Branding is Direction: Lessons from Nonprofits that Got it Right
Insights, delivered.
For nonprofits, branding is dangerous.
If Nike makes bad shoes, even the swoosh won’t save them. If McDonald’s fries taste like garbage, nobody’s ba-da-ba-ba-ba-buying them.
If Mickey Mouse stole your wallet every time you visited Disneyland — and it feels like he does sometimes, doesn’t it, parents? — you’d stop going.
Branding gets for-profit companies only so far. If the shoes fall apart, the fries taste iffy, and the theme park is highway robbery, the market will punish them.
Nonprofits don’t have this check.
In the nonprofit world, branding isn’t tethered to the usual corrective: product performance.
Nonprofits don’t sell books, batteries, or BMWs. Those things either work well or don’t.
Nonprofits sell a story—hope, connection, peace, all of the big ideas you can’t put in a shopping cart. And because there’s no tangible thing donors walk away with—nothing to use, taste, hold, weigh, try on, and maybe return for a refund—branding becomes both powerful and perilous.
At a nonprofit, great branding can hide an empty stage. Supremely gorgeous visual identities paired with delightful, incisive copy can distract donors into funding smoke and mirrors.
It happens. But rarely.
Far more common is the opposite: nonprofits with no real brand at all. They have loyal supporters and do essential work in the world, but they don’t project any consistent vibe. They don’t offer a particular feeling.
Why is that so? Because branding is too often treated as a luxury. “We’ve got a nice logo and a working website, what else do we need?!?”
(Eternal thanks to whoever first said this.)
That brings me to one last important thing: At Mighty Citizen, we usually talk about “brand” as a noun. Your brand is the perception of your organization, the feeling you leave folks with—i.e., vibes vibes vibes.
“Branding,” meanwhile, is the verb referring to all the choices you make (and things you make) to try and influence, in some slight way, your brand.
You can’t control your brand,
but branding can give you a fighting chance now and then.
Here are three nonprofit organizations that came out swinging.
Examples of Great Nonprofit Branding
Girl Scouts: Evolving an Icon
Some logos seem sacrosanct, untouchable—so perfect that tinkering with them in any way will inevitably make them worse.
Such seemed the case with the original logo for the Girl Scouts of America.
On the left, that’s the original. Look closely. It’s designed by a guy named Saul Bass.
(If you don’t know Saul Bass, treat yourself for two minutes. Basically, he’s the Einstein of graphic design. (The Design-stein??) In addition to making a million other things you’ve seen, he did the AT&T globe logo, the opening sequence to West Side Story, and the poster for Psycho.)
In the middle is the logo update the organization did in 2010 to make it more digital-friendly.
Then, in 2022, the logo on the right took over as part of a total visual rebranding—a sort of riot of color and graphics inspired by badges.
However you feel about the new, more flexible logo, it’s undeniable that this was branding at work. Here’s an organization that:
Looked long, hard, and soberly at the reality of shrinking participation in Girl Scouts. Then they decided to tell a new story, in part via their look and feel.
Was unafraid to let nostalgia—nor the deserved admiration folks had for the previous branding—freeze the organization in place.
The visual identity didn’t just get “prettier.” It performed a magic trick: It layered in relevance for new generations without alienating alumnae who still wear their old badges with pride. Isn’t it much easier to imagine an 11-year-old in 2026 loving this new, vibrant, fun-first organization?
The lesson for you?
Don’t let nostalgia or inertia trap your brand.
Evolve or fade.
March For Our Lives: Urgency as an Identity
In 2018, students who survived the Parkland school shooting in Florida organized what became one of the largest youth-led protests in American history.
They didn’t have the luxury of decades of organizing experience. Everything was happening so fast. They didn’t have a cloud drive filled with old branding files. They didn’t have months to plan, reconsider, plan some more, and go back to the drawing board.
What they had was urgency, so that’s where they aimed their branding.
It started with their name: March For Our Lives. They knew their biggest challenge as a new organization was legitimacy. So they chose a name that came imbued with it. There’ve been countless marches for all sorts of things. It was a simple, direct, impossible-to-misunderstand name.
The visuals back it up: bold block lettering, protest-poster motifs, a color palette that looks serious without feeling corporate-controlled. With sharp attention to detail and plenty of unexpected design choices, March For Our Lives’ branding neatly straddles the line between being polished and very much of and for the kids.
And by the by, the branding worked.
Within weeks, March for Our Lives had gone from a handful of Florida students to a national presence with millions of supporters. The branding gave them instant legitimacy, and it forced others to take them seriously.
The lesson for you?
Clarity can beat polish. Branding is legitimacy.
Younger people don’t prefer great branding—they expect it.
St. Andrew’s Capital Campaign: More Than a Receipt
I wanted to include an example of campaign branding because it proves that you don’t always need to overhaul your whole organizational identity. (And because a capital campaign isn’t just fundraising; it’s theater.)
Not long ago, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School came to us with a problem.
They were about to embark on a three-year capital campaign meant to raise $85 million to completely reimagine both of their campuses. But they didn’t know how to present it.
What should the campaign be called? What should it look like, sound like, feel like?
We worked with them to create Raise the Roof—a name that felt playful and memorable but also literal: “This campaign was about putting up new roofs over gyms, classrooms, and student unions.”
Then we gave it an identity all its own: a bold logo, a blueprint motif that tied donors directly to the architectural plans, and a set of visual elements that carried the story through pitch decks, signage, websites, and printed donor materials.
Imagine if, instead of trusting the power of branding to move the needle, St. Andrew’s had simply started asking major donors for major gifts. No name, no look, no particular way of communicating—no vibes vibes vibes. If they’d done that, every ask would’ve been tougher because….
It wouldn’t have felt like a thrilling, aspirational movement that was aimed at something lasting and true.
The lesson for you?
Campaigns deserve brands, too. A capital campaign without a brand is just a long receipt. A great name and arresting look give people something to join, not just something to fund.
But what about your nonprofit?
If you suspect that your nonprofit’s brand isn’t where it should be, it probably isn’t. Or perhaps it’s just time for a new presence in the world.
Or maybe you don’t need branding at all. Maybe Mickey can steal your wallet, and you’ll still hit your goal. But if not, we’d be honored to help fix it.
