The UK is the most generous nation in Europe, our awareness of charities and the work they do takes hold at an early age. With over 170,000 registered organisations in the UK, charities have to work hard to secure their share in that generosity. 

Brand equity, therefore, plays a significant role in gaining awareness, contributions and investment. The right branding can create a lens projecting the values of the organisation itself. Here is how branding and marketing can be your secret weapons for success. 

Trust is the most important business and brand asset you manage. It’s the foundational principle of all relationships, particularly those between charity organisations and their patrons. For value-led organisations being trust-worthy and virtuous is often not enough. In countries where charity organisations are in excess, like the UK, your value as a charity must be conveyed to the public. 

This is why branding is important, the right branding and marketing can help distinguish your charity as honest, transparent and dependable. You want someone who donates to your charity to feel good about their contribution, by helping them recognise your societal value you can encourage more donations. 

Historically organisations might not have considered brand equity relevant to the third sector, but in fact, it often helps build long-lasting, reliable relationships that translate to more donations, participation and recognition. 

Our recent work with Simon Community Scotland taught us the added challenge charities and social organisations face in asking people to take an action or rally behind a movement, for which they will receive nothing tangible in return. By using strategic design and digital marketing to build an emotional connection between your audience and your cause, you can get across personal and societal benefits that resonate with your audience and spur them into action.

Street Change Glasgow is a Simon Community Scotland Initiative which aims to break the cycle of begging, rough sleeping and homelessness. Third sector organisations, businesses, Glasgow City Council and the city’s Health & Social Care Partnership all teamed up with Simon Community Scotland to launch the new alternative giving scheme. It offers the public an alternative to putting change in a cup, to help bring about positive, long term change for people involved in street begging. 

Driven by a sense of social responsibility, we worked with Simon Community Scotland and Glasgow City Council on the launch of Street Change Glasgow, a new initiative with the aim of breaking the cycle of begging, rough sleeping, and homelessness. We created and launched the brand for the Street Change Glasgow campaign, along with all supporting brand collateral and digital infrastructure. 

This is a project that we feel personally connected to as a team and felt that we could apply our creative problem-solving approach to the challenge of branding and positioning an innovative charitable initiative that attracted a lot of public dubiety, albeit misguided.

We took on the responsibility of creating and launching the Street Change Glasgow brand, as well as designing and developing the initiative’s website which had to inform and take donations.

We developed branding that very effectively got across the compassionate and charitable nature of the campaign. The logo, as usual, would play a key part in this, it was at the centre of all marketing and all associated digital and printed materials. We encapsulated every element of the cause within it; a compassionate heart, a helping hand, and a charitable contactless donation.

We translated this branding across every element of the Street Change campaign. Not only did we design banner stands, hoodies, leaflets, debit card-shaped promotional business cards, and podium stands, but also tap point screens, social media graphics, website. This creates a vital consistency – no matter what you are exposed to, be it physical or digital, there is no mistaking it is a part of Street Change Glasgow.

Terminology was also particularly important. Using the right words in the right way is essential to any brand, but this is especially true with Street Change due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter. The people on our streets are not just faceless beggars or rough sleepers, but real people in need of help. We worked with Simon Community Scotland and Glasgow City Council to come up with some appropriate wording and phrases. We also came up with the #TapToChangeLives hashtag, which boiled down the entire purpose of the campaign to its most simple but effective form.

Getting the right branding and messaging is vital to the success of a charity – whether you are a commercial business or non-profit, we all have to compete for attention in a society full of competition and distractions. Strive Digital has a proud history of helping third-sector and governmental organisations to stand out, and we know the only way to achieve this is to use the same methods and principles we would use for a regular brand. 

Get in touch with our talented team of brand specialists today.