Talkin’ Turquoise

As a full-service creative agency, we often work with nonprofits to further their brand and help accomplish their goals. Working with nonprofits is in our DNA. We often serve as a conduit for nonprofit clients, helping them make community connections. Through our work and volunteer work, we strive to make our world a better place and create positive change.

As with any organization, brand consistency is essential to success, perhaps even more so with nonprofits because they are dependent on support and public awareness to accomplish their mission. A nonprofit’s brand can help build loyalty and attract volunteers, as well. If you’re working with or for a nonprofit, here are four questions to consider:

1. How long has it been since you revisited your brand? Organizations should consider revisiting their brand identity every 3-5 years, including the logo and key messaging, to ensure that they represent your organization’s values, mission and culture.
2. Do you have on-brand printed collateral? Developing collateral to distribute to volunteers and supporters will help keep your organization stay top of mind—this could be brochures, fact sheets annual reports, case studies, success stories, or infographics.
3. Are you making connections through your social channels? If your social media presence is lacking, consider revamping your social strategy, ensuring that your graphics, photos, videos and key messaging are on-brand.
4. When was the last time you updated your website? Update your website to improve functionality, navigation, content and visuals—all based on key indicators like audience (who’s visiting), site traffic (where they’re coming from) and engagement (what they’re coming for and what they do when they arrive) and session duration (how long they’re sticking around).

As examples, let’s look at some work we’ve done with a couple of notable nonprofits.

Riverview Center for Growth

Located along the banks of the beautiful McKenzie River, Riverview Center for Growth offers professional mental health services and therapeutic education programs that provide hope and a path for growth. They’re making a real difference in the lives of children, teens, adults and families.

Having formerly operated as The Child Center since 1971, this long-standing human services agency needed a new name that better reflected its mission, services and clients. We used staff surveys and focus groups to understand who they are as an organization, who they serve, what makes them different, and where they are headed.

Based on our discovery, we landed on the name Riverview Center for Growth, then developed branding—logo, brand guidelines and key messaging—that reflects their mission, values and culture.

Our work included discovery, branding, advertising, photography, videography, email, signage, print collateral and revamping their website. Their new website focused on three key audiences: families, job applicants and a community of partners, sponsors and donors.

Riverview has also incorporated the new branding on social media with regular posts reflecting a bold, modern look.

Arts & Business Alliance of Eugene

The Arts & Business Alliance of Eugene (ABAE) has served Eugene’s arts and business sectors for almost two decades. As ABAE’s full-service creative agency, we assist with the planning, promotion and public relations for events and initiatives, and we designed and manage ABAE’s website.

Some of our most meaningful work has included key messaging and collateral for ABAE’s participation in the Arts & Economic Prosperity studies, led by Americans for the Arts. For the most recent study, AEP6 widened its data collection to include diversity and community sentiment related to the arts. The results and our work with them is helping ABAE break new ground in ways that are revitalizing the organization and its brand—so much so that its mission has since shifted to focus more on sector advancement and advocacy for the creation of an arts district within the region.

To assist ABAE in sharing the results of the study, we created a comprehensive digital toolkit. This toolkit makes it easy to communicate the data and key insights and messaging on a variety of platforms.

We regularly help in developing digital and print collateral, including a newsletter, flyers, annual reports and an annual Arts Guide.

Growing your nonprofit

Having consistent branding can not only help your nonprofit organization grow but succeed. Consider if your current brand accurately reflects all that your nonprofit represents. If it’s time to improve the image of your organization and attract more attention from donors and volunteers, we can help make that happen. Be sure to check out our full suite of services.