Rebranding With Grace

Lutheran Social Services of Mid-America sheds its long, confusing name and opts for a sleek, more focused brand.

September 2006 By Christine Weiser

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“The new name communicates the breadth of our mission to serve the needs of all people through a wide range of services,” says Willis Serr, Graceworks’ president and CEO. “It’s the result of a strategic effort to more clearly identify who we are and what we do and to create a common identity among all our programs and services.”

Promoting the new brand
Graceworks spent five months introducing the new name to its nearly 900 employees and 1,000 volunteers, as well as to its donors and the various congregations with which it works.

“We believed it was their role to deliver on our brand commitment,” Blumensheid says. “If your internal people aren’t committed, you won’t have a strong brand experience.”

Graceworks also did extensive brand training for its employees and volunteers. This entailed a 45-minute training session that explained what the new brand was, why it changed, what would change (the name), what would remain the same (the mission), and what their role was. The name change also inspired new publicity campaigns.

“The new brand helped us to introduce a theme for our ad campaign, which will run throughout the year,” Blumensheid says. “We have also integrated the new name and common messages throughout our publications. We’re still revising brochures and are overhauling the Web site — making each page more uniform with common messaging.”

Development’s role
The rebranding also proved to be an easy segue into new fundraising efforts.

“The new brand was a nice opportunity to go out and meet the donors,” says Shannon Schaeffer, director of resource development for Graceworks. “Some of the donors were apprehensive about the new name. They like to hear that our mission isn’t changing.”

After meeting with key donors, Graceworks launched a successful internal campaign, where the organization solicited from employees and yielded a 46 percent response.

“I believe the branding efforts brought so many people into the loop and opened a lot of doors,” Schaeffer continues. “It was very helpful in re-establishing relationships and gave us the opportunity to tell our story of faithful caring.”

Christine Weiser is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and publisher of “Philadelphia Stories,” a nonprofit literary-arts publication.