Cause correction: How charities rebrand to empower and inspire

Crafting strong identities on behalf of not-for-profits is particularly tough, with budget restraints and scepticism of branding itself still prevalent. Jack Cousins takes a look at the organisations breaking through these barriers and the cultural trends underpinning their work.

Once a barren desert for all things ‘brand’ related, the third sector has blossomed to life in recent years, and perhaps this is nowhere truer than in the UK. This may seem totally paradoxical given the nation is facing the brunt of a cost-of-living crisis. If inflation outstrips pay increases, we should expect to see donations to causes drop off. But the UK has seen the inverse happen, with a record £13.9bn donated by the general public to charities in 2023 (a 9% increase from the year prior), according to the Charities Aid Foundation.

It's just as well, then, that charities in the UK have a strong reputation to fall back on in difficult times. Not so long ago this wasn’t the case, and public trust in charities had dropped like a stone by 2018 due to a litany of various scandals throughout the sector including sexual exploitation, systemic fraud and failing to pay workers. Recent figures by the Charity Commission for England and Wales indicate a marked improvement in general trust levels but also a rise in the number of people with very high trust levels.

On the back of this report, the Charity Commission’s chief executive, David Holdsworth, commented, “In these financially challenging times, charities must continue to show people how they deliver on their purpose, including how every penny makes a positive difference.” It’s therefore no good standing still; charities now recognise the necessity to keep on their toes and evolve with the times to connect with their audiences. The sheer quantity of UK charity identity updates in 2024 alone suggests ‘brand’ is now something that’s taken seriously, and this reflects a step change in attitude.

Gaining traction

Max du Bois has seen this transformation first hand over his career in brand design. Now the executive director at charity, education and health sector brand specialists Spencer du Bois, he started his career with a focus on branding private companies and believes there to be vast differences between the corporations and non-profits.

“Charities are far more complex than commercial brands,” du Bois says. “Internally, their metric is not about increasing shareholder value or profit. It's about how we make the world a better place. The objective is to challenge attitudes, change minds and inspire people to dip into their wallets to fund.”

Another unique difficulty charities face includes how they often must communicate to as many as five generations of people. Adding to that a lack of money to play with and, historically speaking, a lack of internal coordination might explain why the concept of branding – a costly and time-consuming practice – was underplayed for so long.

With over two decades of experience helping the third sector, du Bois explains that the commercial world, in terms of its attitudes towards branding, is about five years ahead of the charity world. “It used to be 30 years,” he explains, “but over the last 20 years it's narrowed. When I started off, you sometimes wouldn't even use the word ‘brand’ in main pitches; you'd use the word ‘reputation’ or ‘communications.’”

But times changed. Perhaps fuelled by a combination of the reputation crisis and a 10,000-strong increase in the number of UK charities since 2008, branding became seen as a viable way of maintaining reputation and out-competing other causes. The long-term price of not investing in this practice began to outweigh the cost savings from not participating.

Instead, branding is now a staple for any charity worth its salt in the UK. Not only that, but the level of sophistication has started to far exceed the sector’s once simplistic definition of ‘logo and strapline’. This is evidenced by the brand evolution of the National Trust, Europe’s largest conservation charity, and the introduction of its inaugural sonic identity at the hands of MassiveMusic in 2023.

Du Bois also sees charities hiring people into positions with distinct, brand-related titles as well as the adoption of brand-specific budgets – moves that testify to the potential their boards see in branding nowadays. As du Bois says, “This is because they know brand equals influence and income, and without that you haven't got anything.”

Then again, this also means competitor charities become capable of evolving their identities, sometimes leading to an expansion of their core purpose. One good example of this was in 2019 when many UK mental health charities started to encroach on the suicide prevention space. The Samaritans, which had been a leader in the area since 1953, found itself becoming less and less relevant. It called on Spencer du Bois to help reassert its role and change the charity’s focus slightly to also emphasise its suicide prevention workshops and online courses in addition to its well-known helpline.

This was achieved through a new visual identity that affirms the power of human connection. The once cold and dated visuals were thrown out and replaced by welcoming animated illustrations, a quirky typeface and a more colourful palette to accompany the brand’s recognisable green. With the Samaritans able to exist more effectively across multiple digital channels, positive outcomes followed including an increase in logo recognition and a big jump in revenue generated online.

Portrayed as victims

Another highly common trend amongst charities, according to du Bois, is the end of “flies in the eyes” messaging that depicts people as victims. Typically deployed in the TV advertisements of charities helping disadvantaged children in far poorer foreign countries, the tone is often destitute, meaning donations therefore rely on pulling people’s heartstrings. A way around this, he says, is showing the tough situations people face, but then also demonstrating how the charity helps to empower them.

Jasmin Kozowy-Mouflard, founder of non-profit Instant Aid, also sees a clear movement away from “poverty porn,” as she describes it, and agrees with the idea of empowerment being key. Her organisation operates worldwide and has provided safe havens to people hit by conflict or natural disasters in areas including Afghanistan and Ukraine since 2022. Instant Aid, as the name suggests, specialises in providing quick disaster relief in a way that the larger, often heavily bureaucratic non-profits struggle with.

