspring gives clients the ability to quickly launch free public or private focus groups in every design project).

That way, you can get some outside opinions from friends, colleagues, your mom – anyone whose opinion you value  – to let you know how they feel about each one.

It’s a great way to make sure any design you choose hits the sweet spot for your customers!

Color palette

Color is often used to persuade or influence us. And, naturally, color plays an essential role in a nonprofit’s brand identity.

An important study showed that people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or thing within 90 seconds. That judgment was influenced, in 62%-90% of examples, by color alone.

How you use color in your organization and your brand identity (logo, web design, business cards, marketing materials, and more) can significantly affect your brand.

Let’s take a closer look.

The qualities of color

While our perception of colors and what they mean is subjective, there are some essential qualities that we can apply generally. Here are some of those qualities:

• Red. Often considered exciting, attention-grabbing, warm, and connected to love, anger, life, and comfort.
• Yellow. Seen as adventurous, evoking happiness, enthusiasm, youth, and travel.
• Green. Of course, this color is connected to money, but it’s also known for its connection to balance, health, sustainability, and knowledge.
• Blue. The color of honesty, high quality, competence, trust, reliability, and integrity.
• Pink. This color evokes love, compassion, romance, gentleness, and sophistication.
• Purple. Creativity, royalty, mystery, respect, and playfulness are often connected to purple (and violet).
• Brown. Brown is the color of the outdoors and can be seen as friendly, organic, natural, friendly, and rugged.
• Black. This color is all about sophistication, intelligence, seriousness, and expense.
• White. The antithesis of black is known for its order, innocence, purity, cleanliness, neutrality, and space.
• Grey. When you need to communicate timelessness, neutrality, refinement, of the moment, or practicality, you might want to use grey.

It’s also essential to remember that how you mix your colors in a single design also has psychological implications for your audience. For instance:

• Many bright colors appear youthful, childlike, or full of energy.
• Black and white is a classically elegant combination that implies maturity and sophistication.
• Monochromatic schemes allow you to embrace more vibrant colors while maintaining a softer, more unified feel.
• Combining neutrals with an accent color allows you to take advantage of the emotional influence of an intense, bright color without the childlike implications.

Choose your colors wisely to elicit appropriate brand-appropriate emotions. The color choices in your brand identity should always embody the brand’s personality.

Culture and context can also influence how color is interpreted. Therefore, do your due diligence and research your audience so you can make the best choices based on their specific backgrounds.

Picking the right colors for your brand identity

Research shows that anticipating people’s reactions to a color and its relationship to your brand identity and your brand is more important than the actual color itself.

People want to see that a color “fits” your brand.

For example, the color pink probably doesn’t fit a brand like Ford or Harley Davidson. But, the pink color works excellent for nonprofits focused on cancer research.

The key takeaway here is that what color you choose is less important. It’s more important that you choose colors that highlight or accentuate the personality you want your brand identity, brand, and product to reflect.

Forms and shapes

All logos – whether they include an icon and text, only an icon, or even just text – have a shape.

And, it’s essential to consider what that shape communicates about your brand.

Shapes fall into three major categories – geometric, abstract/symbolic, and organic. And, they all come prepackaged with their psychological associations.

Geometric shapes

Geometric shapes of all kinds look human-made. Mathematically precise squares, perfect circles, and isosceles triangles don’t tend to appear in nature. So, using these shapes communicates a sense of order and power.

Squares and rectangles convey stability, reliability, strength, order, and predictability. Think of the bricks that are used to build sturdy, stable buildings. Consider incorporating squares or rectangles if you want your logo to communicate strength and reliability.

Circles are never-ending. So, they may be the right choice for your logo if you want to make your audience think of harmony, unity, eternity, or timelessness. Curves are considered feminine, and, as such, circles communicate softness, gentility, and femininity.

Triangles are a directional shape. As a result, they change meaning depending on how they are positioned. When right side up, triangles convey power, stability, and upward momentum. Inverted triangles suggest instability or downward momentum. Triangles pointing to the side represent movement and direction based on where the triangle’s point is facing.

Abstract or symbolic shapes

Symbols are simplified shapes that represent something specific in a culture. And, because symbols have precise, ordinary meanings, they are relied upon heavily as a visual language.

