Not every nonprofit is a fit for a brand-led major gifts fundraising approach. Here’s what sets BrandRaise apart, and how to know if it’s right for you.
You’re ready to get started building a major gifts program. Maybe you’re starting from square one, or maybe you’ve gotten started here and there, and you’re ready to intentionally grow. Either way, you’re likely looking for what to do next.
If hiring a fundraising consultant to support with building your major gifts efforts, it likely feels even more daunting. There are so many options, so how do you know who to choose? Or, what makes them different from each other?
One thing that separates BrandRaise from other approaches to major gifts fundraising is our focus on brand. We believe brand serves as the foundation for successful and sustainable major gifts. But that approach isn’t necessarily a good fit for every organization, and it isn’t meant to be. We’ve compiled a few markers to help you see if brand-led is the right fit for your organization, and its goals.
Table of Contents
What it Means to Have Brand as the Foundation
Before we help you identify the right people to ask, we help you get clear on who you are as an organization, what you stand for, and how you want the people connected to you to experience your story. That’s brand strategy work in action and it’s important to distinguish from what is typically thought of as brand work – logo, fonts, and colors.
Brand strategy results in the clarity that makes everything you say and do after consistent, memorable, and easy to understand. The ask becomes a doorway into a relationship, not the finish line of one. And that relationship is what sustains a major gifts program well past any one gift, any one Board member, or any one person who happens to be good at, or have experience with, fundraising.
Want to learn more? Click here to read Why Every Fundraising Campaign Should Start With Brand Clarity
The Markers of a Good Fit for the Brand-Led Approach
Because of how central brand is to our approach, and the fact that we don’t focus on wealth screeners as a specific fundraising tool, BrandRaise isn’t the right partner for every organization looking to build a major gifts program. And since it can be challenging to determine what you need, we compiled a list of markers that our work is designed to support.
Your team understands the work, but your audience doesn’t.
Internally, there is clarity about what you do and why it matters, but that clarity hasn’t been translated well to an external audience. People may vaguely understand what you do, or why it matters, but they aren’t truly connecting to the work in a way that drives action.
Only one or two people in your organization can talk about the work externally.
We often see the Executive Director being the only person on the team or Board who can reliably explain what the organization does, and why it matters. This is a bottleneck because it means your organization’s ability to build relationships and raise major gifts is limited to one person’s availability and calendar.
You want your major gifts program to hold up past any one gift, Board member, or fundraiser
An as without a relationship supporting it is a transaction, and you understand how unsustainable and fragile it is to build a program on transactions. Because it relies more on making a compelling ask in the moment, and less on the connection and shared values alignment, you recognize that transactions are dependent on an individual, rather than the organization itself.
You understand compelling visuals will only get you so far.
You may have recently undergone a visual update or refresh, but realize there is still gaps in how your organization is communicating. Brand strategy work is what makes sure the visual layers has something substantive underneath to build connection and understanding
Your Next Right Step Forward
If you read through the markers and found some that are resonating, it might indicate that focusing on brand before making an ask is something to consider. Every organization’s needs and goals are different, and we’d love the opportunity to discuss if taking a brand-led, relationship-based approach to building your major gifts program is the right fit.
Kelly is a passionate brand strategist and designer who loves supporting nonprofits on their mission to do more good work in this world. She’s seen firsthand the power of creating a consistent and cohesive brand – from building better connections with your audience to streamlining marketing and fundraising efforts.
