Abby Jarvis  0:03  
Hey everybody, it is good to see people starting to log in. I am coming to you from Rainy Central Florida and Farah, where are you coming from? Are you in New York?

Farra Trompeter  0:16  
I'm in currently Sunny, but cold Brooklyn, New York.

Abby Jarvis  0:20  
Nice. Well, well, y'all tell us one that you can hear us and to where you're tuning in from. The downside of working in a remote office is that I no longer have a coworker that will stick their head in my office and give me a thumbs up to tell me that the broadcasting is working. So let us know in the chat. Awesome, thank you, Eric. Great, I am so excited that you all are here, as people are starting to filter in, do feel free to get comfortable and tune in or get ready to absorb some really great conversations. My name is Abby and part of the team over at NEON one, I'm going to be manning the chat and keeping an eye on your questions, and generally helping this be a good experience for you. I am so excited that Farah is here, she has done fantastic webinars with us before. She's one of our highest rated generosity exchange speakers. And we've even gotten to do a podcast together. So this is going to be a great session. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen, am I sharing the right screen looks like it. Great. All right, just a couple of housekeeping things, then some of you have names I recognize that means you're probably a neon user. If that is the case, welcome. If you have any questions about how to apply anything we talked about today to your own account, please let me know. And we'll get you in touch with the right person. If you are not in neon, one user, welcome everything we here today is going to be applicable to you as well. And just a couple little things to help make this go really smoothly. Please do ask questions in the q&a box, we are probably going to be talking to you in the chat, the chat can get moving really quickly. And we want to make sure we get all of your questions. So drop your questions in the q&a box, do talk to us in the chat. And then to answer a question that we always get yes, you're gonna get a copy of this recording and a copy of fare slides plus some other little goodies, and an email from me tomorrow. So I just looked at the email and made sure everything worked. You'll get that email from us tomorrow morning. So keep an eye on that and share it with anybody that you think would get a kick out of some of this branding materials we're gonna look at. With that said, I'm going to turn things over to Farrah, I got a sneak peek at the slides for today. It's going to be awesome. I'm really excited.

Farra Trompeter  2:39  
Well, thank you so much. All right. All right, if you want to stop sharing screen, and then I'm going to try and share mine, Abby, that'd be great. Okay, here we go. Hopefully, the magic will work. Oops, that is the wrong presentation. Hold one moment. I hope everyone is having a lovely afternoon, wherever you are. And we see some folks are joining us from New York, DC, Austin, Kentucky. awesome to see where folks are joining joining us from all right. Let me try this one more time. And we'll get going here. And let's see. I'm not sure I can still see the chat. But uh, me maybe let me know if you want to voice on that. You can see my slides and big orange splendor that would be great. Oh, yeah, I can see him. Magic. All right. Well, welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining this conversation. Thank you to neon one, for hosting this conversation and hosting me, it's always a delight to get to work with you all. Today we're going to talk about is it time to change your nonprofits name. Some of you may be just curious. Some of you may be actually wondering this very actively. Some of you maybe recently changed your name. So it'll be interesting to hear from you as we go. Briefly about me. My name is Farah trumpeter, I use she her pronouns. I'm co director and worker owner at big duck. That second title is because in two years ago, and 2021, big duck transitioned from being owned by one person to being owned by I think 10 is our current list of owners. So we're now owned by our staff. We still do all the things we've been doing for the past 30 years. I'll tell you about that in a moment. If after today, you'd like to connect with me, you can always drop me an email Farrah epic duck.com Connect with me on LinkedIn, most of the other places, but that's probably the best next place to reach me. And I'm lucky enough to just have that Farah URL since I was an early adopter and have a unique first name here. Basically, I have been in the nonprofit sector for about 30 years working initially in fundraising and then getting into communications both in house on staff and nonprofits and working for consulting firms that support nonprofit organizations. And, you know, briefly big duck works exclusively with nonprofit organizations we focus on how you can use communications to achieve your mission. We do work in the area of branding, as well as campaigns and building strong teams. Today, we're going to really get into talking a little bit about branding and what goes into renaming. But to actually focus on one case study, share some tips, and really open it up to q&a. As we go, feel free to chat in your questions, as as Abby said in the q&a, but you can also respond to conversation in the chat as well make sure you're chatting to everyone if you want to make sure everyone sees it. So yeah, this was a little bit about big deck. As I mentioned earlier, branding is probably the heart of what we do we also do a fair amount of how do we create a campaign to reach a particular audience, whether that's a donor or program participant, or our team structured in the best way, what should our team be focusing on, but again, today, we'll really be getting into branding. So I'd love it if a few of you have already chatted in, but I want to invite you to chat in, even though these are four bullets in one message prompt, your name, your pronouns, if you're comfortable sharing and your organization. And then this is the most important part, one phrase, you use it to find branding, branding is x, it might be a word, it might be a few words, how do you define branding. So I just love to get a sense from folks who you are, and how you define brand names. We're going to wait a minute as the chats come in. I'll share some of those chats out loud for the recording.

