← The Smart Communications Podcast
The Smart Communications Podcast
Episode 201: How do you approach rebranding a 100 year old nonprofit?
00:19:37
Discover how a 100-year-old community foundation approached a full rebrand, refreshing their identity to engage new audiences.
Loading summary
Transcript30 lines
- [00:03]
A
This is the Smart Communications. Smart Communications.
- [00:05]
B
Smart Communications Podcast.
- [00:08]
C
Developing the voices Voices. Developing the voices of determined nonprofits brought.
- [00:13]
B
To you by Big Duck.
- [00:16]
A
Hello and welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. I'm Ali Damieu, director of service development and worker owner at Big Duck. I'm really excited to be here today with Big Duck, Brad Drazen from the Hartford foundation for Public Giving. So Big Duck has been partnering with the foundation on a comprehensive rebrand for the last year, which has included a name change. And by the time this episode airs, their new name and branding will be out there to the public. You could check out their their new website with their new brand. But today we have the opportunity to talk to Brad about his organization's rebrand journey. Partnering with Big duck. Why this 100-year-old community foundation decided to rebrand. And just hear some insights and lessons learned that might be relevant to others considering a BRI brand or other foundations out there thinking about maybe changing some aspect of their identity. But before we start chatting with Brad, a little bit more about him and his role at the organization. So, Brad Drazen is the Vice President of Communications and Marketing at the Hartford foundation for Public Giving, leading the organization's community and media relations, brand strategy and awareness, and donor communications. Previously, Brad spent 20 years as a television news anchor, reporter and producer, garnering several honors for his work, including a DuPont Columbia Award, a Peabody and five Boston New England Emmys. Brad has a Bachelor's degree in Drama and English from Dartmouth College and an MBA from ucla. Anderson. So welcome to the show, Brad. Thank you for being with me today.
- [01:47]
B
Thanks so much, Ali. It's great to be here. What an honor.
- [01:50]
A
Yes. This is fun. We have worked together so much over the last year, but this is our first time where we're going. We're going out to the public with the story. Right? Right.
- [01:58]
B
Yeah. It's exciting.
- [01:59]
A
Yes. So as I mentioned, Big Duck has been partnering with the Hartford foundation for Public Giving, which is a community foundation based and centered in Hartford, Connecticut, but expanding to 29 towns in that greater Hartford region. And we've worked with them on a real comprehensive rebrand with which has been timed with their centennial, their 100 year anniversary from being founded in the Hartford area. And our work with them wasn't just a visual refresh, not just a logo. It involved really thinking about how do they want to be perceived in the community, how should their identity be updated, Everything from their name to their tagline, visuals, messaging, and really to better reflect their the impact that they're having. The Work that they're doing today, how they've evolved over their hundred years so that their brand is really reflective of the work that they're doing. So I wanted to start this conversation with the why, right? Like that's a big change, changing the name of a hundred year old organization. You've put in, you know, a lot of work, the relationships that you've had over a hundred years. You know, what we learned was, you know, there was a significant amount of name recognition, but still some confusion about the work that you're doing as well. So I'd love to start from the beginning, you know, what kind of prompted you to take on you and your team something as significant as a complete name change and rebrand at this milestone moment. What was the wide kind of driving this decision?
- [03:28]
B
Yeah, it's a big decision in a lot of ways to even embark on this journey, let alone take the year plus journey with you and the rest of the team. But the reason is simple in a lot of ways. So My boss, our CEO Jay Williams, came here about two years before I did. He arrived in 2017 and he came so enthusiastic. He had been working in the Obama administration for quite some time, had been a mayor of a small city in the Midwest about this organization that had been around at that point for 90 plus years, had been made a huge impact, had put hundreds of millions of dollars into the community through the nonprofit partners. And when he got here to introduce himself as the new CEO of the Hartford foundation for Public Giving, people looked at him with that kind of head tilt, like the CEO of what? And he makes a joke that he almost like packed up his stuff and went back and left because it was hard for him to grasp how many people over the years, including more recently that when you say the Hartford foundation for Public Giving, even people that have lived in this community their entire lives, there is a lack of recognition of this organization among a group of people, business leaders, folks not directly involved in the nonprofit community, but even some folks that are volunteering as lay leaders in the nonprofit community. There was not a deep and broad awareness of our organization, let alone what we do. So that was how we started to think about this. And there were some specific things about the name that we have felt for a long time were both a barrier to kind of cutting through the clutter and a barrier to understanding who we are and what we do. So for instance, the name of Hartford foundation belies the fact that we're a regional organization. And we would get a lot of questions from the stakeholders that that we were working with. Are you just focusing on helping to solve problems and improve the quality of life of people in Hartford? And of course, the answer was no. And in fact, it was founded as a regional organization. The region has grown since 1925, but it's always been a regional organization. We knew that was a challenge. The other thing Ali, that I know that we talked about a lot during our process was the fact that one of the largest institutions, organizational institutions in our community is called the Hartford. It's a major insurance company. Most people that listen to this will at least be familiar with that name. They're still one of the largest employers and they don't have a foundation arm. And so a lot of people. An independent foundation arm. So a lot of people thought we were the foundation arm of that insurance company, which is. Could not be farther from the truth. And finally, this idea of public giving. We have been the only community foundation or foundation of any sort that used that, what I believe is probably an antiquated phrase that in 1925 maybe resonated with people and has created some confusion about, does that mean we give to the public? Do we make grants to individual people? And the answer to that question was no. Or whether we were in some way a government entity, because the word public was in there. So we knew from the jump that the. The name was problematic. And so we knocked on your door at Big Duck and said, how do we work through this? How do we get to what could be a really evocative name, but also truly represent both the geographic footprint of what we're doing and crystallize what it is to be a community foundation?
