Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding: Seven Principles to Power Extraordinary Results (The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series) [Hardcover]

Jocelyne S. Daw (Author), Carol Cone (Author), Kristian Darigan Merenda (Author), Anne Erhard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2010 | Series: The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series (Book 188)

A hands-on guide to help your nonprofit build its brand, raise its profile, strengthen impact and develop deeper relationships with donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders. Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding is about the power a constituency-focused, compelling brand can have to revolutionize an organization and the way people view and support it.

• Shows how to optimally define what your organization stands for to differieniate, create value and breakthrough
• Explains how to build loyal communities inside and outside of your organization to increase social impact
• Features seven principles for transforming a brand from ordinary trademark to strategic advantage
• Includes case studies of eleven breakthrough nonprofit brands and transferable ideas and practices that nonprofits of any size, scope or experience can implement
• Other title by Daw: Cause Marketing for Nonprofits: Partner for Purpose, Passion, and Profits

A practical road map and essential tool for nonprofit leaders, board members, and volunteers, this book reveals the vital principles you need to know to build and manage your organization's most valuable asset – its brand. In today’s highly competitive nonprofit world, building a breakthrough brand is no longer a "nice to do," but the new imperative.

Jocelyne Daw, a pioneer and leader in building business and community partnerships has over 25 years of nonprofit leadership experience.

Carol Cone, named by PR WEEK as the most powerful and visible figure in the world of cause branding, has been linking companies and causes for over 25 years.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Learn more about the book -  bit.ly/bouzGY --AFP Ewire

Visit breakthroughnonprofitbranding.com for more information and insights about the book. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Inside Flap

Seven Principles to Power Extraordinary Results

At a time of intense competition, low barrier to entry, and lightning-quick brand recognition, leading nonprofits are building more value-rich branding programs. They are proactively creating business models that bring their brand to life in the hearts and minds of their stakeholders. Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding demonstrates how a constituency-focused, compelling brand can revolutionize an organization and the way people view and support it.

As practiced in real life, most nonprofits define "branding" as their visual identity produced to aid in awareness and fundraising. However important logos and trademarks are, this limited perspective leaves a significant amount of value on the table. Visionary, mission-driven organizations recognize brand as a bigger canvas for their work. To them, branding is the daily expression of their purpose and a way to communicate their promise to stakeholders. Their brand is their trust mark—their commitment to consistently deliver on who they are, what they stand for, and their unique benefits.

Drawing on their combined seventy plus years of experience in the nonprofit and corporate sectors, the authors studied eleven visionary nonprofits to reveal the seven principles for transforming a brand from ordinary trademark to strategic competitive advantage. The groups profiled reflect a variety of sizes, breadths, regions, and issues. The common thread is that their brand work has resulted in greater social impact and vibrant growth.

Through the use of case studies, Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding reveals how:

• A nonprofit put its renewed brand to work to propel its organization forward—despite inconsistent community support

• Renewed brand meaning heightened stakeholder commitment, stabilized an organization's financial position, and empowered it to weather a roiling economy

• A small organization's brand campaign resulted in exceptional growth

• A re-brand transformed a nonprofit, enabling it to expand from a regional to national footprint

• One of the largest nonprofits lost momentum and regained direction through a revitalized brand process

Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding shows you how to create a brand that creates unique value, builds deep relationships, fosters loyal communities, and increases social impact. It offers a practical road map and essential tool for nonprofit leaders, board members, and volunteers, as well as communications professionals, development consultants, marketing agencies, academics, students, and all those interested in catalyzing dynamic results for the organizations they serve.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470286911
• ISBN-13: 978-0470286913
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #487,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How Brands and People Can Change the World December 5, 2010

By BarbKelly

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Carol Cone, recognized internationally as the mother of cause marketing, once recounted to an eager group of MBA students how she shared a stage with the Dalai Lama. She described how you could relate shared themes of connectivity, collaboration, and compassion to their very different spheres of work, and how companies and their brands aligned with a core purpose could change the world. Ms. Cone and Jocelyne Daw bring the "brands can change the world" spirit and their collective know-how to Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding: Seven Principles to Power Extraordinary Results (The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series). It is an important book, both instructive and inspirational on many levels.

There is a lot to learn about branding, and what that really means, for example, the rational-emotional-engagement dimensions of a brand and how brand meaning serves (or should serve) as an organization's central operating principle. I especially liked the chapter on brand communications and new media tools that socialize brand meaning and tie into business objectives. (Point of disclosure: I work for an Irish internet company, "ammado," whose global engagement and giving technology is designed expressly for this kind of purpose.)

