Social Research Institute
Understanding Civil Society
The benefits of having a strong charity brand
Sally Panayiotou and Claire Lister
For some, the notion of a charity being a brand can be in
conflict with their public benefit remit. The idea of ‘brand’
tends to have commercial associations of marketing spend
or manipulative advertising campaigns that shift it away from
the basic tenets of compassion that charitable organisations
stand for.
There are two key problems with this viewpoint. The first is
its inherent misunderstanding of what a brand actually is.
Brands exist in all spheres of public and private live. Any
brand is more than a simple advertising campaign, but
rather the internal and external expression of everything
an organisation stands for - its vision and values, and the
emotional connotations it inspires in everyone who comes
into contact with it. This is particularly true of charities where
budget streams mean brand strategy plays a much greater
role than simple advertising spend.
Second, it is evident that clarifying and embracing your
charity’s brand identity can have huge benefits for fundraising
and building public trust. For example research conducted by
the Economic and Social Research Council in 20051 identified
the positive impact of branding on a charity’s performance
and it can’t be denied that greater brand awareness and
understanding has a positive impact on a charity’s publically-
generated income2.
It helps to put instinctive commercial associations to one side
and consider what brand actually means when it comes
to charities. Charities are grounded in a vision of a better
world, the desire to confront injustice and to promote change.
Charities stem from strong beliefs and passion about a
1  Conceptualising brand values in the charity sector, Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC). Nine focus groups were conducted with donors
from each of nine charities - three each dedicated to the causes of children,
animal welfare and visual impairment. A quantitative postal survey was
conducted of a sample of 9000 donors - 1000 from each charity
2  See reports such as PR Week and Third Sector’s Charity Brand Index
2009 based on public perception data http://www.charitybrandindex.com/
and The UK’s most valuable charity brands 2006 based on sales data http://
www.intangiblebusiness.com/Reports/The-UKs-Most-Valuable-Charity-
Brands-2006~379.html
particular issue. In our recent trend research on behalf of
the Charity Commission – ‘public trust and confidence in
charities’ - two thirds (67%) of the general public give a rating
of 7 or more out of ten in their trust in charities to make a
positive difference to the cause they are working for3. Your
brand encapsulates all of this. If one considers that your
brand is essentially the internal and external representation
of everything your organisation stands for, to dismiss the
need for a charity to develop a strong brand is to completely
underestimate the power of an effective brand strategy.
So how do we go about defining and
communicating a charity’s brand?
Brand strategy and image development is an organic and
ongoing process. It works best when strategic thinking
happens iteratively, and all stakeholders are involved and can
influence the outcomes. At the heart of any brand is a clear
definition of its values and beliefs – our mission is... our
values are... - which are simultaneously:
• tailored to different audiences through targeted
communications; and
• communicated in a consistent manner both internally
and externally.
It is also key to forge an identity that moves beyond generic
associations of charities into an understanding of how your
brand is differentiated from other charity brands.
The creation of a charity’s brand strategy requires the
systematic consideration of the different aspects and
dimensions that make up the brand. To this end it can be
useful to set our thinking against a brand model, although
like any model this should be used flexibly as it is really just
a way of thinking about your image. The following key brand
3  Response given on a scale of 0-10 where 0 means don’t trust them and
10 means trust them completely. Survey conducted by Ipsos MORI. 1150
respondents aged 18+ across England and Wales between May 7 and 17
2010 interviewed using a CATI methodology.
Understanding Big Society
The benefits of having a strong charity brand
components provide a good framework for thinking in a
strategic manner:
• You might think about your proprietary signs, which
are the ‘anchors’ of brand image and its identity, for
example your visual identity, current stories or anecdotes
about your charity and the immediate associations that
people have with you. The big question here is whether
such signs drive and reinforce the core values that your
charity wishes to express
• Experiential drivers relate to the relationship that
supporters, beneficiaries and stakeholders have with
your charity. This might include the interactions that you
have with stakeholders, for example when you seek to
influence them
• Brand equity dimensions are the very heart of your
brand. These include your brand values and the concrete
aspects of what your brand ‘gives’ your stakeholders
supporters, beneficiaries, and the general public
How can research help you develop a strong
brand?
At Ipsos MORI we have carried out brand development and
stakeholder work for a wide range of public sector clients:
charitable organisations such as Big Lottery Fund; bodies
such as the NHS; central government departments like
HMRC; public policy think tanks such as Joseph Rowntree
Foundation; and a wide range of arts and educational bodies,
such as Bristol University. Depending on the specific needs
of the research we draw on a range of qualitative (interactive
