095 – Make Your Non-Profit Stand Out From the Rest with Howard Levy

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: How can you truly wake up your brand and propel your organization to new heights? Today we’re diving deep into the thrilling world of non-profit marketing with a true expert.

Get ready to uncover the powerful secrets of storytelling, behavioural psychology, and action design principles that will captivate your audience and drive real results. This episode is jam-packed with game-changing insights; you’re not going to want to miss it. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success podcast. I’m your host, David Pisarek. Today, we’re exploring the vibrant world of non-profit marketing and branding with Howard Levy.

Howard is a non-profit marketing expert who’s helped hundreds of organizations revitalize their brands and achieve greater success. He founded one of the first marketing agencies focused on non-profits 30 years ago. As President of Red Rooster Group, he’s partnered with various organizations to improve their marketing and raise millions of dollars for their causes. He specializes in using behavioural psychology storytelling and action design to motivate donations and engagement. Howard, welcome to the podcast.

Howard Levy: Thanks, David. Wonderful to be here and glad to be sharing insights with your audience.

David Pisarek: So, Red Rooster, you make hot sauce.

Howard Levy: Or we get confused with a restaurant in New York. Also, we’re based in New York. So we got their calls before they had phone lines in but we were around for a while.

“Wake up your brand” that was the idea behind the name. It’s fantastic that so many people want to make an impact in this world, but it also makes it challenging for organizations to stand out, capture people’s attention, capture donors, and anyone else they want to engage in their mission.

So that’s why we came along and said “We need to do something to help these organizations who are really the unsung heroes that don’t get the attention that they deserve and really need to clarify their voice get their message out and engage people.” And that’s why we started Red Rooster Group.

David Pisarek: It’s amazing. And it’s really hard to stand out from the crowd, right? We don’t want to think of other non-profits as competition because they’re not.

We’re all here to do good to improve humanity and help feed starving children or whatever it happens to be. That’s at the core of why you started the organization. But really, there are only so many dollars to go around, right?

Howard Levy: Yeah there’s a frenemy situation in many cases.

The pool has expanded over the years in terms of the amount of money that non-profits have raised. But on the other hand, actually there are fewer people who are donating.

So more money is coming from the top and the landscape is shifting in that way to get attention from larger donors rather than the masses of people. Although still the top organization is still raising tons of money from the masses.

But for most organizations which I suppose your clients are as well small and medium-sized organizations that really need the firepower that we’re providing in terms of sharpening their brand and getting attention and getting the messages out there.

David Pisarek: And I think we alluded to this a little bit as we were just talking for the couple of moments here. But what are the reasons that non-profits would want to revitalize their brand?

Howard Levy: Yeah. So you were talking about an organization that had been around a while and we work with organizations also that come to us say “We’re founded with a specific mission and over the decades things have changed. We’re no longer working with just children. We’re working with the families or adults.” So the population that has served has changed.

Maybe the geography has changed. It’s expanded to another area. Potentially services have changed and now taking on a whole different lines of work. One organization is expanding internationally. Some organizations are trying to expand nationally. New leadership wants to take in new directions has a new idea for a vision of how they could accomplish the mission or solve the problem in new ways.

So we’ve encountered lots of different reasons that non-profits want to engage an agency to revitalize their brand.

David Pisarek: I mean I’ve certainly experienced some of the challenges in terms of web projects and stuff because that’s primarily what we do at our agency. From your perspective what are challenges that non-profits typically face when they’re going through a brand revitalization or even just talking about potential of doing that?

Howard Levy: Yeah it’s a good question because this industry is not necessarily trained for that.

I think if you work in the business sector or at least a large company and you’re a VP of marketing, you probably have an MBA, you probably have gone through marketing steps.

So you’ve had some training on rebranding or other marketing types of initiatives. That’s getting to be a little more so true these days with non-profits but still for many organizations they don’t have that experience in-house and they don’t know what to do.

So, I think educating clients on how to go about the process and avoiding the pitfalls, particularly as non-profits, unlike some businesses, are consensus-driven.

And so it’s hard to get leadership to acclimate around a particular decision. And there’s a lot of like “Hey let’s ask everyone what they think” which is good to get feedback but not necessarily be able to get everyone on the same page all the time especially about the larger brand initiatives like the name of an organization for example.

Not everyone is going to agree, but someone else has to make a decision. You look at the data get field research get some response and know that you’re making the right decision but then actually to make a decision and move forward.

David Pisarek: Yeah I think it’s important as an organization, especially one that’s serving the public that you wouldn’t want to go and make a drastic change to your name and then there’s maybe a disconnect with what people know about you or your new organization where’s the legacy the history all that type of stuff to be able to know that they’re actually trying to connect with the same organization even though you might have changed your name.

