Charity branding for the charities really needing it
It is a well known fact that the charity sector has close to 164,000 charities all competing for the same pool of donations, contracts, influence, volunteers and supporters. Yet the actual number of charities dropped in the years 2003-2013, and as the pool of charities shrunk, the number of big charities rose sharply – from 460 in 2003 to some 958 in 2013.
As a consequence, of the 164,000 charities, those with less than £500,000 annual income make up 88% of the entire sector, taking only 10% of the total charities income.
This market imbalance has been further compounded by the knock on effect of the financial crash. The age of austerity can no longer be termed a "blip". it is a new landscape that charities have to become accustomed to if they are to survive. And, with the number of charities remaining large, and the available funds static, competition for those funds is becoming more and more intense.
The charity sector is not unique in suffering the effects of polarisation. This is a characteristic of many markets from technology through to finance. When the middle sized players lack either scale or specialism they are in a dangerous place.
Domination by the big players
Also, of course, the charity sector is dominated by the big players – the MacMillans and the RSPCAs of this world. They are the ones with the focus and messages that are immediately understood by their target audiences. As they’ve grown, they have been getting more of the share of income, influence and contacts. They have the size and the consistency that enables them to invest in their marketing effort, in innovation, in developing new services for their clients – and in their brand.
At the other end of the scale, there is the multitude of small, specialist charities which also focus on a narrow range of issues. While small, they often operate on a local level, and speak directly to their constituency because of their "closeness to the ground" and to their stakeholders.
Then there are the ones in between – the "squeezed middle" which have neither the scale nor the specialism to help them compete..
Positioned between the large, uber brands and the small, specialised charities, this "bulge" of small to medium operations have neither the nationwide "footprint" of awareness and commitment enjoyed by the big charities, nor the strong local ties and loyal constituency of the micro-charities.
For many of them, there are a set of problems: lack of differentiation, lack of focus and lack of voice. Some claim that the effort of fundraising and awareness raising would be better directed away from this undifferentiated sector, and towards the larger charities. The Charities Commission itself has commented on the duplication that exists between many of these.
Clearly, these charities are struggling to compete with each other to carve out their territory and develop sustainable income and future growth.
Drifting from the original mandate
Over time some charities, like any other organisation, tend to lose touch with their original mandate – very often a specific one – and allow their message and their activities to become ill-defined, generalised and blurred. Like any brand in need of revitalisation, a solution is to look back in time and find the "core truth" that lies behind its original foundation.
Lack of voice does not mean staying silent. On the contrary, you can shout as loud as, or louder than, anyone else, but if your words aren’t relevant and don’t stand out, no one will hear what you say. There was, a few years ago, an ad campaign for an Irish beer, with the strapline: "Strong Words, Softly Spoken". If the words are right, it may not be necessary to use a megaphone to get your message across.
It might be worth, when considering your message, to ask yourself the following four questions: Is my message distinct? Is it relevant? Is it unique in the sector? And is it motivating to my target audience? Distinct, relevant, unique and motivating!
While most people are aware of the need for branding, there is still some confusion about what a brand is or does. Branding isn’t necessarily big spends on TV, large marketing departments or complex ways of communicating to an audience. The purpose of branding is to build and exploit an identity and reputation in order to reach out to and inspire all stakeholders. Branding isn’t "puffery"; it’s a practical business tool.
It follows that to invest in branding is to invest in the future of a given charity, and to invest in what it exists to do – to serve the particular cause it has been set up to do.
The big charities know this and have invested in their brands over many years, enabling them to keep pace with the changing world we live in. The micro-charities, being close to the ground and their target audience, position themselves through the direct experiences they bring to their clients and volunteers. It is the charities in the "squeezed middle" that need to build and exploit their brands in order to build long term, income generating, sustainable and thriving organisations.
Defining what makes unique
To do this, they must first define what it is that makes them unique. This process of defining can take different forms. For instance, in the case of volunteering charity CSV, it embraced and "owned" the transformational value of social volunteering – both for its clients and the volunteers themselves. This defined the charity's driving brand principle – "Volunteering Matters"- which defined its unique territory and enabled it to reach out to and inspire all stakeholders, from staff and volunteers to the general public
By contrast, mental health support charity Richmond Fellowship defined itself by creating partnerships with other organisations which shared the same set of powerful beliefs. In doing so it created a new offering that advanced its operation, shared skills and resources, and drove forward its cause together with partners such as Aquarius, My Time, Croftlands and Can. This "collective" approach set it apart in the sector and gave the charity the differentiation and standout that it needed
So what is a brand positioning for? It performs a number of functions. Brand positioning enables the charity brand to claim, and own a particular territory for itself. It defines the core philosophy and message for external and internal stakeholders. It will also help define which media are most appropriate as a vehicle for getting that message most directly to a target audience. And most important, it will signal the continued ‘right to exist’ – the unique space a charity occupies in the sector.
Not an easy task
It’s not easy to find a brand positioning – often, those within a charity are too close to it to be able to stand back and use the tools and techniques required to identify and distill it. Furthermore, a brand positioning is not the same as a line of copy – however arresting or relevant that copy may be.
A brand positioning should define not just what a charity says about itself, but what the brand actually means. It should define how an audience perceives the charity and what associations they should make with it. It should also define what those audiences are saying about the charity to others.
By defining a brand positioning, a charity will create the crucial difference between itself and others that will give it a unique voice which "cuts through" to its audience. It will benefit not only itself and further its ambitions, not only the sector as a whole – but, most important of all, its own beneficiaries.
It may even help it to survive.