That feels like a lot. You can also just type in how you define branding, just looking to see where people are coming from on that. So branding is great. Thank you, Amanda, who's chatting in identity and reputation. Brian's chatted in, it's not something I normally thinking about, but it's our identity that the people we serve. Have you chatted in, it's what people think of when they hear your name, the colors, the logo, the work you do the way they feel about you, Charlene or Carly, and I'm sorry for mispronouncing that recognizable identity. Alexa shared, what the outward stakeholders see Stephanie shared, it's the way to capture the attention of the audience who want to attract, Sophie has said, defines and speaks about your work from a free a few key indicators. I see. Rod one noted, it's who you are and what you do. J has said it's your mission and the way of life that drives you. Wow. And Carolyn's noting recognizable identity. So a lot of folks talking about identity, and a few other ideas, keep those those intros and those definitions coming. I'm going to share with you a little bit about how we think about branding at big duck and see how that might evolve your definition or perhaps reinforce it. So, one, one of the newer ways we've been thinking about branding, or really wanting to clarify is that the brand has both an inside and an outside or an internal and an external piece, some of your comments where I think often we're focused on kind of what we put out there, what people think about us. And all of that is true, we think one way that can be helpful to think about it is first being really clear about who you are internally, and how you want to express those ideas, and then shaping your external communications to reinforce those ideas. And that association people have with you because of those interactions is part of what's left of your brand. So a lot of what was I think chatted in reinforce this idea that it can be also helpful to think about first, we have to be clear internally who we are if we are going to get that external association that we strive. So we're going to launch just two polls today. This is the first poll just kind of get a sense of your organization's approach to branding. Is it something you haven't thought about or examined recently, something you recently started working on? Something you actually just updated some elements of your brand? Or maybe your organization's constantly refining its brand? So just check the best response for this first poll question.

Abby Jarvis  9:12  
You've got some active folks out here? Awesome. Yeah. I love seeing it. All right, answers are starting to slow but there's still time to get your answer in. The most common answer by far is that people have most people have recently started working on this. And the next most common is that no one has updated or they haven't updated it recently. We do have a few ambitious people here who are constantly refining their brand. And no one right now has indicated that they have recently updated that brand.

Farra Trompeter  9:49  
Well, let's see that those official results come through. It was helpful to hear you talk through that but if you could share that back, awesome. Okay, so two thirds of you have said we've recently started working on this And a significant amount 20, you know, almost a quarter, we haven't examined it recently, and little more than 10%. We're constantly refining and my constant refiner folks, certainly curious about how you're doing that. And it's exciting to see we do think branding, should be kept alive and thought about constantly. And if we think about branding in a very expansive way, it's not just something we do every five to 10 years. And for those of you most of you who recently started working on this, that's exciting, I hope that you'll you'll get a lot from this conversation that you'll be able to bring into your processes. So thank you so much for responding to that poll. So at big duck, we follow an approach to branding called Brand raising, brand raising is the name and a model that comes from a book that our founder Sarah Durham wrote a little over 10 years ago, many of us contributed to it, which really says, before we get into things like our name, or logo or colors, what's on our website, whether or not we're gonna get on threads, or Tiktok, or what's our next podcast? We're first really starting at the what we call the organizational level. Where are we going as an organization? What are we about what guides our work? And given this moment, given our latest strategic plan or theory of change, given what's happening in our community? What should be our most important goals and audiences from a communications perspective? And then what do we want those audiences to associate with us? And I'm going to break down positioning and personality in a moment. So often, it can be really helpful for you whether or not you've recently gone through a branding process. Really, defining positioning and personality can be very helpful in making decisions later on. When you're debating color palettes or images, or what words using your tagline, reminding ourselves of what is it we want people to associate with us? What do we agree before we even started or even as we're midstream, can be helpful. And I'm going to briefly talk about positioning and personality at the end and the follow up email, you get links to an e book, including one about brand strategy that can be helpful to dive into that. So just to build off of that positioning is the big idea people have in their minds about you. It's kind of the overarching Association. And we think it can be really helpful in a branding process, being informed by the organization and where it's going, and what's going on in the community in the community, clarifying those goals and audiences and then saying, what do we want people to think of when they think of us? How do we want to make them feel, and then using that to guide any changes to the brand identity, like your visuals and messaging, and then thinking about the experience of your brand every day, across communications channels. Positioning is also something important to think about, not just like we are the best were the only, but also thinking about the space we occupy in the ecosystem alongside other organizations. In a world where we're trying to work in connection with others and in partnership and be less competitive, it can be helpful to think about, especially if you work in a crowded space where there are lots of similar organizations. Where do we what's our slice? Where do we fit in alongside others. So that can be part of positioning work to. And then it's important to remember, for us we see positioning as an internal tool. Sometimes, people come up with a positioning statement, they feel like it's really clear, they wind up using it as part of other messaging. But it's not meant to be your mission statement. It is simply meant to be a big idea that we can come up with, that we on the team can remember we can train our team and whoever our ambassadors to remember, this is the IBM Big Idea that should come through, and it becomes a yardstick we use when making decisions. Again, we're debating the next, you know, theme for our year end campaign. If we're in if we're in that season, where's that fitting in with the ideas we want to reinforce about us, we're about to make a speech and an event, we're going to be changing the bio on our Instagram profile. How do we reinforce this big idea. And then that coupled with personality, as your tone and style, the emotions you want people to associate with you, I often say, you know, positionings, this sort of big idea in the mind or the head personalities, the feeling in the heart is one way to think about it. Again, when we're working on personality, the goal of it is to internally help us make decisions when we're writing and designing elements about an organization. And we're looking for words that feel really distinguishing that can really bring a feeling to mind like you know, fierce or compassionate these we can imagine how a person is like that. And then we're bringing those attributes in to think about how we want our organization to be seen. Once we've done positioning and personality or or informed by that we're also thinking about the goals for the brand and communications is our organization in a space where we are trying to expand or bring people into participate in our programs. Do we are trying to diversify funding, set up some earned revenue attract new donors hold on to the donors we have? Are we trying to change hearts and minds change legislation? So in the beginning of our branding process really being clear about what does your brand and your overall nonprofit need from your communications? Is it fundraising goals? Is it program's goals? Is it advocacy? Some organizations are in a moment where it really leans toward one of these goals. Many have goals in all of these areas. But again, as a checkpoint, when you're in a branding process to say, what do we need our brand to do for us, that can be really helpful. So that's a little background about branding, we're gonna get into naming for the rest of our conversation today. And again, we'll have plenty of time for q&a, but feel free to ask as we go. So what is the job of a nonprofit name, a nonprofit name has to do three things, it has to identify who you are. It has to be not be, I should say, misleading or inaccurate, right? It has to be true, it has to be clear. And it has to be something legally that you can use and something that is available. In other words, you know, you can get a URL that maybe is associated with it, that you can register it and there's no intellectual property concerns. It should ideally be something that's easy to remember, be distinguishing not sound like every other organization that's in your space, you should reinforce the big idea and the feeling we want associated with us that positioning and personality. And it's something we think about with our tagline and logo. Sometimes the logo has the name and tagline all visualized. Sometimes it's just the name. But thinking about those things together can be helpful. You know, a tagline can often help bring action or clarify a name. For example, big duck. That is what we call an evocative name. We're going to talk about different types of names in a moment. Our tagline is very straightforward, smart communications for nonprofits, and in fact, is a distillation of our positioning statement, right? It is, helps reinforce an idea we want you to associate with us. So when you're thinking about your name, we're gonna have a few different checkpoints. One thing is to say like, okay, to people, actually, can they pronounce her name? Can they spell it correctly? Do they know what it is? Is it accurate? Is it also, you know, one thing that we talk a lot about is making sure your name is not alienating people? Right? The name should be part of bringing people in, not closing them off. And again, is it available?