And it’s important to take a pulse and really understand if it is really the name that’s the problem. Is it the logo? Is it the branding? When I talk about branding with our clients we don’t talk about the logo.

I mean, the logo is certainly part of it, but there’s a lot more to it. There’s the colors that you’ve got. There’s the tone and style of your messaging. There’s your overall, I guess, mood board type of stuff like the style of your photography and the videos. There’s more to it than just “Here’s my logo,” right?

Howard Levy: Yeah, that’s right.

The logo is a good entry point because, in some way, it encapsulates a lot of different things. All those things are the tone of the colours; if there’s an icon that represents something, it’s giving a pictorial symbol of what the organization is all about.

But the larger picture is really the brand strategy “Who are we and where we want to go? So is our mission clear?” You start there because as we just alluded to in the question you asked “Why do organizations start this process?” Really the mission is unclear.

The population service is different services are different the expansion all those kinds of things are the strategic issues. And behind that question is “How do we remain intact? How do we get all of our people on board with rowing this whole ship in the same direction? And how do we not lose our donors? And in fact how do we create a larger tent in opening to engage donors through that?” So the strategic question starts there “What’s our mission and what’s our vision for the world? And how do donors and others see that? Is it inspirational enough? Is it really addressing the problem?

Is it paint a picture of the world that we’d like to be in?” And then “How do we tell that story?” So we had the message that’s reflected in the name and then that’s reflected in the logo and that’s reflected in all those things the colours and the fonts and all those things and then how that ladders down to the website and social media communications videos and all those things. So that’s the whole hierarchy and picture of that brand strategy.

David Pisarek: Yeah. So to everybody listening if you want to rewind maybe about a minute and play it on half speed you can make a note. And these are the things that you need to do or keep in mind as you’re working through your brand whether you’re going to do it yourself you’re going to hire an expert like Howard or my agency, or whoever it is that you know “Okay these are the things that you actually really do need to consider.”

It’s not just the logo; it’s not just the name. It’s everything combined, plus your history, presuming that you’ve been around for at least three or four years and that you’ve had some impact on the community. Your history your legacy is really part of the brand as well.

So what have you done? Good or bad right? And how can you move forward from that?

Howard Levy: Yes, a lot of organizations are really interested in maintaining their history.

Hopefully there’s a good founding story that you want to hold on to. But I want to tell you something that I think is interesting. It’s in some way a framework for seeing the world. It’s like personality types for people and for organizations. And non-profits may see themselves in this.

I think it’s called the KAI Index. I could be mistaken about that. But on one side are adapters and on one side are innovators. It’s not good or bad. It’s just a framework for seeing the world. On the adapter side if it’s not broken don’t fix it. Maintain the status quo. People in this particular sector are acclimated toward that. For example lawyers because you look to the precedent in the law.

We find that a lot of non-profits are oriented toward that way the maintaining status quo making incremental improvements. And the other side is the innovators. And you think of tech companies like disruption. “Let’s throw out the system. Let’s break things.” So I think when non-profits look at how they are how do you characterize your organization? And how do you characterize the people who are making the decisions?

How do they see the world? So when you’re talking about brand strategy or redevelopment and we find a lot of them are for the adapter mindset of “Let’s make incremental changes.” I don’t think we realized that for a long time. And it sheds light on ways of interacting with the clients.

I think for the clients it’s a useful tool to understand where they are in terms of how they make decisions and how they get consensus. Because if you have a leader that says, “Let’s charge ahead let’s throw out the old name in the history that we’re talking about we need to reach donors for tomorrow” and everyone else is in the adapter mode or the cultural disposition of the organization is there they’re going to have a hard time bringing everyone along.

And conversely, someone who doesn’t have authority who’s trying to make the change but the whole organization is in this adapter mode, then they’re not going to have a lot of progress there. So you have to understand where the organization is and who the people are in it and what system so that you could actually get everyone on board at the same time.

David Pisarek: Yeah there’s a couple of examples that I’ve got from our history. Here, there’s one organization that wanted to change or supposedly wanted to change their new executive director. I was like “All right new branding new era. Cool.” We did branding. We got it all sorted. They did signage and whatever with the logo and all that. New website new fresh clear crisp modern design for them.

That director left and the new executive director was like “Why were these changes made?” “Well the previous director gave us these imperatives. We had a committee. We brought together people. We did interviews. We consulted. We came up with this is this. This is the rationale of the artistic this that whatever behind the meaning of why we did what we did.”

And what did they do? Pick a wild guess Howard. They went back. They went back to the old logo. They went back to a design for their website that looks like it’s probably about 10 or 15 years old. What can we do? There’s resistance to change, and “We tried it. It didn’t work. Okay.” It’s unfortunate because there was a lot of time and effort that did go into it and all that.

Howard Levy: I’ll say in my 30 years that has happened.

