How Charities Benefit by Promoting Their ‘Brand’

To the Editor:

Vikki Spruill’s column (“Build Brand Identity for Causes, Not Groups,” June 14) did a wonderful job explaining exactly why her premise is flawed. Ms. Spruill’s comments, surprising as they may be coming from a former public-relations executive, nevertheless are prominent in nonprofit circles.

The idea that a nonprofit would perform like a for-profit in order to differentiate itself (create its own unique selling or service proposition, if you will) seems dangerous to Ms. Spruill because, she says, it will cause competition and perhaps result in questionable practices by nonprofit leaders. Yet in the end she asks nonprofits to consider three important questions that are at the heart of branding: Where does the soul of the organization lie? What was the impetus behind its formation? What need did it fill then, and does that need still exist?

Sorry, Ms. Spruill, you just asked the three fundamental questions of branding. You are asking the nonprofit to simply determine what makes it unique, why it exists, and why someone should support it — all questions that need to be asked in order to create a brand, protect a brand, and enhance a brand’s position in the marketplace.

In the for-profit world the questions might be, Why should this company exist? Why was the company formed? And why would the consumer buy the product the company makes or service it offers?

The nonprofit-branding naysayers, in my experience, don’t understand marketing or branding and see it as some kind of violation of charitable purity. In reality it is an exercise designed to help the nonprofit serve its constituents better by establishing its uniqueness in a very cluttered nonprofit world.

A decade ago Boys & Girls Clubs of America was a $180-million organization, with about 1,000 clubs nationwide. In the early 90’s, with the help of some very savvy board members who were CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, we created and implemented a very aggressive brand strategy.

The strategy required us first to determine who and what we were, second to focus messaging on a limited number of issues that describe what we do for kids, and third to seek corporate, government, and private partners to support our strategy and support our public-relations and information campaign on that strategy.

Result: In 2001 our combined budgets are more than $1-billion, and we are going to open our 3,000th club this year. In a little more than 10 years we have increased our budgets by more than $800-million and we have opened over 2,000 new clubs. In the past few years we have opened a new Boys & Girls Club every other day. Two years ago we opened 337 clubs in one calendar year.

Now, there is no way I will say the brand strategy was single-handedly responsible for this unbelievable growth. But I sure can tell you the American donor knows who we are, what we stand for, and what we do to serve American children well. In short, they know what this brand stands for, and they’re “buying.”

Kurt Aschermann
Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications
Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Atlanta