So there are different types of names out there. Sometimes it can be helpful if you are thinking about going through a renaming exercise, to even kind of play with these buckets to generate ideas, or to initially start by saying, Where does our name kind of fit in? Sometimes a name fits more than one category. But this is just to help get you thinking. So there's the descriptive name, Atlanta Community Food Bank. Well, we know from that name, it's in Atlanta, and it's a food bank. I know this organization, we actually work with them a few years ago, they do more than distribute food, they do a lot of work around nutrition around changing systems. But again, as an initial identification that explains who they are. It's very descriptive, straightforward. Many nonprofit names, I think, fit into that category. I'm trying to see I know not everybody shared the name of their organization. But I'm trying to look through to see if I here see some So Caroline, with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association. Well, I know they're in DC, and that they work in music. And you know, and they have, I assume, and orchestra, if I am associating that correctly, right? That is a very clear, straightforward name tells me who they are. metaphorical names, these speak to kind of are inspired by ideas. For example, in this case, this organization Wayfinder Family Services, is really speaking about helping people navigate through all the services available to them. Or it could be a composite name, we often see this with our friends in the pharmaceutical world. But sometimes in nonprofits where you bring two names together, or what is it called a portmanteau or something when you have things like you know, Bennifer, well, a couple names that are brought together. So America cares. This was bringing together America and cares, right? This is an organization that is is supporting people that can be a little less obvious as to what they do, but is also often a way we see it. Origin based, these are when you see it's often named after a person like the Elton John AIDS Foundation, or named after a moment, or some kind of connection to the history of the organization. evocative right kaboom, they build playgrounds, that like kaboom. There's a lot of energy in that name. It's exciting. We don't know what they do from just seeing that name. But it kind of makes us wonder a little bit about what they do. Language some times an organization, especially if it's connected to a particular community might use a word that means something in that language. So cachette means rainbow. And this is an organization that works with LGBTQ equality and Jewish life. So that name makes sense. Now, not everyone speaks Hebrew who they work with. So their tagline, which is for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life is often paired with the name to help people understand what it is. And then finally, we see names that are really just a call to action, fight colorectal cancer. This is an organization that when we talk about the ecosystem, part of what they do is really occupy that advocacy space in the fight to cure colorectal cancer. So a name like fight Colorectal cancer is right for them. So again, something that can be helpful here I'm trying to give you lots of ideas is just to think about, what what category is your name in now, and it may be in more than one. And if you are going through a name exploration exercise, this can be a helpful list just to go down the road, you might say, You know what, we're never going to do anything that's evocative. That just doesn't make sense for who we are. Our personality is straightforward, rigorous, you know, to the point. So an evocative name would feel very off personality. This is why it makes sense to do positioning and personality first, otherwise, you have it, let's just see what it generates. And sometimes, again, in the world of no idea is necessarily a bad idea at first, it can help us get creative and think about new things. As you're going through a name change, or even just a brand new process, you know, we often recommend you do some research, get a sense of how you're perceived. Now look at things like your strategic plan, think about where you're going to determine what makes sense. For the brand, build out that brand strategy. And then look at your existing brand. Look at your colors, your typography, or your fonts, your logo, your tagline, your name, your messaging, and just do a check on it and say, given the fact that we want to be known as and felt as x and y, what do we need to change? And also, again, given what any kind of feedback or what's going on in our organization, and we often find or like, one way to kind of categorize it is should we not change our name? Should we evolve our name? Or should we do a complete revolution, and I'm going to show you examples of that. But in essence, and evolution is when we sometimes simplify, or evolve to an idea that's already associated with us. A revolution is when you see a completely new name, that there's really no hints of the former name, in that new name. So just to give you some examples, and forgive me, I couldn't find a better image of this old logo. These are all organizations we've worked with highest, which works with refugees, and operate from a place of Jewish values and history and culture, their name highest for for over 100 years stood for Hebrew immigrant Aid Society. When we started working with them, one of the things we found was that most people couldn't remember what those four letters stood for, they would often get them wrong. And a lot of the language that made sense over 100, I think it's now 140 or 150 years when they were started, you know, made sense to us. But they were now working with refugees and less working with immigrants, they weren't just providing aid, they were providing so much more than that their society now feels very elitist, and closed. Most people in the Jewish community don't go by Hebrew necessarily as the lead characteristic, it's mostly associated with a language unless with a people. So none of the words really made sense. And people didn't associate it, but it wasn't time to change their name fully. So we made a small change, which was leaning into the acronym and really elevating a tagline and their new visual identity that helped define who they were. Examples of an evolution, the Shriver Center, that sorry, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. This is an organization based in Chicago that we had the pleasure of working with a few years ago, when we were doing their brands, we realize that again, most people there are a lot of Shriver centers out there named after Sargent Shriver and other members of the Shriver family. And most people were just shorthand calling them Shriver Center as it were, but they're not the only Shriver Center. So coming up with that association, Sargent Shriver Center on Poverty Law, even remove removing a few of those words, removing Sergeant removing national, right is really what we did, even that made it easier to develop a stronger visual identity. So again, the name and the visuals do often go very closely together. Another example of evolution. Few years ago, we worked with the Center for Community change, and they also have a C three and C four. So they were the Center for Community change, senator for community change. action, we looked at just moving right into community change. This is their purpose, this is what they're about, they want it to be seen as less academic, less just grass tops more connected to change. And here you can see the new visual identity also with the new tagline power from the ground up, really helping reiterate what their value in addition is to the field. And also really where their plan was going as an organization. And then revolution, these are complete name changes, Association of small foundations, you know, with this tagline for foundations with few or no staff, very descriptive, right, we can get what they're about from seeing that identity on the on the left, but it's highlighting kind of a deficit like it's using small it's almost in some ways you can you might infer somebody might infer that those foundation aren't as having as much of an impact aren't as important to pay attention to. So and what was clear was, as we were working with them is that those foundations do have a big impact. How do we talk about the leverage those foundations bring. So their name became exponent philanthropy to the power of small. And then the last example, and I mentioned the Wi Fi under earlier, this is an example that's also we see in a lot of name conversations, which is sometimes the language in your name is not only no longer accurate, for example, we are the you know, the, you know, the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Association, as we were using earlier as an example. And all of a sudden, now they have a strategic plan that says they should be across the East Coast. And they're going to be working also in New York and Virginia and more than just the DC area. So then they might need a name because their name should no longer be focused on a geographic area. Or there's a population named in your name, and you're no longer just working with that population that often is coming up. Sometimes also language in our name is offensive. It is, you know, our approach to language culture has changed. So in the case of this organization, Junior blind, of California, they're based in LA, use your junior blind of America, I'm sorry. And one of the things we found was both that their name was no longer accurate. They were working with not just children who are visually impaired, but children who had a lot of other

