You’re Not Nike — Get Over It

Corporate-style branding hurts nonprofits, flattens fundraising.

● The new kind, which says, "Buy our stuff and you'll be great." Nike and Apple are examples of this. They put the customer and her goals in the center of their messaging.

Here's why it doesn't work

With either, the customer ends up having direct experience with the product. He always gets the chance to decide whether it lived up to the promise.

If you pay Apple, you'll get an iPhone. You'll use that iPhone and quickly know whether your money was well-spent or not. When the brand and product are both good and well-aligned, the customer turns into a fan. When the promise isn't kept, the customer typically stops being a customer.

But the whole thing falls apart when you apply that logic to a nonprofit.

Here's why: When you hand your money over to a nonprofit, you get nothing tangible in return. There's no iPhone to play with. You simply have no way of knowing whether the brand kept its promise. Since you have nothing in your hand, you are bound to have a sense that the nonprofit brand didn't keep the promise.

The only proof a nonprofit has to offer is information — stories. Stories are nice. They're critical for building relationships with donors. But when you get right down to it, stories are to direct experience what product reviews are to owning a product. Even the best story fails to help a donor experience a fulfilled brand promise.

When a nonprofit makes a corporate-style brand promise — whether it's "give because we are great" or "give to make yourself great" — it paints itself into a corner. It can't pull it off. The claims are empty. The problem is, its claims are qualitative claims. They can't be proven. The donor is going to be disappointed, or at least underwhelmed, by the lack of tangible proof he gets.

In fact, the more exciting the brand promise you made, the wider the gap your donor will feel between the promise and the experience.

That's why nonprofits that have never been through the branding exercise often have stronger brands than those who have. They aren't making high-flown, abstract statements about who they are — and promises they have no ability to fulfill. They just put out fundraising offers. To fulfill the promises they make, they only have to be grateful for the gifts and share stories of success. That's not glamorous, and it's not going to get written up in Communication Arts. But it works. It keeps the promise, and that's what matters.

There is a better way

I'm not recommending that you just ignore branding altogether. (Though if you have to choose between a corporate-style brand and none at all, you're much better off with none at all.) There's a better way.

An effective nonprofit brand takes a different approach: Instead of a look-at-me brand, it's a look-at-you brand. It recognizes that donors give to make good things happen, not to support an organization. Instead of promising to be the coolest charity on the block, it promises a fulfilling, information-rich experience that will maximize the donor's impact. It says two things:

● You'll have a lot of impact.

● You'll see that impact, clearly and dramatically.

Notice these are both "you" statements, not "we" statements. The smart nonprofit brand communication guidelines are packed with you statements. And thin on we statements. All that stuff about how cool the organization is moves into the background where it belongs.

When a donor gives, you just deliver the information you promised. Deliver it quickly, well and frequently. And overdeliver, while you're at it.

At that point, you're fulfilling a fulfillable, no-BS promise. There's no gap in the donor experience. Fundraising keeps working, and the revenue you need stays on target.

So when someone comes to you wanting to help you build a corporate-style, super-polished, look-at-me brand — you might want to say no thanks. You can't afford the damage it can do to your relationships with donors.

And you'll save your marketing people the embarrassment of making outlandish claims about what –matters most. FS