People have seen these images repeatedly, so it’s essential to be clever and original in how you use them. It’s easy for logos featuring symbols to appear trite and unoriginal.

Here are a few common examples of symbols:

Stars can convey patriotism, religion, or even show business and Hollywood depending on how they are used.

Hearts can be used to communicate love, relationships, and marriage, while broken hearts represent break-ups, divorce, and sadness.

Arrows suggest direction, movement, and travel. These are commonly used in businesses that ship and deliver goods (FedEx and Amazon, anyone?)

Be careful when using these and other standard symbols in your nonprofit logo. They may be an easy-to-understand visual shorthand, but they are also so commonly used that you run the risk of looking indistinct from your competition.

If your logo is too “on-the-nose” and unoriginal, you may come across as unprofessional, which will undermine peoples’ faith and trust in your nonprofit.

Organic shapes

Irregular, organic shapes are wide open to your creativity.

Organic shapes include the shapes of actual organic items occurring in nature (rocks, leaves, tree bark, amoeba, water ripples, etc.). This category also encompasses any irregular non-symbolic shape, even if it’s not inspired by nature.

Professor Sunday Moulton, Ph.D. explains:

Organic shapes are defined by not being regulated by patterns or exact dimensions in their angles, curves, or lengths of lines. In fact, they are just like shapes we find in nature with all the randomness and freedom you might see in a rock formation, a tree branch, or a leaf chewed by an insect.

When utilizing organic shapes in elements of your brand identity, keep these nonprofit branding guidelines in mind:

1. Natural shapes like leaves, grasses, representations of water, and trees tend to have a soothing effect on the viewer.
2. Shapes with jagged angles may create feelings of anxiety for your viewers, while shapes with soft curves will make them feel more relaxed.
3. Shapes that don’t resemble anything recognizable are open to the viewer’s interpretation. This means that you will need to work harder to communicate a specific message through other design elements and branding choices.

The psychology of lines in logo design

Lines appear everywhere.

Lines divide space. They create definitions and forms. They communicate direction. Lines tell us where to stand and where to drive.

But, beyond their practical function, they can also communicate a great deal aesthetically.

Let’s look at how lines can psychologically impact logo design.

Thin vs. thick lines

Thin lines are delicate and may appear fragile. They communicate elegance and femininity. They can also imply frailty, weakness, or flexibility.

Alternately, thick lines suggest strength and rigidity. They appear more traditionally masculine than thin lines. Thick, bold lines are used to draw focus and emphasize where they appear.

Straight vs. curved lines

Straight lines imply order, structure, and predictability. They may also be perceived as rigid or harsh. Straight lines are the best option for underlining text to draw the viewer’s attention while at the same time allowing the text to be the star.

Curved lines, on the other hand, offer more energy and dynamism. Curved lines are visibly flexible and can communicate agility and reactivity. Curve lines are a great choice if you’re looking to convey grace and fluidity.

The stronger the curve, the higher the energy the line will communicate. Softer curves are more calming to look at.

Horizontal vs. vertical vs. diagonal lines

The position of your line in space impacts the psychological effect that the line creates.

Horizontal lines run parallel to the horizon. As a result, they contain the least visual energy of all line positions.

Unlike vertical or diagonal lines, they look as though gravity has already acted upon them, and there is nowhere for them to fall. This means that horizontal is the most restful and stable line position. They feel comfortable and safe.

Horizontal lines help to emphasize width can be used to indicate the earth or ground or to indicate lateral movement.

Vertical lines run perpendicular to the horizon. They appear to rise straight up from the earth, filling them with the potential visual energy to tip or fall.

Vertical lines draw the eye upward. They are often used in religious iconography to draw focus upward to the heavens.

Thicker vertical lines are perceived to have more stability (and be more calming) than thin vertical lines, which look more fragile and unstable.

Verticality also can be used to convey dignity or upstanding trustworthiness.

Diagonal lines can be positioned anywhere between horizontal and vertical. This makes them very expressive and the least stable of all the line positions.

The higher the top of the line, the more distance the line can fall. This translates to more potential visual energy. You will elicit more tension in your viewer the higher the angle you create from the horizon.

Diagonal lines suggest movement and action. They are more casual and playful than vertical or horizontal lines because they resist being pigeonholed in either resting position.

