Amongst the ongoing debates around business and charity branding, I’ve not seen much discussion around the concept of brand equity. As defined by Wikipedia, this is:
"The commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product, rather than from the product or service itself."
For non-profit organisations, this will effectively translate to the sum total of the reasons people support, trust or work with you when they have a choice not to.
Basically, what you do, how you do it and how you represent yourself to the outside world which underpins your attraction to various audiences. So when an organisation has successfully spent years building these reasons for its target audience to trust and engage with it, there can be a significant risk that any change in their brand might undermine these reasons and put future success in jeopardy.