exploratory research) and quantitative (measurement)
methodologies and sometimes a combination of both, ranging
from cost-effective ‘dips’ to larger strategic overviews. In
this section we explore some of the techniques that we find
particularly effective in brand development work.
In our experience, establishing a set of target values and
associations can be a challenge both externally and internally.
It is one thing to agree upon a set of target values, but
quite another for a charity to effectively communicate,
live and breathe them. Brand research is a creative process
for your charity internally, as we build on the strengths of the
brand and explore where it could be taken. When conducting
exploratory research we take the charity through the brand
development process, agreeing key stages as we go and
ensuring each part of the process works with your culture and
ideas, as well as fitting within the broader market context.
Establishing brand identity is a process that starts with
understanding current perceptions - how do people in each
of your different stakeholder groups currently perceive you,
where can we identify any gaps in positive perceptions? This
is termed an ‘identity audit’. We might draw on ‘customer
journey’ work to explore supporter and beneficiaries’ contact
points and examine the experiences that people have when
they interact with your organisation, and how these go
into building up an overall perception of your charity. It is
important to explore any key trends occurring in the market
and significant market drivers and inhibitors that have the
potential to change the landscape. It is also valuable to
explore the competitive environment and perceptions of how
other charities are positioned in the market.
There are a number of different projective techniques
commonly used within qualitative research to determine
current brand values, such as brand mapping, word
association, image association, or picture drawing. Such
techniques have great value for tapping into the less overt
emotional associations that drive responses to a brand but
people can struggle to clearly articulate. That said we must
ensure the techniques applied are suited to the particular
audience - for example, we know from our experience with
business audiences that senior figures or government
stakeholders can be irritated by some of the more exploratory
techniques!
Segmentation work is particularly important in identifying
different groups of supporters, beneficiaries and stakeholders,
and mapping affinity to the charity brand, while quantitative
Key Drivers Analysis helps to identify the factors that have
the strongest influence on particular perceptions. Research
can also be used to identify what would bring particular
groups closer to the brand and assist a charity in creating a
strategy that is tailored to the particular needs and motivations
of different groups.
In exploring how your charity brand can evolve, techniques
might include ‘brand positioning’ to help you identify the
clearest and most motivating story about yourself. These can
then be developed into positioning concepts in the form
of statements on boards, together with mood imagery or
pictures, which are then put into external research. A useful
way to use these is to show such concepts ‘unbranded’ in
the first instance before setting them against your charity.
For each we would explore their core attributes – relevance,
resonance, appeal, comprehension, communication, fit with
current perceptions of your brand and overall power to
motivate, in building a comprehensive picture of the most
effective messages.
In applying the research we might hold a brand building
day, which is a strategic review of your brand, or an action
planning workshop, at the close of the research, which
draws out the key findings of the research in an actionable
manner.
How to go about developing your brand
In the commercial world brands tend to be explicitly defined
and communicated. The same isn’t necessarily true of
charities, and the general public certainly don’t like to
think of a charity allocating budget that could be used for
charitable causes to ‘commercial’ aims. Hopefully this article
has demonstrated that in the charity landscape branding
isn’t about ‘packaging up and selling’ your organisation, but
rather, ensuring that you have a coherent and consistent
strategy, which is appropriate and compelling to your
different supporter, beneficiary, general public and
stakeholder audiences. Yes, impartial research can help to
explore and develop this strategy, but even in the absence of
a research and marketing budget you can still apply these
principles of structured thinking and objectively review how
you’re perceived internally and externally in developing your
charity’s ‘brand’.
Further information

If you are interested in hearing more about how we can help with your evaluation and research needs please get in touch:

Sally Panayiotou
t: +44 (0)20 7347 3073
e: sally.panayiotou@ipsos.com

Claire Lister
t: +44 (0)20 7347 3330
e: claire.lister@ipsos.com

Ipsos MORI
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London SE1 1FY

t: +44 (0)20 7347 3000

f: +44 (0)20 7347 3800
e: info@ipsos.com

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About Ipsos MORI’s Social Research Institute

The Social Research Institute works closely with national government, local public services and the not-for-profit sector. Its 200
research staff focus on public service and policy issues. Each has expertise in a particular part of the public sector, ensuring
we have a detailed understanding of specific sectors and policy challenges. This, combined with our methodological and
communications expertise, ensures that our research makes a difference for decision makers and communities.