Smooth vs. jagged vs. irregular lines

Smooth lines are clean, calming, and restful. Depending on their context, they can convey confidence, fluidity, or ease.

Jagged and zig-zagging lines are filled with tension. These dynamic lines change direction quickly communicate erratic movement and irregularity. They can suggest excitement or anxiety, confusion, or danger.

Irregular lines that are neither wholly smooth nor jagged look hand-drawn and natural. They appear casual and can emphasize and focus by placing an additional weight in the places where you want to draw focus.

Irregular lines can convey playfulness, confidence, timidity, or hesitation based on how they are drawn.

Lines are incredibly expressive tools with great potential for embodying emotion. You can combine most of the factors described above to create lines with great individuality.

When designing a logo, choose the style of line that best supports the brand the logo will represent.

Composition

Typography, colors, forms, shapes, and lines are the building blocks for a great logo design.

Don’t forget that how you compose those elements also impacts how the logo is perceived and its message. And these elements also impact your overall brand identity.

Here are some important considerations to think through when composing a logo design and other elements of your brand identity:

• Size denotes importance. The larger an object is, the more focus it draws and the more important it seems.
• Western audiences read from left to right. So, things appearing on the left side of the logo will be viewed first and perceived as the most important.
• Loosely spaced items surrounded by negative space look more restful than items that are closely spaced. If you choose to emphasize negative space, be careful not to leave too much, or the logo may lack coherence.
• Scattered or irregular placement suggests playfulness, chaos, or rebellion; orderly, symmetrical arrangements communicate formality, stability, and conformity.
• Layering items together create visual relationships, so be mindful of how you combine shapes and lines.

Symbols

Symbols are one of the earliest forms of written communication.

From cave walls to hieroglyphics to the printed word as we know it today, symbols are a powerful way to communicate concepts at a glance.

The ability of symbols to convey information, culture, and identity has made them an invaluable part of our shared visual language. This is true not only in popular culture but also when it comes to nonprofits.

We live in a world where people and nonprofits are recognized more for what they represent than for who they are. This makes symbols a powerful and effective way of communicating and important elements in brand identity.

Think about this effect when you see a red octagon or an X on a map. These symbols speak to us on an almost primitive level.

As people interact with a symbol, it becomes filled with meaning.

When you see a person wearing a white coat and stethoscope, you probably think that person is a doctor. The white coat and stethoscope are symbols of the medical profession.

When people see a “red cross,” people worldwide will quickly think of the Red Cross.

This recognition and how quickly they can communicate an idea or concept that makes them so powerful.

How symbols influence your brand identity and nonprofit branding

Many nonprofits use logos as symbols for their brand identity.

Symbols are a visual shorthand that nonprofits can use to imbue their brand identity with a deeper meaning.

Symbols create connections between your nonprofit and the ideas you want people to associate with your company.

Careful use of a symbol in your brand identity can have a subtle or powerful effect (or both!).

It all comes down to what you want your brand to stand for and what you want to say.

Symbol examples

Symbols are everywhere – you can find them on street signs, food products, sports teams, even on the laundering instructions tag inside your favorite shirt.

Not sure which one to use for your brand identity? We’ve gathered a list of the more common ones (and their possible meanings) here.

Rose

Besides love and romance, roses also can represent appreciation, friendship, passion, and much more. Here, the color of the rose is just as important as the flower itself. Roses have experienced a resurgence in popularity; the symbol has emerged at the forefront of many modern designs.

Fire

Fire conjures up thoughts of anger, passion, and destruction. It can also signify rebirth (as in the myth of the Phoenix). Fire can also convey a blaze – of energy, speed, and bright, burning passion. Look no further than the iconic Firefox, the Mozilla logo that communicates a brand dedicated to speed and durability.

Lion

The “King of the Jungle” carries with it authority, strength, royalty, and steadfastness. The power and force that a lion communicates make it a go-to choice for any organization looking to demonstrate a respectable, strong standing in its marketplace.

Wolf

The wolf is often used to show independence, freedom, the wild, strength, and guardianship. Logos that use a wolf in their design demonstrate ferocity, agility, and clever edge that work especially well for sports-related logos.

Triangle

The triangle is connected to ideas like stability, power, harmony, women’s health, and illumination. A dynamic shape, the triangle conveys focus, balance, and innovation. When shown oriented base-down, stability and strength become clear. However, when shown at an angle, it relays an energized, spontaneous feeling instead.

