Good branding can not only transform the perception of your organisation but the entire experience. As the old comedian’s mantra goes, “You can’t just tell them you’re funny. You have to make them laugh.”

No matter how big or small you are, your organisation is a brand.

People will have feelings about you and the promises you make through everything from your logo to the way you talk to how you dress and who your friends are. Keeping that promise is the key to great branding.

Only now is the third sector really waking up to this fact that branding can be a very effective tool for helping you achieve great things. In 2008, a study by the Economic and Social and Research Council of the UK's top 500 fundraising organisations showed that charities can seriously increase revenues through a commitment to branding. The truth is, they don’t have a choice…

Millions of words have been devoted to branding, but the reality is that a brand can be whatever you and your audience want it to be.

A brand is a logo and corporate identity in its simplest and most powerful form.

How well-known is the Red Cross logo? Not only is it a signpost but it also has a real emotive power.

A brand is your organisation.

Especially if you work for a charity or support organisation where the company is the product/service. However, a strong brand can also present opportunities. Take the RSPB, for example. They launched their own brand of wildlife-friendly organic rice several years ago.

A brand is a financial asset.

Oxfam, The National Trust and Cancer Research all have brands that are valued close to £200 million. Not bad when you consider that a brand is not really a tangible ‘thing’; more a way of thinking about and communicating things.

A brand is a set of beliefs, values and perceptions that exist in the mind of your stakeholders about your organisation.

Your brand personality heavily influences the way you interact with the world-at-large both verbally and visually. If there are three charities that each help children and are equally worthy, how does a customer choose? Usually based on emotional and sometimes irrational criteria.  It’s basic applied psychology and it sits at the heart of why brands exist.

A brand is a storehouse of trust and reputation.

As human beings we generally trust what we know – which is why organisations spend billions on generating familiarity with their brands, which in turn drives emotional and financial buy-in. The British Heart Foundation understood this when it took the successful decision to license its brand name for use on consumer products by  food manufacturers.

A brand is about experience.

If the reality of who you are doesn’t match the brand personality you project to the world-at-large…you’ll end up with some very upset customers. The best brands are built from the inside out, based on real values that can be sustained. This is another huge advantage for the third sector, where all charities and support organisations are very strongly value-based. After all, a customer can never truly experience a brand until after they’ve bought into it

A brand is something that absolutely must be able to change.

Even organisations that change with the times will struggle if they are unable to communicate that fact. A brand can never be set in stone and needs to meet the ever-changing needs of its audience.