a lot of other opportunities to strengthen who they were and what they were looking for. And then it was more about what they were providing. So the new name became Wayfinder Family Services, again, opening up what they do, in this case, doing a more what I would say kind of is both an evocative and a metaphoric kind of name. So those are just some examples of how you know, name changes can be on a spectrum, sometimes you decide not to change your name, but really look for a tagline a new visual identity, sometimes you look to evolve. You know, another example of evolutions or sometimes we change to a property or an association we already have. I mentioned fight colorectal cancer earlier, when we worked with them over a decade ago, they were the Colorectal Cancer Coalition, but their URL was fight colorectal cancer. And it became clear that they really were again, like the advocacy arm in that world. And we were like this Colorectal Cancer Coalition. It's a lot to remember your shorthand calling yourselves C three or Triple C, nobody remembers what those C stands for. You're not just a coalition, there's so much more that you do, like the name just made no sense. But hey, you already, you already have fight colorectal cancer as an idea people associated with you, it is your URL. Why don't you evolve into that. So sometimes, in a name process, you might already have something that makes sense connected to you. So as you're determining what you should do, I mean, of course, we have to have BI in the decision to change the name can't just come from the top, it should really be something where you include as much of the staff as possible. Ideally, you're also perhaps including members of the board members of the community or program participants or alumni, your donors really depends on the organization and what that looks like. You also want to make sure you know, going through a name change process can take a lot of time. Can can be a significant amount of resources might involve external costs. If you're hiring a consultant, hiring a lawyer to check those intellectual property involves promotion. If you do change your name, depending on your organization, if you have a physical space, you might have to pay for a lot for new signs, especially if that those are etched in stone or in some other way. And I think it's important to consider, you know, should we leverage the assets we already have, like I was sharing with bite colorectal cancer, what is the equity associated that we already have built in? And are we ready to reintroduce our organization? And then finally, as we're thinking about our name, what about the rest of our brand And if you change your name, you're going to need a new logo. Right? That isn't automatic, you probably are going to need new ways to talk about yourself. So the decision to change your name often signals a much bigger, a bigger shift that you need to take. All right, I'm going to keep going into our case study. And then we'll soon have q&a. But again, I know that I see some questions coming in in the chats. But feel free to keep asking them. So I'm going to share a case study of some work we did recently with the Brooklyn Bar Association volunteer lawyers project. That is a very long name. That was one of the reasons why they wanted to change their name. They also were often because it was so long, they were shortening to VlP, the volunteer lawyers project. And again, their full name honored how they were founded, they were initially connected to the Brooklyn Bar Association here in New York. But they were starting to move beyond that. And this name just was such a mouthful, that again, they were short handing it people didn't remember what it stood for, it was time to really think about where they were going and how they could use their brand to open up and invite more people to participate in their program. So the process we took with them is a process we often take we do some research, we collaboratively create, get aligned around goals, and audiences develop the brand strategy of positioning and personality. We then build out the full identity system name, tagline logo, colors, our approach to imagery, templates, all of that set up a brand guide. Then we work on messaging and their case, we did both the articulation of vision, mission and values as well as their organizational messaging. And then we made sure to train their team and think about a mini communications plan or what we call a rollout plan, when you are in fact reintroducing the organization. So just briefly, the approach to their process, really making sure it was inclusive was important. There were updates provided throughout the process. So people knew what was going on and their input was requested. And the goals early in the process were how can they use their brands to really help them get more people to access their services, reach new volunteers engage the ones they have, and bring in new donors. And so you can see their audiences here. Given those goals, I think they they make sense, pause for a second as you read them. And again, going through an exercise where you're agreeing who's the primary audience who's the secondary audience who's the tertiary audience, in some cases, can just be helpful as you're building these things to remember who we're keeping in mind, who does the name really have to work for. And then the positioning and personality this is just an example of their positioning and personality, big idea they want people to associate we create a more equitable Brookland by delivering free legal assistance and resources. And some of the way they want people to feel about them is that they're accessible experts, steadfast, resourceful and championing. And you can see each of those words have some sub words to help remind people what they're trying to communicate. Again, this is internal. But as we think about their different names, as we think eventually about their different logo options, coming back to this list, and using it as again, that yardstick is very helpful. So the building out the identity, if you're going to go through a name change process, even just to explore what's out there, you've got to start there. In their case, we talked about first and foremost, ideally at shorter than Brooklyn Bar Association, volunteer lawyers project, and also distinctive, we also wanted to look at names that were both explanatory as well as metaphor. So you can see as I went through that list of categories, that's what they were thinking a lot about. And they wanted to avoid acronyms, and avoid words that were already associated in their name. They felt like you know, other than Brooklyn, we really want to move away from some of what's been Bar Association. You know, we don't have to speak to that origin anymore. Project feels temporary. Volunteer is certainly part an important audience for us, but so are the clients and the program participants. And so we want to feel bigger than that. So this is a sample of some of the names we came up with in the beginning. You know, I don't know if any of these are jumping out to anyone. But you can see here, there's the explanatory. This is what we do. This is who we are, this is what we're about. And then things that felt a little bit more metaphoric things that were kind of bringing up bigger ideas than immediately weren't as directly explaining who they were, but started to kind of bring some emotion in. In your mind, you can guess what the name is, if you're not familiar with this case study. We'll see. I will tell you the answer is access justice. Brooklyn. Curious if anyone had landed on that. You can imagine there were several rounds. There was a lot of back and forth. For the purpose of this conversation. I just wanted to land on where we went. Oh, that's awesome. Jay. Glad to see that. You pick that One. And so once we have the name, then we can look at taglines and visual system. In this is an example of some of the names, the tagline options that we put together with access justice Brooklyn, early in the process. In that first rounds, the ones that you see bolded here, helping our neighbors navigate the legal system and legal professionals, community champions came up as the top two that the working group was excited about. As we went back and forth, we actually finesse that further, and the winning tagline was legal advocates for our community. And again, because the tagline comes with the name, Brooklyn, you know, if access justice Brooklyn is the name, these things work together, I sometimes say the tagline finishes the sentence your name begins. And then finally, the visual system. This is what they used to look like this is the before. So coming into this process, it does actually feel a little bit more law. For me, it feels a little bit dated, it doesn't feel like that personality we're striving for.