Circle

Circles can evoke the concepts of wholeness, completion, infinity, cycles and also represent the self.

Dragon

Dragons are especially revered in Asian culture and are often used to represent strength, wisdom, good luck, and potency.

Tree

Trees are a common symbol for life and the outdoors. They can also signify fertility, good health, and calm. It’s a popular design symbol for a reason and can be found in many nonprofits seeking to emphasize their nature-oriented mission.

Arrows

Arrows can mean direction, speed, progress. They can also point out that something is important. They reinforce the idea of movement and are great for conveying expedient service – like FedEx’s iconic negative space logo (notice the white arrow between the E and x).

Sun

The sun is a potent symbol of life, power, glory, and energy. The heat and intensity the image of a sun communicate to a viewer creates a lasting impression of warmth, endurance, and limitless power.

Moon

The moon represents the rhythm of time, peacefulness, femininity, eternity, and enlightenment.

Flag

Flags can have many different meanings depending on the context and what color they are. White flags can mean surrender or peace, red can mean warning, attention, or caution, and blue often symbolizes freedom. Using a flag in a design can, therefore, represent several meanings – be careful that your color choice doesn’t send a potentially conflicting message about your brand.

Owl

Owls are synonymous with wisdom, insight, the night, grace, mystery, and learning. Education and literacy institutions are quick to adopt the owl into their organizations.

Water

Water can represent life, cleaning, creation, and purity. The cleanliness and health water conveys is powerful and can be used in various forms: water droplets, waves, and rain showers are commonly used in organizations seeking to demonstrate environmental, calming, or cleansing brand values.

Clouds

Clouds are commonly used by climate/weather-focused businesses and nonprofits, but they have recently become a major symbol of online storage.

Heart

Hearts are a straightforward way to demonstrate love, romance, and enthusiasm – the retail industry, in particular, uses hearts in product packaging, package graphics, and product design to great effect (especially on Valentine’s Day). Nonprofits focused on health, curing diseases, vitality, and emotional welfare also use the symbol to great effect. Hearts are a versatile symbol and are an increasingly popular choice for a wide range of nonprofits.

WHICH LOGO IS BEST?

Tips on using symbols in logos and brand identities

There are some important considerations if you want to incorporate symbols into your brand identity.

As symbols often come loaded with meaning, their use and how they can be interpreted should be weighed against your nonprofit branding goals.

Here are some things to keep in mind.

Tell a story

Not all symbols are equal! You must do your research to ensure whatever symbols you choose are clear and concise and add to the narrative that is your brand.

Don’t choose solely based on visual or aesthetic beauty. Tell a story.

Think internationally

Symbols can mean different things in different cultures and countries. Brand identity in one country may be strong and consistent, but confusing and inconsistent in another country.

For example, the bald eagle may be a symbol of the United States of America to most, but to Native Americans, it is a symbol of nature and a messenger from the Creator.

Colors are another good example of a symbol that can have many meanings.

Doing some due diligence before you choose a symbol is significant if you run an international nonprofit.

Avoid conflict

Choosing multiple symbols for your brand identity can have its pitfalls. You don’t want to choose symbols that have conflicting or unexpected ideas.

Symbols can be combined in compelling ways, but research is again your best protection against unfortunate combinations.

Ultimately you want your brand identity to have a unified message, and whatever symbols you choose should help and not hinder this.

Be intentional

Successful logos have a meaning behind them.

These powerful logos make a lasting impact because they communicate your brand’s message in a compelling, effective way.

A thoughtfully used symbol gives your logo the powerful impact your brand needs to stand out.

Ensure that you choose a symbol or two that form a strong connection to your brand’s values, mission, and personality. If you aren’t careful and considered in choosing a symbol for your logo, you risk sending confusing, mixed, or even negative messages to your audience. This would weaken your brand identity.

Be intentional with the symbol you choose and that it clearly supports the brand persona you’re presenting.

If you’re looking for ways to connect your brand message on a deeper level with your volunteers and donors, symbols may be just what you’ve been looking for.

Creative elements are the look, feel, and voice of your brand identity. You’ll communicate them consistently across all channels, and it’s vital to get them right in your branding process.