The chapter on brand communications/Principle 4 is representative of the many levels on which the book operates, presenting an overview of the principle, specific how-to success factors (detailed in an exhaustive checklist), and real world experiences of selected nonprofits. It is in the case studies of these exemplary nonprofits that the book's inspirational tone shines through: from the story-telling power of one woman's fight in the "Go Red"/American Heart Association campaign, to Komen for the Cure's voice of empowerment for women, to Goodwill's daily contribution to community enterprise and personal development.

The cumulative effect is a book that goes to the heart of nonprofit leadership and how nonprofits drive social change, and stands squarely as a valued resource for successful change management in any sector. For all of these reasons, Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding: Seven Principles to Power Extraordinary Results (The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series) has a wide natural audience of readers who, through their work, daily lives, and values are making a positive difference in the world we all share.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This book delivers the goods on nonprofit branding December 7, 2010

By Deborah Coulter

Format:Hardcover

I don't read many books anymore. Social media has ruined me. Give me the 140 character summary. But I knew I would read a book by Jocelyne Daw and Carol Cone. I've been learning from these two women for years.

For background, I'm a local, transactional cause marketer at a Boston hospital. If you're a cause with a corporate partner I'll show you how to raise money with register programs and cause products. I'll help you enhance those efforts with special events, social media and location-based services.

But what I do has limits. And through the years I've grappled with how nonprofits can shift to truly transformative cause marketing. I even posted about this recently and enviously explained how some cause brands are like magnets that attract power, partners and money to pursue their worthy missions.

But how do they do it?

Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding has a lot of good answers.

BNB identifies seven principles for evolving a cause brand from something ordinary that has no pull to something powerful and really serves the cause. The best part is the 11 case studies the authors use to illustrate the principles, which really bring them to life.

My two favorite causes profiled were UNICEF and the Food Bank For New York City because they both reminded me of my own organization in some way.

UNICEF reminded me of my hospital because the initial research done on the brand revealed that people were unsure what UNICEF stood for. I think the same is true of my hospital. Sure, we're New England's largest safety-net hospital, but what does that really mean? Some key takeaways for me from this section were:

* Research is key. If you have to figure out where your brand stands before you can chart a course for it.
* The value proposition of your brand has to be simple and actionable. UNICEF: Whatever it takes to save a child.
* Identify and label your core supporter community. For UNICEF it was empathetic globals, "people who care about the developing world and feel very strongly that people and the government should do much more to help those in need."

The Food Bank For New York City had me thinking of our food pantry that this year will serve 90,000 men, women and children-nearly double the mouths we fed just two years ago. Again, as with UNICEF, research revealed that external audience just weren't sure what the food bank did (its original name was Food for Survival). Two of the key lessons from their rebranding included:

* This process begins at the very top of the organization. The board and senior management must be fully engaged for the rebranding to be successful. I really admire the food bank for the courage it took to admit that things weren't working and the cause needed a change.
* To be a breakthrough brand you have to be bold in your goals. It wasn't enough for the food bank to focus on food delivery and 1,000 food pantries and soup kitchens they supplied across New York City. As the authors note they had to shift to the "higher-order, more compelling cause of addressing hunger and food poverty for New York City system wide." Yeah, the vision thing that stirs donors' ideals and giving.

After learning all seven principles and seeing them in action with 11 causes I gained a new appreciation for just how important (and demanding) rebranding is for a cause. It's a pilgrim's journey full of meaning, reflection and uncertainty. The trip is not for the fainthearted nor for the solitary traveler.

Fortunately, in the uncertain waters of nonprofit branding, we finally have a compass and a companion in Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding.

Joe Waters
@joewaters
[…]

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bible of Nonprofit Branding October 24, 2010

By JASON SAUL

Format:Hardcover

Written by the gurus of cause, Jocelyne Daw and Carole Cone, this is the book we've been waiting for. This well-researched book nails the ultimate question: how do we turn nonprofit brands from logos into living value propositions? Daw and Cone explain branding in a way that is powerful to both nonprofits and for-profits. And most importantly, Daw and Cone don't just highlight case studies of organizations, they tease-out the key principles that all nonprofits can relate to and break it down into simple easily-understood elements. What I particularly liked about the book was the way that the authors tie branding into impact and teach us how to engage stakeholders to learn how our organizations create value. This is something that very few books discuss.

Daw and Cone have hit upon something pretty powerful - the emotional connection to a brand. this is something that EVERY company wants today. The principles - things like "rally internal brand ambassadors" and "expand your brand by mobilizing an external community" are fresh, new and incisive. The authors take this concept the full distance: extending their message all the way through to fundraising, offering creative ways that brands can be used to generate revenues and create new value. All of my concerns were anticipated and convincingly dealt with.

This book is a must-read for every nonprofit board member, executive director and consultant.