Fonts Don’t Fund the Frontline

Why bothism is not the answer to the brand or fundraising spend argument

If someone suggests a rebrand, show your CEO this chart. It could save you millions.

You know the conversation. It unusually starts with the arrival of someone new. Someone senior. Someone with a desire to make a mark.

Suddenly, the conversations are peppered with phrases like tired creativity, visual identity and brand refresh.

It all sounds exciting stuff. The dark arts – that no one quite understands – are going to turn your charity into a supercharged fundraising machine.

But here’s the truth: while you’re sketching logos and rewriting tone-of-voice documents, your budget is drifting away from the one thing proven to raise more money – fundraising. As the chart above shows, every £1 spent on fundraising generates £1 more than if you'd spent it on brand advertising.

And this happens whilst your actual fundraising programmes are crying out for an injection of cash.

And you, dear fundraiser, are sitting there thinking why the hell are we spaffing money up the wall when I could turn that money into more money – for the work that we all know is central to our purpose.

Well, the next time this happens, you can stop quietly gritting your teeth and instead calmly slide a report across the table. Specifically, the Great Fundraising & Brands report from Professor Adrian Sargeant and Harriet Day. You can download it here.

A few years ago, they looked at the numbers from thirty charities to see what actually drives fundraising growth, and the results aren’t necessarily the greatest endorsement of brand spend.

Here’s what the data actually says.

Spending on Fundraising Works. Shock horror!

Let’s start with the blinkin’ obvious. The single best way to raise more money is to spend money on fundraising.

According to the study, for every £1 you invest in fundraising, you get £2.60 back.

This is your engine. It’s your donor acquisition, your appeals, your legacy marketing. It’s the stuff that actually asks people for money and brings it in. It is the most efficient and powerful thing you can spend a donor’s pound on. No debate.

Now let’s look at spending on ‘Branding’. It’s a bit meh.

So what does that branding budget return?

Well, for every £1 you invest in branding, you’ll tend to get £1.60 back.

Now, that’s fine – spend on branding can drive a positive return (but as we know – not always). But look at those numbers again. £2.60 vs £1.60. Why in the name of everything that is holy would you actively choose the less effective option? Why would you take money from the thing that works best to fund the thing that works less well?

It’s doesn’t make sense, however you dress it up – even in a pretty new typeface.

But as they say on QVC, wait, there’s more…

Here’s the £15.5 MILLION Insight: It’s Not just down to the budget, It’s the Personality that matters.

This is the killer finding. This is what you need to print out and staple to your CEO’s forehead.

The study found that amongst the charities they analysed, those that had a strong, distinctive brand personality – that offered a great brand experience – generated an extra £15.5 MILLION in income a year.

Read that again. Fifteen. Point. Five. Million. Pounds.

This had nothing to do with how much they spent. It was about how good, how memorable, how engaging their brand was.

It’s the difference between being a Salvation Army – with a clear, human, supportive personality - and being yet another generic charity with a mission statement full of jargon and a logo of some hands cupping a globe.

A massive budget for a rebrand is a waste. A brilliant brand experience is priceless.

They are not the same thing.

So, Should You Rebrand or Just Get On With Fundraising?

This data gives you the perfect answer to that tedious, circular debate.

1. If you're just bored with your logo...

If your brand works, if donors know you and like you, and your only reason for a rebrand is that "it feels a bit dated," then please, please, please, focus on donor recruitment and development. Taking £100k that could raise £260k and instead spending it on a project that will only raise £160k (if you're lucky) is not the greatest intellectual decision the world has ever seen.

2. But if your brand is genuinely rubbish...

If your brand is a hindrance. If it’s generic, confusing, tainted with scandal or has the personality of a damp flannel. If nobody can remember who you are or what you do. Then yes, a rebrand might be of value.

But it must be a strategic rebrand focused on one thing – creating a distinctive personality. And that personality comes from who you actually are and what you actually do – not from the new logo you’ll be charged tens of thousands for.

Success doesn’t come from choosing a new shade of red or blue or green. It’s comes from talking to people in a way that’s human, memorable, and unique. That’s where the £15.5 million prize is.

So next time the branding conversation starts, wait for the vigorous nodding to slow down, and ask the question:

"Are we proposing to change what we look like by spending money to design a new logo, come up with a new strapline supported with a new palette and typeface, or are we making a strategic decision to build a stronger - more distinctive and engaging – brand experience?"

Because one is a vanity project. The other is a fundraising super-weapon. The data is clear.

If you’ve got the budget, choose wisely.

If you’d like to dig deeper into this. Let me recommend – again – Alan Clayton’s book, Great Fundraising Organisations. It explains the difference between organisations that deliver sustainable growth and those that simply get a short-term flurry of income from the increased media spend that normally supports a rebrand.