The key creative elements of your brand identity include:

Nonprofit name

A good nonprofit name is an important part of a strong brand identity. A strong name creates a valuable first impression for your volunteers and donors. It’s a shorthand for conveying what is meaningful about your brand and what makes your brand stand apart from your competition.

Your organization’s name should clearly convey the public brand identity you want your nonprofit to present.

Not sure where to start?

Give some serious thought to what your brand’s primary goals, values, and purposes are.

Since you’ve just defined your brand’s personality, try to develop brand names that support the most important elements.

When you name a nonprofit, you must be certain your name represents your complete, authentic brand.

Nonprofit logo

A logo is one of the most important elements of brand identity. A well-designed nonprofit logo is a critical component of any well-executed brand experience.

But what makes for a well-designed logo that strengthens brand identity?

At its most basic, a logo is a small, symbolic artwork representing a nonprofit. But, when you set aside all the design trends and fancy fonts, at its core, a logo must:

1- Embody your brand.
2- Be instantly recognizable.
3- Be versatile.
4- Be timeless.

Everything else is optional.

Every design choice in your logo should exist only to serve and strengthen the four items listed above. And, if you meet these four requirements, many other commonly cited logo must-haves, like simplicity and memorability, naturally follow.

Nonprofit website

As we mentioned above, brand identity includes everything visual about your brand.

Your website is often the first place prospective volunteers and donors visit to learn about your nonprofit.

And while many different things influence people’s decisions to volunteer or donate, there’s a single common factor that drives nearly every decision: can the person trust your nonprofit?

Strong, modern web design is vital to your brand’s reputation, your bottom line, and your future.

Email design

First impressions are important. And, in our digital age, we often make our first impressions via email.

For example, a welcome email is the first exchange between your nonprofit and a new volunteer or donor.

It sets the tone for future communications, encourages people to take a closer look at your nonprofit, and provides helpful information.

Style guide

A style guide (also known as brand guidelines) is a set of rules to follow any time a member of your organization wants to publish, present, or promote content for your brand, use your brand design assets, or use your brand identity correctly on marketing materials, including on social media.

Personality

Brand identity may change and evolve as time and trends pass, but a brand’s personality mostly stays the same. Brand personalities typically include 3-5 key characteristics (like rebellious, empowering, and adventurous, for example).

There are plenty of different possibilities to consider when deciding on a voice for your brand.

Image courtesy of Shopify

Here are some other questions to get you started down the discovery road:

• What are your nonprofit’s main purpose and function?
• How do people benefit from your nonprofit?
• What is the current public perception of your nonprofit?
• What is the most important part of volunteers’ and donors’ experience with your nonprofit?
• What kind of qualities do you want people to associate with your nonprofit?

Your answers to these questions will build the core of your brand. All of your future branding decisions should expand on these ideas.

A style guide (aka “brand guidelines”) is a set of rules to follow whenever a member of your organization wants to publish, present, or promote content for your brand.

A style guide answers questions like:

• What brand design assets are available for public use?
• What is the proper way to showcase brand assets?
• What font does your logo use?
• What colors are approved?
• When you need an image for a project, what tone and feel should it have?
• Should writers use “email,” or does your organization prefer the hyphenated “email?”

These seem like small details, but if they’re not captured in a style guide, your brand identity can quickly drift into an inconsistent experience for your volunteers, donors, and the general public.

It’s not enough to create a brand identity – you must also consistently leverage it to build a strong brand and a powerful brand image.

Consistent, strategic nonprofit branding allows your nonprofit to grow strong brand equity.

How to create a style guide

Here are the six basic items that should be on your brand identity style guide:

1. Brand overview

What is your brand?

What does it stand for?

What are your goals and vision for your nonprofit?

These are all important things to define early, as they will serve as the guidepost for the overall flavor you want your brand to incorporate.

Image courtesy of CI Studio

2. Logo

Your logo is an essential element in your guide and an important element in brand identity design.

A logo represents the aesthetic of your nonprofit’s brand identity, is the first thing people notice, and the piece that they remember later. A logo should be consistent everywhere it’s used.

Image courtesy of Apple

General rules for the logo include specifications about the size, placement, how much negative space is around it, and the places your company considers appropriate usage.

