Giving Compass' Take:

• Richard Marker, writing for Wise Philanthropy, discusses the popularity of re-branding in philanthropy and examines the reasoning for the name change at Wise Philanthropy. 

• How can re-branding strengthen a philanthropic organization's messaging? 

• Read about how re-branding impacts nonprofit organizations.

It seems that the philanthropy sector is awash in a re-branding frenzy. Two prominent organizations in our field, Guidestar and the Foundation Center announced that they will henceforth be Candid. Not very long ago, 2 organizations of which we are members changed their brand names: The Association of Small Foundations became Exponent Philanthropy. Grants Managers Network became Peak Grantmaking.

We chose the brand “Wise Philanthropy." We wanted to help people learn how to make decisions that were correct for them, informed by the highest ethics, the best practices, and the goals that they wanted to achieve. Wisdom is more than knowledge, but it does require knowledge; it is more than experience, but it benefits from experience; it goes beyond intelligence, but it is hard to have smarts without some smart.

Why did we decide to re-brand? Well, if one is asked the same questions over and over, it is clear that our title isn’t exactly right. Too often we have to explain at least some of these seven areas.

  1. Our business model is a boutique/niche approach so even in the field of philanthropy advisors and evaluators and educators, what we do isn’t typical.
  2. We don’t work for or have the family name “Wise”.
  3. We don’t manage anyone’s investments.
  4. We don’t manage anyone’s giving or even propose grantees.
  5. We don’t accept retainer contracts since we want any recommendations to be fully independent and never appear to be self-serving. 
  6. We don’t do any fundraising nor accept any development related contracts. 
  7. We are not connected to a firm with a similar name based in Switzerland.

Read the full article about re-branding in philanthropy by Richard Marker at Wise Philanthropy