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What You Need to Know About Nonprofit Logo Designing and Branding
Not-for-profit organizations are welfare or community-based charitable organizations, which generate money through donations. The purpose of such institutions is to earn profit while their mission is to offer help or services to humanity on a larger scale with that profit in order to make a change in society.
Branding could be perceived as a method of telling a story or sending a message about your brand. This can be achieved through logos, fonts, and brand colors on digital mediums and print materials used to create awareness. The elements you choose to represent your non-profit organization are incredibly important as they tell your story and create a positive perception in the minds of your audiences. Tell your brand story in the best way possible with an attractive logo and relevant imagery to stand out from the rest.
Your Manual for Branding a Nonprofit Organization?
Nonprofit organization logos are the most essential part of your branding strategy that communicates what the brand is about. Whether you are designing a nonprofit logo, or working on a concept for a foundation logo, the fonts, color, design, fonts, and also the language you select showcase the core message of your non-profit organization. A charity organization commonly uses its brand elements to express its mission, which most of the time represents symbols to make it unique.
A few steps that would help in making your organization reach the donors and target audience are:
Take a look at each one in detail so that you can make a well-informed decision according to your requirements.
1. Story or Message Behind Your Brand
Brand storytelling is now one of the most used approaches in marketing. The design must be able to connect with others through a story. It helps the customer to connect with the brand. When creating a logo or visual branding elements, the initial step must be to write down what your brand is about. The more relatable the story is; the more customers are going to communicate with it. And try to use factual language in this strategy. For example, Campfire Circle has designed a logo that visually shows its branding story along with the childish bright color fonts. This allows people to recall the character of the work they are doing as a non-profit organization. In a very modest way, they have shown how they are helping the children going through cancer and radiation by offering them summer camp so that they would engage in new activities, make some new friends, and have a good time so that their perspective on life may change. The logo is designed in such a way that communicates about a camp with visuals and a smart font.
2. Pick a Relevant Logo Style
It is important to understand what type of logo style would work for your nonprofit organization. While in some cases, an illustration or mascot might be the right choice, in others, a more minimalist design could be suitable. So you have to think about the brand message and audience perception very carefully before choosing one. For instance, a charity or association that focuses on environmental protection may have a logo that consists of just an icon of a tree or water drop.
You can also choose a mascot or an animation for a charity that’s associated with children’s education. Since the audience and brand message will be slightly different here, you can opt for a logo style that is elaborate and includes more elements than a minimalist one. To make the right choice for non-profit branding, it is important to understand a few key logo styles.
Wordmark
This includes the organization name in a custom font for brand recognition.
Pictorial Logo
It consists of a symbol or image that represents the cause and creates an instant visual connection.
Combination Mark
This combines text and imagery for versatile and comprehensive branding.
Mascot
Such logo styles include a relatable character which makes the organizations appear friendly and approachable.
Abstract Logo
This is quite simple and includes geometric shapes or abstract forms to convey ideas and values. This logo style is mostly open to interpretation.
When choosing a type, make sure you consider various digital mediums like social media platforms and your website where the logo will be featured. This way, you can analyze how the audience will view it and what they can assess about your non-profit foundation or association.
3. Choose Colors and Fonts
Now to bring your vision to life, select the font and color that closely represent your non-profit organization’s brand identity. Different colors carry different meanings and different fonts have different ways to communicate the story and form emotional connections with the audiences. These elements facilitate the customers to establish an emotional bond with the organization. This would later translate into their volunteering and donating choices.
For example, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation was dedicated to a vision to support people affected by cancer. Their wristbands became a cultural sensation in the 2000s. Millions of people started wearing them to show their support for the campaign and were aware of this disease. They used primary colors like blue and yellow. Yellow communicates a positive feeling of joy, happiness, and hope. On the other hand, blue is the symbolic shade of freedom, trust, and stability. They used Geometric 415 font which is a sans-serif typeface with a clean and bold font for clarity and visibility.
4. Build Your Branding Guidelines
Brand guidelines define what you do and protect your organization’s core messaging across different platforms. The ability to deliver brand guidelines is what sets apart your charity foundation from others. Connect with customers using the key mission of your brand, and use brand elements such as color, tone of the font, and visual representation of your brand that would reflect the brand identity and make it stand out in the competitive market.
For example, Charity: Water is a non-profit organization that aims and strives for the provision of clean, safe, and sanitary drinking water to the marginalized and deprived populations of developing nations. The brand is known for its visual image, which features a water holder. In addition, modern fonts are used in the brand's logo. The organization has raised over 500M and helped many needy people with clean water. The organization has used yellow color to represent positive feelings of hope, happiness, and joy.
5. All-in-One Stop for Branding Strategy
This involves using brand kits to give templates and guidelines to achieve consistency. It provides the designer of the brand with maxims of how to build the brand identity with the visuals essential for every business to grow. The guidelines of the kit will be made and then executed on different social sites for brand recognition. Elements for the brand kit contain a color palette, logo design, whether it includes initials of the brand or the whole name, photographs to show visuals, and fonts to set the theme.
For example, Dove Recovery House is associated with peace and the message of love, freedom, ease, and the start of a new fresh life. And the bird in the logo symbolizes purity of soul and hope. It is one of the most successful brands that connected with the audience emotionally and built confidence in women who have undergone tremendous traumas.
6. Key Elements of Successful Non-profit Branding
Non-profit organizations have to present themselves in a manner that depicts that they are displaying themselves suitably for the accomplishment of their targets. As the organization mainly depends on donations and sponsorships, it is crucial to formulate an identity that is equally satisfactory and influential. It is also significant to plan on techniques to target their potential audience and decide on ways to make your brand appear more interesting. Your branding strategy for a nonprofit organization should possess the following qualities:
- Conduct audience research when creating your brand kit. This includes what your audience expects from you and your brand. Your target audience must connect with the brand. Check out your competitor's approach to get an idea of how you need to go about it.
- Remember your existing brand recognition when you develop nonprofit brand guidelines. A rebranding can confuse your present customers who recognize your existing brand. Take the opinions of your supporters in the rebranding process so that you can get an understanding of your brand.
- If you have a real story behind it, try to show it to your audience not in the logo but in your marketing strategy by giving them a visual storyline.
- You can communicate the problem your brand is trying to solve or how donations can make a difference with visual icons to create emotional understanding. You can also share your work and how it is making progress on your social sites.
Conclusion
Nonprofit branding is extremely important because non-profit foundations have a mission to achieve goals and targets. That's why branding needs time and it should be the top priority of an organization as your brands need recognition on social media. The other thing your organization needs is hard work. It isn’t easy to transform your audience into loyal supporters and that's why by following these basic yet essential tips, you can create a distinct identity for your brand.