We’ve gone through a process and it hasn’t been fully adopted or part of it has been or part of it has been overrun. We did work and it was probably 10 years ago. It was a huge national organization did a whole website rebrand rewrote hundreds of pages of content. I mean it’s a huge thing. And then they fired the executive director and they just scrapped it and did something else. It’s like “flabbergasted how you do that.”

I think there are political turf wars there. I mean, there are a lot of nuances to what goes into these things, but building consensus along the way is really important so that those things don’t happen.

But it sounds like you did and in cases where we did also the things sometimes new leaders have their own ideas and it’s not much you could do to overcome those things.

But it does go to try to mitigate those things in terms of having a clear process that everyone buys into and says “Look if we’re going to get research and we’re going to find out X Y Z then we’re going to adhere to what X Y Z says. Otherwise why are we going through that whole process to begin with?”

David Pisarek: Exactly. And I think part of it… So there’s the branding part, but there’s also the communications side of stuff and making sure that we’ve got a clear strategy around communications for engaging different types of audiences.

I don’t think there are really many organizations that have a single audience. I think it’s really really rare to have that.

If you look at (forgetting about just non-profits but across any major or minor brand) there’s always multiple audiences. If you look at restaurants like McDonald’s Burger King whoever they have different people that they cater to. That’s why they have Seniors Day and they have “buy a cookie send a kid to camp” day or whatever thing. There’s different audiences across the board. So what do you see as key elements of having a successful comms plan or engaging different audiences?

Howard Levy: And you’re totally right.

Non-profits are different than businesses. And McDonald’s has consumers. They’re all consumers though. Their main goal is “Buy our food.” With non-profits it’s more challenging.

You have people who are your beneficiaries of your program. You have donors who may be government funders in agencies may be foundations individuals corporate sponsors.

There’s a whole range of entities that have different strategies and needs. So the first thing is prioritizing those. And it’s important to do that because many times it’s not really clear who do we really need to reach.

And then often creating personas, which are profiles of people that you’re looking to reach to have some demographic information, how old they are, what are their interests, what is their income.

And then there’s psychographics, which are their values and their world perspectives. How do they see the world? What’s going to motivate them? And then how do they see your issue and your organization? And even for regular communications a community center.

It’s like “What do you think our role is? Are you just going to a gym? Are you going to a church or a synagogue for those communal needs? Or do you see us as a hub?”. So the more you could understand about your audience then the better you could use the right type of message to hit the button that’s going to motivate them to volunteer participate donate whatever it is you want them to do.

David Pisarek: So I guess a quick little moment of self-promotion.

Anybody that’s interested in digging in further on psychographics check out episode 16 of the podcast. It’s all about psychographics and what you need to do when you’re thinking about that part of your avatar persona, whatever you want to call your audience.

It’s really important because then you really clearly understand the emotional need that you need to fulfill for them. And how can you lean on that to get them to take some action with you? And at the end of the day we need to do storytelling.

I think that’s probably one of the things that is missing a lot from many brands: “How do we tell our stories?” Do you have any thoughts on that?

Howard Levy: Yeah that’s exactly right. I think it is.

It’s really about a moment of transformation that your organization made and you have to make that clear.

I think the biggest problem that I see with non-profits is “What role did your organization play in helping a person or situation to have that transformation and communicate not just the physical but what was their emotional journey?” And I think often that’s lost. What was their emotional state before? And then equally so their emotional state after. “Now what a great burden is lifted from me the relief. Now I could do things.” And I think that’s a critical part of storytelling that should be captured that’s often missed.

David Pisarek: And if we can leverage storytelling in a way we can make people do things.

So if you have a page on your website that is a great story about your organization helps raise money to support a local hospital to buy beds for emergency care. On that page don’t have a call to action that says “Donate.” Have a call to action that’s like “Help buy more beds.”

Something engaging that’s related to the content. You can help drive people to feel like they need to because you’ve created that connection with them that “Hey this is an important thing. I can actually contribute and help with this thing that you’re trying to already do.”

Howard Levy: That’s exactly right. I think that’s the biggest part is connecting the story with the action.

The other thing is in crafting the story especially in context of a fundraising pitch it’s acclimating around the donor’s needs. Same services craft message though framed in a different way based on the needs and motivations of the audience. And you’ll likely have a much better response for your efforts.

David Pisarek: I think this has also something to do with behavioural science. What is it that motivates somebody is different than somebody else.

It’s going to be hard to build a persona for everybody that’s your audience. Pick the top three or four which is probably going to cover I’d say maybe 70% or so of who you’re really trying to connect with. Don’t carve it in stone. Review it on an annual basis and stuff like that.

But other than crafting the message for the persona are there any other behavioural science techniques that non-profits could use to boost fundraising?

Howard Levy: Yeah there’s dozens of these.

So we said it looks really overwhelming for non-profits to understand how to use these. So we put together a model that uses six steps.