When we got the new name new tagline together with that we built out a new visual system. This is what they look like. Now, this is the example of the rebrand. The logo is again a metaphor to adore inviting people in providing support. You can see there's a elements in the visual system that goes throughout, there's an approach to how they communicate who they are online, in print across social channels. And I'll give a shout out we collaborated with our friends at great believer, which is a website firm, to bring it online and really make sure that it all felt connected. When they did roll out their new website, it was very clear like you'd see up top the VLP is now access justice Brooklyn, through repeated in a few places, really letting people know about that over a time period, some organizations for the first six to 12 months, if they have done a more revolutionary name, we'll do a formerly known as kind of logo with a small line underneath. But again, that is part of a rollout plan. The other piece that's important is to really bring it all together into our brand guide. If we have time, depending on where things go, I can kind of point around and show you but this is a digital brand guide that not only has things like the visual identity, here's the logo here the colors us here's our fonts, has the messaging in it has the brand strategy in it has files people can download if they're interested. And it's the kind of thing that you can build that and add over time. And even if you use an outside platform like Canva, you can also link to that in a tool like this. So we're very excited and not just building brands that help you accomplish your goals, but also building brands that everyone in the team can use and have access to. So it's a lot of information, a lot of examples, I want to talk about your next steps. If you're thinking about going through a name change, and then we'll open it up to q&a, I can show you that brand guide if there's interest, all that fun stuff. So why might you want to update your name or refresh your brand? These are some of the top reasons that we often see. Certainly curious if any of these are coming up for folks you can chat in if they are, you want to shake off an old image people associate, they think about who you were 1015 years ago, you really need to shift, you've shifted who you are, you're doing other kinds of programs and work. Sometimes a new name gives you that fresh start. Maybe you want to connect with new audiences, or you're failing to reach the ones you thought of your name could be getting in the way so could other things. So you know, a new name isn't going to solve all of the problems on this page, or specifically that second bullet. But it's a it's a question to ask your language, war visuals, or both are outdated and not inclusive, you might be using images and ideas that are alienating and exclusive and causing harm. That is certainly a huge reason to update your brand and potentially your name. You're failing to differentiate from your peers, you look like sound like everybody else, people aren't really sure what to think of when they think of you. Sometimes in a space. We worked, for example, with the breast cancer organization, it was very important for them to still use pink and feel connected to that movement for other organizations, you know, that becomes something they want to challenge. Many, as I mentioned earlier, maybe you've moved or you've expanded beyond the original geography and your name is really kind of confining, because you do you're so many more places and that maybe your name had listed a state or community and now you're a regional or a national. You've merged with another organization. And in those cases, some organizations one of the two, or if there's more than one take on a name of the other or the Create a new name. And then finally, you're known for the wrong things or not at all. You're the best kept secret. That's often a reason to think about updating your brand. What potentially and potentially just other aspects. I see someone's chatted in Brian's chat and a big one for us new audiences failing to engage our current ones. And we've expanded beyond our original geography, right? So that like starts suggesting, Hey, maybe I should be looking at this. And maybe you are. I'm curious, as anyone looks at this list of anything else is coming up for them as a reason that they might consider refreshing their brand or changing their name any reasons here resonating. Our name is more known for our acronym, which is a ry S II, but don't know what the letters stand for. I will also say with love, I hope this is okay. That reading that quickly, it also looks a little bit like ours, which is, you know, a British ism for, you know, the booty, and that may or may not be what you want to be associated with. So sometimes these acronyms can be challenging in and of their own way. I see a few other folks chatting in their acronyms. One other fun thing to do was to go to a website called acronym finder.com. Type in your acronym, because there's a good chance that your acronym you're using could stand for something else. And sometimes, whether it's an urban phrase, you know, Urban Dictionary, or, you know, some other colloquialism, or just another organization, it may not necessarily be the one you want to be in the same space as, in fact, maybe they're doing things that are really against your values or, or really what your organization is about. So even just checking, who else has that? That that acronym can be helpful. And see Sophie's chatted in actually, it's pronounced a rise, which could certainly help. But again, for those people who don't know, you like me, you could read that very quickly and miss it completely. So yeah, so those are some things to think about. And, you know, with all of this, I'm going to do another poll. I'm just curious pulse check. Where are you on? Should you change your nonprofits name? Are you thinking yes, maybe? No, not sure. And you'll see a little bit of language with that. So I'm just gonna launch a poll.