Image courtesy of NASA

3. Color Palette

As we discussed in Brand Identity Design: the Building Blocks of Your Brand Identity, color is a powerful part of your brand identity.

To make sure your brand identity colors aren’t subjected to an over-zealous designer’s pastel or glow effect, your style guide should have a detailed color palette.

The style guide should clearly show what colors are permitted, where certain colors should (and shouldn’t) be used, and what colors should be avoided.

This should include specific color values (RGB, CMYK, and even Pantone) to remove uncertainty when creating collateral for the web, print, and other media.

Image courtesy of MailChimp

4. Typography

Your typeface and font are important elements of your brand identity design, as are the rules you assign to them.

Headers, quotes, copy, and any fine print all need the right color choice, sizing, and style, with font choice of critical importance.

Stop that new intern from replacing your carefully chosen typeface with the dreaded Comic Sans MS by detailing all of your brand’s typography in your guide.

Image courtesy of Medium

5. Images

Your style guide should include image guidelines: what’s allowed, what’s not, and when a specific image should be used.

You can even include instructions on where images should be sourced from, and if you have a particular aesthetic, what form it takes.

Whatever you’ve decided for your nonprofit should be spelled out in your guide so that your brand identity is consistent and strong.

Image courtesy of Spotify

6. Voice

Style guides aren’t just for visual elements.

The lexicon your nonprofit chooses can help define your brand’s personality and can have a profound effect on how your volunteers, donors, and the general public interacts with you.

While you don’t need a weighty tome, capturing the general sound of your nonprofit’s “voice” can make the difference between an anything-goes approach and something more measured and unique.

Ultimately, style guides are not about crafting hard and fast rules for every little piece of your brand. They’re meant to be guidelines that create consistency and help your nonprofit project a unified presence.

Several tools are available to help you create your style guide, including Frontify and ZippyPixel’s printable brand guidelines template. There is also a seemingly endless inspiration available to help you learn from the work of others.

Remember that you won’t know if you’re doing things right unless you track key performance metrics and monitor your brand. Use Google Analytics and various survey and social media tools to understand how people talk about your brand and interact with your brand. Doing so will help you tweak your brand identity and to correct mistakes.

To help you translate your brand identity into nonprofit marketing (including digital marketing, social media marketing, and offline marketing), we want to share examples of nonprofits that do a great job telling brand stories through their marketing.

ignite: futures with promise

Teen Living Programs (TLP) was started decades ago to help homeless youths. Originally TLP started as a place that provided temporary housing for youths. But over many decades, the organization became a nationally recognized place for youths to reimagine their futures.

Recently, TLP recognized the need to rebrand to reflect the work the organization was doing today. They worked with Prosper Strategies, a nonprofit consulting firm based in Chicago, to update their brand identity and messaging to communicate their growing mission and appeal to a bigger audience of volunteers and funders.

After rebranding, ignite developed a plan to reintroduce the organization to the board, youth, funders, supporters, volunteers, the media, and the general public. This wholistic messaging was unveiled at the organization’s annual gala in 2019, and that evening alone, ignite raised $500,000.

What you can learn from ignite:

• Feature your logo prominently on your website, t-shirts, bags, coffee cups, letterhead, business cards, and elsewhere to increase brand recognition and showcase your brand identity.
• Make thoughtful choices about the graphics that will best communicate your brand story. Dig deep and be selective – use the images that pack the most meaning possible while also jiving with the overall design concept and brand story.

1. Avoid a generic brand identity

How many nonprofit founders have thought: “I want my brand identity to be very bland and generic so that my nonprofit is indistinguishable from anyone else!”

Not one.

A strong brand identity is often the critical difference between blending in and standing out from the competition.

But while most marketers and nonprofit founders often recognize the value of strong brand identity, many don’t always prioritize it.

New nonprofit founders often incorrectly believe that a good logo will cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars (that’s simply untrue – check out this guide to how much a logo design should cost).

As a result, they sometimes buy pre-made templates in an online logo store, try a do-it-yourself approach, or use so-called online logo makers (some of whom claim to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to create logos).

Nonprofit founders aren’t the only ones who make the mistake of using generic logos- businesses of all sizes sometimes use logo shortcuts, only to find out that it’s even more expensive to rebrand later.

After all, memorable logos are 13% more likely to get people’s attention and 71.6% more likely to get a positive response from people.

