With thousands of charities and millions of businesses trying to get the public’s attention, having a strong brand has become essential for charities to break through the noise and grow their impact.

Your brand identity is essentially the personality of your charity. It makes a statement about your values and allows your donors to instantly connect with you and the work you do. Oftentimes, people equate a brand with an organization's logo, but a successful brand is much more than its visual identity. A strong brand captures an organization's purpose, culture, and personality that customers attribute to it.

So how do you know if it is time for a brand refresh? Perhaps your tone doesn’t match your visuals, or your style varies from one piece of marketing to the next. Or maybe it’s simply that your brand is tired and just needs an update.

Refreshing your brand can seem like a daunting task, especially in this inflation economy when your resources are likely already under a lot of pressure, but it doesn’t have to be. You can easily scale your refresh to match your current needs or capacity. For now, however, use this guide to see if you should consider a brand refresh.

Does your charity fall into any of the following categories?

Your original branding is out of date: Trends come and go in design just as they do in fashion. Are you still using a brush script or an emoji style icon in your logo? What was a popular design style 10 to 15 years ago likely isn’t any more and may be making your brand look dated. The more outdated your logo or website looks, the more unreliable your donors are likely to think you are.

Your brand is too similar to others: Maybe your brand suffers from a lack of uniqueness? Perhaps it’s too similar to that of other charities in your cause area in terms of colour, logo, or fonts? Or worse, can it be easily confused with a much larger and well-known for-profit company? This could be making your brand indistinguishable from the rest, or worse, it could make you look like an inferior copy.

You attract the wrong audience: Your audience should include your current and prospective donors. Does it seem like your message isn’t getting through? Are you getting a lot of questions in your inbox? Are people expecting you to offer different services when they donate to your charity? If so, there’s likely something in your brand’s look, feel, or messaging that isn’t lining up.

Your branding is too confusing: Are you an environmental charity with a black logo? Are you a children’s nonprofit using a fancy cursive font? Can a stranger understand your brand and what you do without needing an explanation? As a charity or nonprofit, you need to clarify what you do to your potential donors so that it’s recognizable and understandable in an instant.

Your competition has moved past you: You may not have a direct competitor, but the truth is your charity is in competition for eyeballs and consumer dollars. Consider what other similar charities are doing to increase their donations or how for-profit companies attract a similar audience to yours. Have they made changes or innovations in recent years? What can you learn from them? Be sure, however, to not copy them outright.

Refreshing your brand is not just limited to visual elements like logos, website design, and social media posts. Your refresh efforts should also tackle things like your brand’s voice, name, taglines, and captions.

Don’t let cost be a factor in putting a brand refresh off either, there are plenty of design tools and services that allow for branding to be affordable and timely.

Rebecca Lacroix is a Graphic Designer at CanadaHelps, Canada’s largest online fundraising and donation platform that has raised more than $2.5 billion for charities over the last 22 years. Rebecca has been working with charities and nonprofits for 6+ years to deliver them expert branding identity, design strategy, and marketing services. Learn more at CanadaHelps.org