Abby Jarvis  42:22  
I love seeing you guys are cracking me up in the Iron

Farra Trompeter  42:25  
Man. There's some good entertainment coming in here.

Abby Jarvis  42:30  
All right, answers are still coming in. We're just about at 60%. So right now, we're kind of evenly split between? Yes. And maybe maybe is leading half of the folks who have responded have said that they're interested in this. And a small number of you 8% are not really sure. So as it stands, I'm gonna end this and launch it so y'all can see what it looks like. Okay.

Farra Trompeter  42:59  
Yeah, so Wow, so 44% of you think maybe we need a revolution, that's exciting. Half of you are sort of questioning, we maybe need this, maybe it would be a smaller change. And then a few of you not sure. You know, I think it's interesting. Yeah, a lot of you noting that the acronym is is like it's a bad acronym, because of the the word that it spells. Again, you know, I see Karina you're chatting and I was just in a training last week, where there were two different organizations, one who talked about their work with people who have autism or autistic people, another person who used a phrase special needs, and the other organization corrected, or at least explain to the other person that special needs is no longer a phrase we use that has been identified as being harmful. So even sometimes again, and you know, as language changes, the name we use, the tagline we use, the messaging we use is important to look at. So yeah, that is certainly you know, if you're in certain spaces with communities, it's also important to check your name with those communities and get their feedback. But yeah, it's exciting to see many of you say you need a revolution. I do not to sort of damper anyone's parade and it's exciting to see, one of the things we talked about a big duck a lot is that name change is probably the hardest thing we do. Getting a new name is that everyone feels excited about as hard if not impossible. You can. There are times when we do land it and people as they live with it, they learned they come to love it. But everyone has opinions about names. You know, I only have cats, so I have not had the experience of naming children. But I know friends who, when they name their children, they won't tell anybody the name until the name has been like the baby is born. The name has been decided because they're worried Oh, you're thinking about naming an X. I know somebody named x when I was a kid. They were a bully. You don't want to name your kid that or, you know everyone has associations with name So your job is to figure out what is the right Association you want your organization to have? And then how do you use ongoing branding and communications to again, reinforce the right thing with that. So for those of you thinking about exploring a new name, I just want to share with you some of the steps you might go through. And this is, you know, sometimes people just say, let's explore it, we might ultimately decide to keep our name the same. But sometimes there's enough going on. And some of you have chatted, and some compelling reasons where it makes sense to even just open it up. So the first thing is, what are we trying to do? Who are our goals? Who are we trying to reach? What are their strategic plans, say about where we're going? Or what conversations have we had about the next few years? Let's just start by kind of anchoring our branding work in the organization strategy, then, ideally, we recommend coming up with that positioning and personality, checking your current name against that, right? If we all agree, we want to be felt and have these certain emotions associated with us, we want this big idea. Where's our name falling in that spirit? And then saying, Okay, if it's not there, do we need a new name? Or maybe we just need a new tagline? Or we even need to create a tagline a lot of folks don't have tag lines? And being really clear that everyone agrees, what are the challenges of the current name? What are the guidelines? What the new name should communicate? Should the new names speak to X? Speak less to why does it have to keep a certain word in it, maybe we want to hold on to the word youth. But we want to add, and adults because we've expanded the population we work in, maybe it's important to hold on to DC, but we need to bring in something bigger than that as we expand geographically. Then, right, once we've got our guidelines, we're clear about goals and audiences what we want those folks to think and feel about us, then maybe even having a conversation, are we in an evolution space, or a revolution space? Are we looking to completely start new? Do we want to hold on to what we have? Do we want to keep both options on the table, then get into those different I showed you some different types of names, the metaphoric the origin, base, the call to action, you know, thinking about other different types that feel like they resonate, get ideas from our community, not just the senior staff, not just the head of the board, but the full staff, the full board, maybe program participants, donors, other people, our program partners, figuring out, you know, sometimes it can be helpful in a process to get their ideas of what's working, or could work, what's not working with are currently and what could work in a new name. Once you come up with your list of, of name ideas, and you kind of call that list down to the ones you think are strongest, you know, put that name in quotes and Google see what comes up. And you'll see in that results, usually other search engine, a social media sites, there's a database called test, which I think stands for the Trademark Electronic Search something. See, can't remember the acronym is a trademark database, it is free, you can