In a world of noise, that can make a big difference.

In specific industries,  generic logos have become highly problematic.

The epidemic of similar fonts, glyphs, and swishy people leaves a weak first impression on customers and is unmemorable.

We’ve talked about the legal and branding dangers of these generic logo symbols in The Logo Store Nightmare: Ready Made Logos Harm Your Business.

2. Not delivering your brand identity consistently

If there’s one word that might encapsulate the habits of successful brands, it is consistency.

Behind any identity, from Coca-Cola’s huge presence to smaller but equally memorable brands like Dollar Shave Club, is a clear and consistent delivery.

The same holds for nonprofit brands.

The critical part is that this can’t just be online or in print: it needs to be evenly applied across anywhere your nonprofit interacts with your audience.

It can be challenging to communicate your brand identity when you’re limited to a single large header image, but this is a perfect example of why good branding is more than just visual.

You have to adapt to each network’s constraints and find a way to represent your brand identity faithfully.

3. Neglecting every nonprofit branding opportunity

Some nonprofits have the basics of good branding down.

But there are still many places you can extend your brand identity.

When you give Powerpoint or Keynote presentations, how do the slides reflect your brand identity?

Many nonprofits neglect to update their presentation templates or don’t create templates. You end up with an assortment of slide designs and presentation designs that can seem inconsistent at best or unprofessional.

Take the time to create custom presentation templates and ensure they are used consistently and kept up to date as your brand identity evolves.

Another small but meaningful place that nonprofits often neglect to extend their brand identity is their employee’s or volunteers’ email signatures. We’re not suggesting you use massive, rich-media email signatures with embedded images and fancy typography (because those are annoying).

Including a short, concise message (such as your mission or tagline), however, is a great way to use a space that would usually be forgotten.

And, of course, use your nonprofit’s name as your email address if at all possible. An email address is part of your brand identity, too – don’t rely on a generic Gmail or Yahoo email address.

4. Cheating on your nonprofit branding guidelines or style guide

It’s one thing to make sure the brand you create is uniquely yours and cannot be misrepresented or misinterpreted by others.

It’s another thing to make sure your nonprofit branding strategy is consistently applied internally.

Whether this happens intentionally (when an internal team takes matters into their own hands and deviates from the brand on purpose) or through carelessness or lax brand policing, the results are similar.

Many nonprofits shoot themselves in the foot if staff members and volunteers do not follow established brand guidelines.

Build brand guidelines or a style guide to ensure that everyone responsible for putting your brand identity out to the public knows how to put your brand in the public sphere.

Keep guidelines as specific as possible, and keep them documented and accessible to all of your staff.

You worked hard to create your brand. Give your staff members and volunteers the tools they need so they don’t inadvertently go off-brand and make internal checks so that you know your brand is applied correctly by all.

This is important in all your communications, even at events where you’ll publicly showcase your brand.

5. Not evolving your brand identity

Just as people’s tastes and trends change over time, so should your brand and brand identity.

A brand is a living document of not only what your nonprofit represents. A brand also acts as a vital connection between your audience and your nonprofit. Listen to what your audience says on social media.

Don’t be afraid to involve them in the discussion. As your volunteers and donors change, so should your brand identity.

6. If you rebrand, do it right

Rebranding can be a great way to refresh your brand by incorporating modern aesthetics into your existing nonprofit’s identity.

It’s important not to let your brand stagnate, and sometimes, a visual overhaul can help inspire loyalty and more volunteers and donations.

However, if you introduce these changes poorly, you risk isolating your potential volunteer and donor base and offending your existing ones. When making changes to established brand identity, you need to be sure any changes have benefits that significantly outweigh the risks of potentially losing the credibility and identity you’ve spent time building.

Ensure you are conveying your rebranding efforts clearly so that your volunteers, donors, and the general public don’t end up confused or otherwise estranged from the brand they know.

Ensure your audience is informed to prevent your rebranding efforts from causing frustration.

Even major for-profit businesses make mistakes when rebranding. In the following video, we look at four rebranding failures so that you can gracefully avoid these rebranding pitfalls.

The good news is that whether you succeed or fail is in your hands.

We regularly update this complete nonprofit branding guide. We most recently updated this guide on February 21, 2022.