Volunteers are the backbone of your nonprofit—they’re critical to your success in fundraising and service delivery. Throughout their time supporting your organization, volunteers will learn a lot about your mission and inner workings, which will likely lead to them forming their own opinions about your image in the community.
If your nonprofit chooses to update its image through rebranding, it’s immensely helpful to engage various stakeholders in the process who can provide different perspectives. These may include staff members from all departments, board members, recipients of your organization’s services—and of course, your volunteers!
In this guide, we’ll discuss a few ways your nonprofit can get its volunteers to support its rebranding efforts, including how to:
- Involve Volunteers in Decision-Making
- Communicate With and Through Your Volunteers
- Share Volunteer Stories in New Branded Content
Depending on the scale of your nonprofit’s rebrand, it can be a complex, highly involved undertaking. The more help you can get, the better—especially from longtime volunteers who know your organization well and are happy to share their perspectives. Let’s dive in!
Involve Volunteers in Decision-Making
Rebranding involves a lot of decisions, the first of which is realizing that your nonprofit’s brand no longer aligns with its organizational identity and a change is in order. Then, you need to decide which of your brand elements need to be updated—name, tagline, logo, color scheme, typography, imagery, messaging guidelines, etc.—and how to revise each one.
While your team will make the initial choice to rebrand and develop an overall vision for the process, volunteer perspectives can help with the concrete decisions of updating specific brand aspects. There are a variety of methods you can use to ask volunteers for their input on different design choices, including:
- Surveys. These tools are best for collecting large quantities of data from many volunteers, which is useful when you want outside input to decide on specific brand updates. Include both multiple-choice and open-ended responses on your rebranding surveys to ensure you don’t miss any good ideas. For example, if you want volunteers to help you choose a new nonprofit tagline, you could give them three possibilities plus a write-in option for additional suggestions.
- Focus groups. On the flip side, focus groups are more effective for getting qualitative opinions from a smaller group of committed volunteers. For instance, you could show the group a few sample color palettes and ask them what feelings each one evokes. Or, you might have them read two similar writing samples with different word choices, describe the tone of each one, and explain which one sounds more like your organization.
- Design submissions. If any of your volunteers are skilled in graphic design, consider asking them to create and send in their ideas for new logos or other branded graphics. Then, you can choose your favorite and give a prize to the winner, or combine a few design ideas to create something new that represents your nonprofit even more effectively.
In addition to helping with decision-making, asking volunteers for input on your rebrand in these ways shows that your nonprofit values them, making them more likely to continue supporting your organization as it enters this new phase of its journey.
Communicate With and Through Your Volunteers
According to Loop’s nonprofit branding guide, “One of the most essential functions of [your nonprofit’s] brand…is its ability for people to recognize and connect it back to your organization.” By communicating with your volunteers about your rebrand throughout the process, you’ll ensure your brand remains recognizable to this key audience—and even help it stick in other community members’ minds.
Here are some ways to communicate about your rebrand with your volunteers:
- Host a rebranding Q&A session. This can be in-person or virtual depending on where your nonprofit’s audience is and should help them understand why and how you’re planning to update your image. Open this event to your whole community, but make sure to send emails and text messages to your volunteer contact lists to specifically encourage them to attend.
- Create shareable social media content. Post updates, teasers, and explainers about your rebrand across your nonprofit’s various social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Then, ask your volunteers to share your posts with their networks to expand your reach.
- Design updated branded merchandise. Give volunteers early access to merchandise (t-shirts, water bottles, car magnets, etc.) featuring your nonprofit’s new visual brand elements, either by holding an exclusive sale or sending the items to them as gifts. When volunteers wear or use the merchandise in public, it’ll spread awareness of your rebrand to the wider community.
Additionally, if more questions arise from your volunteer community throughout your rebrand, make sure they know how to contact the people at your nonprofit who can provide answers.
Share Volunteer Stories in New Branded Content
When used strategically, narratives can be extremely compelling in inspiring support for your nonprofit’s work. As UpMetrics’ nonprofit storytelling guide explains, “By telling stories, your organization can appeal to its supporters' emotions in memorable and meaningful ways.” And when your content sticks in audience members’ minds, your updated brand is more likely to as well!
Although there are many individuals your nonprofit could tell stories about, volunteers are often compelling subjects because they’re relatable to potential supporters in your content’s audience while also understanding your organization’s inner workings. Consider sharing your volunteers’ stories in various rebranded marketing materials by:
- Writing a series of blog posts for your nonprofit’s website.
- Conducting short video interviews to post on social media.
- Adding a volunteer feature section to your monthly email newsletter.
- Opening direct mail messages with short volunteer stories to grab readers’ attention.
Every nonprofit’s rebranding approach and volunteer base are different, so adapt the tips above to align with your organization’s specific needs, goals, and audience. No matter how you engage volunteers in your rebranding efforts, thank them for their contributions of time, effort, and expertise to ensure they know you value them.