The first step is understanding your audience. Who’s your audience? And like I just said you tell the message very differently if you know who they are.

The other is telling the story. What are the stories that you’re going to tell? How do you frame it in a way that’s going to resonate?

The third is your call to action. So you’re asking for money but you gave a great example. Don’t just be general. Ask for the very specific thing that relates to the story or the transformation. So how do you craft those different call to actions?

Number four, I call it “Determining your delivery.” How are you getting that out? Is it in print? Is it digital? Who’s telling the story?

Number five is “You have all those components.” How do you design it for action? How do you package it in a way that makes people want to open it? Often we just see the name of the organization on the cover of a brochure. I’m like “You just wasted that.” Why would I want to open that? You didn’t give me any compelling reason. There’s not a headline there’s not a question there’s not an interesting photo that prompts me. There’s not a promise of a benefit or a value.

Number six is “Reinforce the relationship.” So it’s not a one-time transaction but you’re cultivating a relationship that you want to have. Then the psycho starts again. Some of the principles like understanding your audience are self-connection. And non-profits I think don’t do that enough. Part of it is they don’t have enough data. So the prompt there is to collect data at every interaction. This could be one question. It could be one question on a donation form and start to build your database so that you understand people even if it’s just like “Why are you donating today?” “I gave because it was the meals it was the education it was the health care.” All right great. Now we have three ways of talking about the same package of services. Instead of one email I’ll blast everyone we can start to target those things.

Another principle in understanding your audience past the self-connection and using any opportunity to connect with people based on something is to label them give them a label a “cancer survivor” as opposed to just someone else who’s grappling with the issue.

And you have an identity now that has an affinity in a relationship with other people who have just gone through the same experience. So even just a “champion of our cause” using the noun as opposed to “someone who supports our cause” has been shown to be more powerful in their own communications.

David Pisarek: I think it’s an evolutionary thing. There’s a feeling of safety, a feeling of community. Not always but I think generally speaking I think that’s definitely part of that.

So these are things that you should be thinking about as you’re putting together your brand in your package all that stuff. Let’s talk about the opposite side. Are there any mistakes that non-profits should avoid in their marketing communications and fundraising efforts?

Howard Levy: Well the first is I think just coming from the perspective of we the organization and not from your audience. So just speaking out at your audience. I think that’s the biggest thing that I see.

Why are you sending out the email? “We got tons of things to say to people.” Well that’s great but one do they want to hear it? And number two, what do you want them to do about it?

I have this “Think, feel, do” model.

Think, feel and do. What do you want them to think about your organization? Do you want them to think that you’re authoritative resource about the field? Do you want them to think that you’re strong advocates? What do you actually want them to think when they get this thing? And what do you want them to feel? I mean do you want them to feel outraged?

A lot of political stuff is just trying to push outrage. Do you want them to feel curious? “I want to know more about that. Wow that’s fascinating.” And then finally what do you want them to do? Is it to donate? Is it to register for an event? Is it to volunteer? Is it to join a committee be on a board sign up for the newsletter?

And often, there are many calls to action, but there may be too many, and it may undermine the ability of someone to focus.

So I’d say your biggest mistakes are knowing your intention and use this “Think feel do” model clarifying your priorities and coming at it from the audience perspective of “What do they want to know what’s going to motivate them?” You may not have to tell them all the things or you could put them on the website or you could put them in other channels. Or you can segment and say certain people are going to want to know about the health care and certain are all going to know about the meals and certain ones are going to know about the education and we don’t really need to tell everyone about all the different things we do all the time. And usually you’ll find if you do that your response rates will go up.

David Pisarek: I love what you mentioned about “Think, feel, do.” I’m totally going to be taking that one back with my team and chatting with them about how can we leverage “Think feel do” in the stuff that we’re doing internally and with our clients and pass that along.

I think, overall, having you here has been an amazing episode. A lot of insights for sure. I hope for all of you that are listening that you’ve been able to get some really great advice to level up what it is that you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

If anybody wants to get in touch with you Howard what do they need to do?

Howard Levy: They should go to our website redroostergroup.com. Find a lot of great information and case studies and resources there.

There’s a contact form so you can use that.

We do have a free resource that will be useful in light of this. It’s this Actionology fundraising card deck that is free for download and it goes through 15 of these principles and each principle is allocated as three cards on it.

One is a description of the principle. The second one is actual case studies of non-profits using that principle so you can see how it’s put into action. And the third card is prompts for you to use this in action. So it’s a good resource to have. It’s free online and you can check it out at redroostergroup.com.

David Pisarek: Amazing. Thanks again for joining Howard. It’s been great having you here on the Non-profit Digital Success podcast.

To everybody listening, if you’re interested in the card deck or any of the resources, the book, etc, head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details.

Until next time keep on being successful!