The Non-Profit Brand Series: Start With The Brand Vision

Some of the best ideas on brand development comes from Scott Davis book Brand Asset Management.  David Aaker also has some outstanding work on this topic and most of what you'll find are adapatations of their work.  In his book, Davis says brand visions have four components:

1. A statement of the overall goal for the brand
2. Target market(s) identified for brand development
3. How the brand will be differentiated from others
4. Financial goals linked specifically to the brand

1) Overall goals for the brand should be closely tied to the mission of your organization.  In most cases, the brand you are managing is your organization itself as few non-profits have the resources to actively manage a large brand portfolio (in most cases it is a mistake to try.)

2) Target markets are your constitencies.  You should spend considerable time understanding these different groups and how to communicate and engage each.  In most cases you will have more potential constituencies to focus on than you will have the resources to engage in a meaningful way.  Identify the three most important groups to accomplish your mission.  For MCEC, we selected: families, policy makers, and volunteers. 

3) Understanding how your brand is different from any other in your space is challenging, but may be the most important part of the exercise.  If your constituencies cannot understand what is unique about your organization they are less likely to engage with you.  MCEC is unique from other non-profits focused on military children in that our mission is to ease the transitional challenges affecting education.  We are positive, global in scale, and experts at what we do.  We are working toward the day when every military child walks into a new school and is greeted by name by their new guidance counselor and a Student to Student volunteer.  There would be no confusion or backward progress the student's level or graduation date.  They are quickly integrated into the same extracurricular activities they have been passionate about for years in their previous schools and they are actively recruited by major universities because of their unique perspective as a military child and not in spite of their mobile life.

4) No non-profit can survive without funding.  There are many different models to fund the efforts of the non-profit and you should develop your brand with this in mind.  If you organization is funded based on invidual donations your brand needs to be oriented toward attracting these individuals.  If your organization is funded from services you would have a slightly different approach.  MCEC funding comes largely from services, we are recognized as the experts in the transition challenges of mobile military children.  As we manage our brand, we keep in mind the importance of maintaining an image of accessible experts who equip caretakers of military children.