- [07:32]
A
Yes. And through many rounds of name ideas and input from your staff and from your board and from community members over months, it took us to kind of circle around a potential new name. And I know in the beginning of working together, there was this recognition that was research informed, touching on what you just said. You know, there are these challenges with the name, openness to a name change, but exactly where we would end up, that was an unknown. Right. Were we going to do something more of an evolution, you know, something small, like a tweak to maybe to address a couple of those challenges? Or are we going to do something that was a little bit bigger or more radical? That was a real start, you know, start from scratch. Yeah. And we ended up more in the latter.
- [08:19]
B
We did.
- [08:19]
A
And so I'd like to take a second just for our listeners, to introduce the new. The new name of the organization and share a little bit about that and welcome you, Brad, to share a little bit about why this name. So the new name of the organization is Greater Hartford Gives foundation or Greater Hartford Gives for short. And a little bit about that is that. Well, first I will share that our working group really aligned on this name. I think from the very first presentation of options that where we worked on, we looked at many, many, many names, but this one always stood up to the top. And the, you know, the action orientation nature of it Greater Hartford gives, it's, you know, you know, it was really a invitation for people to see themselves as part of the community of donors, of givers, not just through philanthropy, but through volunteerism, bold ideas, collective support for the community. And that the name really is like a promise to the community. It's one that reflects the generosity, the strength, shared commitment of the entire region. And we like to talk about how the name Greater Hartford gives, it's bi directional and it ties to the kind of clarifying what is a community foundation? A community foundation does so much more than giving, but the resources that are generated are from the community.
- [09:33]
B
Right.
- [09:33]
A
What makes a community foundation different from other kind of forms of private philanthropy is that individual donors and supporters in the community are pooling their resources and then the foundation, with input from the community then distributes out those resources to the biggest needs and some of the nonprofits in that region. So there's this bi directional nature that is embedded into the name. Thinking back to those early conversations, Brad, and even just the journey, why do you think that the team aligned on Greater Hartford Gives? What was it about it that stood out as something that would really work as this new identity to represent the organization?
- [10:13]
B
I'm going to go back half a step further and remind you that when we did an early exercise on kind of the continuum of evolutionary versus revolutionary, we had a team of 10 folks within the organization representing a cross section of functional expertise, whether they were fundraisers or program folks making the grants, early career and more advanced career, different levels in terms of the org chart, et cetera. And we put post its on that, that continuum. And my post, it was the closest to evolutionary to have a kind of a modest name change. And the predominant view was if we're gonna do it, let's really do it. And that inspired us to push the envelope. And so when we saw Greater Heart Forgives as an early opportunity, you touched upon some of the things that are really important, special and I think intriguing about the name. The bidirectional nature of the giving is so important in terms of the Community Foundation's place within a geographic area. You know, for those listening, I know this is a high information audience, but community foundations nationally have a little bit of an identity crisis in that it's hard for folks broadly to understand what a community foundation is, is and does. The idea of bidirectional giving that we can't give out to the nonprofits unless community members who have a stake in the success of greater Hartford, that live, work or play here, even folks that did so and have left but feel a connection to the geographic region, if they don't make financial contributions, we can't then in turn put that money out to the nonprofit community to help improve the quality of life, particularly for people who have the least. So that was really, really exciting about it. The other thing about it that we think, you know, perhaps it's my. I'm not the most risk averse person, but in this case I seem to be. So if you look at the words in the, in the original name for the first hundred years, Hartford foundation for Public Giving and now we have almost, we've almost shaken up the words and let them fall into a different order. We added the word greater to better capture the regional nature of our work. Hartford is still at the center of our region. It's literally the center of our name and giving and gives. It's just changing the part of speech, but that's still, it's still based in the old name, which I think gave people additional comfort with it. And as you pointed out, our official name is the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation. We are using Greater Hartford Gives as, as kind of our marketing name. It's easy to wrap your arms around. I think it's a phrase that philanthropically minded people, people who are interested and aware and want to do something beyond their own kind of nuclear family's benefit, can hear the word greater heart forgives and say, I think that's me. Like that's a kind of organization I need to be connected to. And that is one of the goals of the rebrand, which we believe. There are tens of thousands of potential stakeholders that live in our region that currently aren't aligned with the Hartford Foundation. Not because they don't believe in what we're doing, because they don't have the information about what we're doing and how our view of the world is so much in sync with their view of the world. And we're really excited about this opportunity to bring in literally tens of thousands new people into our work to better understand how to, how they can help us affect Positive change across Greater Hartford.