search it, checking to see it's still we still want to go to a lawyer, you'll see that in a few bullets, but at least starting to see if there is an open trademark for the name you're thinking about. Concerning what the URL should be checking if that URL is available. Checking again, social handles like if we became this name, can we actually hold it? Really see does this name feel in line with our values? Mana when I say it? Hi, this is Farah from x. When I start using that new name, how does it feel? You know, how does it feel when I hear myself say it when I imagine myself writing it, then talking to an intellectual property lawyer, some organizations have access to pro bono lawyer support, some will have to pay. In many cases, you might still hold on to your current name as your legal name and file what's called a for doing business as or a fictitious name or promotional name. So for example, our my company's legal name is big ducks studio Incorporated. A few years, a few years into being a company we decided to just go as big duck, but any legal documents, it says big duck studio Inc. But because we have a doing business as we can use just big duck and our communications. Finally, once you figured out that new name, it's available, everyone's on board, or as many people are on board as possible. You're going to update the rest of your identity and build out a rollout plan to make sure and then you're gonna have to be really diligent to keep correcting people reminding people this is our name now. And eventually, people forget you even had another name, perhaps after years go by. So some questions to ask as your as those for those of you out there who are wondering about this maybe thinking about it is really just putting your name in these questions. Does X name represent who we are now? Does our name represent who we hope to be in the future? Does it help us achieve our goals? Will that engage current and potential audiences and can we own it and that's especially true as you're as you're thinking about the new names that you're coming up with, to really making sure again, that owning it comes back to Can we get the domains? Can we get it legally? Is it available?

As I think Abby has chatted in a few times, you will get a copy of the slides in this recording. So I'm going to continue just a few things and then we'll open it up to q&a. Change is hard. This is a difficult process requires a lot of patience and love. It requires a lot, you know, reminding people your name can't do every single thing. You don't want a name that's 660 letters, 60 words long, and then people acronym it. It's also very hard to get a name. That's just one word. So really helping remind people what his job is to do. reminding people, it comes back to the strategy, it comes back to what we're trying to do, how we want people what we want people to associate, not just what you personally, love or hate, although certainly hearing people's opinions is important, but always anchoring conversations and strategy, thinking about how you can use your name to stand out and not fully blend in with others. And then finally, there are a lot of highs and lows in the naming process. My colleague Liz Rika did a really fun blog post that we punctuated with some gifts from shits Creek, about the highs and lows of the naming journey, we'll make sure to link to that in the list of resources that Abby sends out tomorrow. So I would love your questions. If you haven't already. put your questions in the q&a. I know Abby has been gathering some that have come in in the chat. As you're writing questions. Just a quick note, there's a lot of work that big duck does here in terms of building grand strategy, determining if you need a new change, helping create new names and visuals. Also thinking about names of programs or how sub brands connect to the primary brand. We also do a lot of work in terms of communications, marketing, donor communications, planning, building out campaigns, and really helping team structures. If ever, you're wondering if we can work with you always happy to have those conversations. But is that a chat out my email is just Farah epic duck.com, you can always drop me a note. And then finally, we've got lots of resources on our website on this topic, we really try to provide as much support to the entire nonprofit sector as we can be on just our clients. So there's a blog post I wrote a few years ago that really gets into the details of going through a name change process. That's called resource guides, exploring a nonprofit name change. There's several case studies for some of the organizations I shared here and more on our website, just so you can, again, sometimes showing those key cities can be helpful in making that internal argument to consider this work. And then we've done lots of podcasts or podcasts is called the Smart communications podcast. We've done several on naming, including should you rename your nonprofit? How can you embrace the challenges are changing your name? What can a good tagline do for you? And I did just record one with Liz that'll be coming out shortly about those those highs and lows. So yeah, and then we have an ebook. That's all about brand strategy. If you want to wrap your head around those concepts of positioning and personality, that'll be available to you, as well as, as I said, the smart communications podcast, it's in all the places, Spotify, Apple, Google Play on our website with a transcript, etc. So that is my that is the I think the end of my slides, I'll just go back. I'll leave these resources up for a moment. And I see that again, there's some questions in the chat questions in the q&a. I'm going to invite Abby to come on screen and ask me those questions. And feel free to chat them in as we go.

