Giving Compass' Take:

• Global health nonprofit Path hired an interactive design agency to help them redesign their brand which helped clarify how they are making an impact. 

• The nonprofit dealt with a common problem in the sector: Not having funding or capacity for branding. Eventually, it shifted its strategy when it realized rebranding is an investment in building better partnerships. 

• Read the quick guide to digital marketing for nonprofit organizations. 

Until this year, the health nonprofit Path hadn’t updated its website for a decade–not an uncommon lapse for a nonprofit. “There’s this legacy in the sector of this tension . . . when we’re making decisions about how we allocate dollars either to program services that can directly impact people, or to marketing and branding,” says Carla Sandine, the organization’s chief marketing and communications officer.

Like other nonprofits, Path kept choosing to invest in its work to directly change public health. But it eventually realized that branding also deserved significant investment.

“We just heard from people repeatedly that they didn’t understand who we were,” says Sandine. “Even our employees and our donors had a really hard time telling people who Path was, and telling people our story.” The nonprofit was likely losing out on donations; studies have found that the majority of donors give to the most well-known nonprofits. Potential partners might have also been more likely to think of other nonprofits first.

The organization chose to work with a brand design firm and an interactive agency who typically worked with businesses rather than nonprofits, and who recognized some of the problems in traditional nonprofit marketing.

"Investment in a brand in a nonprofit that then can potentially pay off in building greater partnerships and increasing revenue then increases the impact we can have on the programmatic side of the work. It’s not a zero-sum game.”

Read the full article about nonprofit branding by Adele Peters at FastCompany