charity brands

In the last week there have been lots of conversations around why branding is potentially pointless for charities and can be a total waste of hard-earned money.

Well, I’m here to (loosely) use maths and logic, the core tools of good fundraisers, to suggest why this need not be the case.

Firstly, here’s a truism I think we can all agree on:

• Unfocused, generic brand advertising ≠ guaranteed success for a charity’s specific activities

A recent Third Sector article reported that

Yes this is a blog about Cancer Research UK’s re-brand... but it’s not a typical analysis.  Others have done this already and there’s not much I can add to what’s already been shared (a quick Google search will show you what I mean).

Instead I want to focus on the absence of outrage which I find hugely interesting.  Previous high profile charity rebranding exercises have come under criticism from the sector and donors alike as being at best a vanity exercise and at worst a waste of donors’ funds. 

What a week of message contradictions we've noted at Bottom Line Ideas...

First there was research from Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) which showed Britain to be the fifth most charitable country in the world (up from eighth last year apparently). The same research also reported that nearly 80% of us give regularly to charity, second only to the Thais. Then we saw the British Government veto any further support to the IMF in support of specific Euro-zone bailouts - our European cousins perhaps not feeling our generosity quite so much.