After two years of good work with Instant Aid, Kozowy-Mouflard realised the need for a coherent identity that could cement the brand’s position as a core NGO on the ground that provides instantaneous aid with transparency. Up until recently, its identity was more or less solely confined to the name itself and a simple logo that Kozowy-Mouflard had created herself.

She says, “I was so knee deep in the actual work that it was really hard to even push ourselves away from that design. I knew [the old brand] would be a massive problem after about two years and that there would be the need to mature and become more adult.”

In a bid to be taken more seriously, Instant Aid turned to UK-based Driftime for help. The challenge for the design and impact agency’s co-founder and CCO, Abb-d Taiyo, would be creating an identity that was distinct enough to stand out while also feeling professional in a very serious sector. Given Instant Aid regularly collaborates with well-established organisations like the UN, the brand also couldn’t be alienating in any way.

The revised logo steers clear of well-worn design cliches typified by legacy NGOs, such as the use of a light-blue crest, for instance. Instead, Driftime devised something new altogether – with a view to the revised identity becoming truly ownable in time. Its new logo is a reimagining of the six-pointed 'medicinal star' (or Star of Life), a symbol used throughout the world to identify medical services. The third spoke, which represents early response, is emphasised, thereby underlining its core mission. The use of a bold orange also counteracts any potential confusion with other disaster relief non-profits.

Importance was also placed on uplifting the voices of those caught in disaster – a marked contrast from old sector practices – and this is evident from the tone of voice. Described as “youthful” and “pioneering”, the emphasis was centred around motivation, Taiyo says, to leverage relevance. While deliberately respectful to those Instant Aid aims to help, it was still crucial to craft an identity capable of also generating awareness, attention and vital funding.

Taiyo adds, “It’s indicative of the shift that we hope to see in the sector. It’s about pushing boundaries beyond how it looks and setting new standards to empower non-profits with the opportunity to communicate their mission and engage with their communities.”

A little respect

For fledgling Instant Aid, its new, upbeat identity will most likely play a crucial role in achieving its goals of being accepted by fellow, far larger non-profits and NGOs. But can this push for positivity and empowerment work for charities who already have a long and colourful history? This was the hope for the RSPCA, the world’s oldest and largest animal welfare organisation, who felt it was time to rethink its identity ahead of its 200th anniversary.

Despite high awareness of the charity, there was also a general perception of stagnation surrounding its brand. Internally, there were disagreements over what the RSCPA actually stood for. While externally, there were negative connotations of its inspectors as people out to shut down your farm or take your pets away. A strong, upbeat new identity could dispel these confusions and myths.

The job to rebuild the RPSCA brand fell on global branding agency JKR. Its executive creative director, Sean Thomas, realised this would be no easy feat, especially given this would be its first rebrand in half a century. There were concerns from the get-go about striking the right balance tonally; it needed to be positive but also capable of drawing attention to the more horrible aspects of animal cruelty. Having said that, the sheer lack of brand consistency with regard to typefaces and colours left a lot of space to manoeuvre.

After an extensive research period, where the JKR team spent time in-person with RSPCA staff at their offices and went out on the road with inspectors, the necessity to be bold became clear. The brand idea, ‘Putting the society back into the RSPCA,’ was then conceived.

Thomas says, “We felt that the ‘society’ part of the RSPCA had been lost over time. It needed to become a brand that was less about ‘Give us your money to pay our bills so we can do all the work’ to ‘We need you to help play an active role in this.’ That then galvanised all the design work.”

The previous logo might have been the brand’s most iconic asset with its punchy, octagonal shape, but even that was almost completely discarded. The highly flexible new design, which uses an octagon to house custom illustrations, cleverly allows the RSPCA to inform its audience about the wide variety of animals it looks out for. This works particularly on its high street store signs up and down England and Wales where the animal chosen can be customised based on the area. For instance, a canary for Norwich, a fox for Leicester and a seal for Cornwall.

Meanwhile, a thick custom typeface, Wilberforce Sans, speaks to the heritage of the charity. Designed with the help of Studio Drama, the design was inspired by protest placards found in the RSPCA’s archives, and its name directly references the charity’s founder, British politician and abolitionist William Wilberforce. The use of vibrant and engaging colours further fuels a sense of renewed purpose.

Thomas has since been informed that there was a spike in donations and positive sentiment towards the charity off the back of the rebrand, but it was the press reception that surprised him.

He says, “If I'm honest, our country does not have a good history with charity rebrands coming out into the market. The right-wing press in the UK loves to hate on a redesign and talk about the money that’s been wasted. There was still a bit of negative reaction in some newspapers, but it was almost uniformly loved. It was probably one of our most well-received pieces of work we've ever done.”

It's clear that designing for the third sector is still uniquely challenging worldwide, even in a country as advanced in its understanding of branding as the UK. Intense competition means design has to be of a high quality, and anything less will be trounced in the media, which then leads to public scepticism and trust issues. And if that wasn’t enough, the sector is trying to wean itself off the once ubiquitous practice of depicting beneficiaries as victims, all while operating on very limited budgets.

While not all redesigns will hit the mark, evidence from the past few years at least suggests these organisations have a hunger to evolve and recognise the power of branding. But if the work is done right, they have every chance of setting themselves up for a stronger future.

This article was taken from Transform magazine Q4, 2024. You can subscribe to the print edition here.