- [14:14]
A
Yep. And I know we had lots of grounding conversations as we started the work with defining your brand goals and your communications goals and your audiences is really about how do we make sure that this organization is not perceived as an ivory tower, that you are very much based in the community, have always been and you are a foundation and an organization that is welcoming and inclusive to all, whether those are your nonprofit partners, potential donors, volunteers, those that lend their voice into your community based giving efforts. There's so many ways and tentacles that you all have out into the community and you want to continue to kind of extend those and make sure that you are relevant to even more people. So that was definitely a driving force. In addition to the name, you know, we worked on visual identity, we worked on tagline, we worked on key messages, we worked on a rollout plan, we worked on what we call a brand architecture. How are all the different programs that you run? How does everything tie back to a consistent brand?
- [15:10]
B
Right.
- [15:10]
A
So there are a lot of different pieces to it. So we'll, we'll be sure to share more as we put together the show notes as this brand comes to life so that our audience could follow along. But as a just a final wrap up question for others listening, maybe they're contemplating a rebrand. Maybe they're rebrand curious. Maybe they or maybe they have gone through a rebrand in the past. Especially those who might worry about losing brand equity. Right. Because that is a major question here. Is that is it worth it? Right. Like we have this equity in our name. We need to kind of put this new foot forward. What advice would you give them based on your experience?
- [15:47]
B
It's a great question. I'm going to do an internal and kind of more externally facing. The internally facing piece would be if you do embark on this. I do think the reason we got to the, the positive result that we did and we're getting the buy in from within the organization is because we approached it with a multi dimensional, cross functional group of folks who came to the work from very different angles. And I think that created a wonderful dynamic within the work and then improved the buy in in the long run from the other staff that weren't at the table during that session. In terms of externally, I do get the fear of losing brand equity and we believe that we are not going to lose any stakeholders that are already with us. One of the things about this we need to clearly communicate is the work isn't changing. And so for the people who have been connected to us and interested in partnering with us in a multitude of ways, whether they're donors, nonprofits, policymakers. Our work isn't changing. We're not going to disappoint them in any way. And we believe for Those people, after 90, 120, 180 days, it's just going to be our name. The work won't change for the people that we can bring into the fold over the next many months and years. It is only going to put out more deeply and broadly into the water, so to speak, of Greater Hartford. This idea of an organization, organization that sits at the epicenter of all these different influences on quality of life in Greater Hartford, particularly for assisting creating opportunities where there have been barriers before for members of our community. We can be the clearinghouse for that, knowing that we don't do any of our work on our own. It's all done in partnership. We're going to bring in thousands more partners effectively to help you use the word relevance to help keep us relevant, to bring in new stakeholders, maybe even younger stakeholders to help maintain this organization in perpetuity. And that's how we and all community foundations are founded. So it's a really exciting moment for us and we are all in on this.
- [18:11]
A
I'm so excited to see how it all comes to life. And I know it's going to be great as the work that you do is so impactful for the communities that you work in. So, Brad, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [18:22]
B
Lot of fun.
- [18:23]
A
It's been truly a professional honor to be able to do this branding work with the Big Duck team and the whole team over at your foundation. We're going to link to your website because in addition to launching this brand, you're launching a new website all time together. This is a big undertaking.
- [18:38]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [18:39]
A
And we'll see you again. Thank you for listening.
- [18:41]
B
Thanks so much.
- [18:42]
C
Ali, are you a fan of this podcast or Big Duck's other resources on nonprofit communications? If you are, we'd love to hear from you. Please drop us a line by writing to helloigduck.com to tell us what you're working on and what topics you need help with. We also welcome getting your feedback via reviews. You can review this podcast wherever you listen. We'd love to hear from you.
- [19:06]
B
This is the Smart Communications Podcast, Developing the Voices of Determined Nonprofits brought to you by Big Duck.
- [19:13]
C
Big Duck is an agency that puts smart communications in the hands of nonprofits. We help our nonprofit clients develop strong brands, strong campaigns, and strong teams that advance their missions and achieve their goals.
- [19:26]
B
Connect with us@bigduck.com.