Abby Jarvis  53:26  
Definitely. So we got a really interesting question a little while ago from Alexa. And they asked, Do you recommend hiring a consultant for a rebrand and a name change? Or is this something that staff and board members can do if they've got the right, like areas of expertise?

Farra Trompeter  53:42  
Yeah, and I see a related question that just came in about how this seems like it could be very expensive. First, especially for a small organization, sense of cost. You know, I can only give a sense of cost for one big duck does a full branding process, which you know, starting with research brand strategy renaming new visuals, potentially new messaging, new brand guide, you know, we're talking over $100,000 that is what we've cut a lot of organizations out, there are organizations and individuals out there who may be able to do at a different price point. So again, I can only share for us. Related to that question, you know, whether it's from a budget perspective, or from a skills perspective, you decide you want to do this process in house with your staff and board. I think it can be done, it has certainly been done. The hard thing can be making time for it and also maintaining a level of objectivity, being able to say to the board or to the staff. Actually, I think this is a better direction to go than this one can be harder when you're in the organization. It can be also harder to see the forest through the trees. When this is what you're doing day in, day out. And sometimes an outside volunteer or consultant, someone who's not on the board or staff can see things can ask questions in a way that maybe lands a little differently or heard differently experienced differently. A. But you know, that's one of the reasons why Sarah, the founder of big duck wrote the book brand reason why we have this whole, you know, we try to put out as many resources as we can, for folks who need to, you know, who need or want to do it internally, it definitely can be done. It can just, it can just feel and unfold in a different way when you're doing internally, versus working with an outside person, whether that's a paid consultant, or a volunteer who comes in to just to do this. I know that I'm not sure if they're still doing this as much. But for many years, there was Taproot Foundation, which was a place where nonprofits could apply for a skilled base grant. And so the grant you got were professional volunteers who were providing services for free once you got the grants. But you were working with a group of people that almost worked like a consulting firm. So there are, I think resources like that out there. For this, but yeah, I think foundation Taproot Foundation, yeah. And, yeah, you're gonna cue up a link to that. I'm not sure how actively what what they're up to these days, it's been a few years since I've chatted with them, I used to be on the board of a nonprofit that got a service grant from them on messaging. So part of how I know their work. But you know, when every time you're doing something in house or with volunteers, sometimes things can take longer, in addition to being a little more difficult, but sometimes it works, because people already have those meetings and those systems set up. So I've seen it, you know, folks really enjoy and appreciate benefiting from working with consultants and folks who say they need to do it internally, because of the budget and the resources they have. It's it goes both ways. Definitely.

Abby Jarvis  56:34  
I wonder, too, I know an organization that I volunteered with for a long time, did some pro bono work with a local business? So maybe if you have some local marketing or consulting businesses, that may be a good option for you, too. I'm curiosity. And this is a me question. How long does a process like this take?

Farra Trompeter  56:57  
Yeah. Again, and I can only speak to when, when we're doing it. I mean, I think if you're committed to diversity, equity and inclusion to do in a process that really honors voices that make space for voices and make space for feedback, the process takes longer than if you are doing this from the top down. So first is kind of like where's equity showing up in a process like this for you? And how much are you really ready for that? Generally speaking, giving space for voices giving space for a thoughtful process, I think going through again, if you're going to do brand, strategy, new name, then new tagline and visual system, build out the brand, then think about a rollout plan how that brand comes to life on your website, you're looking at at least six to 12 months. Especially were bringing in a bigger if you're doing a bigger website, and not just kind of a reskin or an update could be even longer. If you're just focusing on the branch, like getting to the decision around should we change our name? What are some options for a new name? That might be three to four months, but then again, you need to then apply it and build it out.

Abby Jarvis  58:02  
That makes a ton of sense. Yeah. The the brand work that we did, the last organization I was working with quite a long time. So all right, yeah, we got some things to think about. I don't even work for an organization, and I'm thinking about some of the names of organizations I work with.

Farra Trompeter  58:23  
So a lot of once you open this up for yourself, you're gonna be like, oh, wait a minute.

Abby Jarvis  58:27  
I realized like, what they're one of my favorite organizations in town, I never call them at their full name. I only ever use their acronym.

Farra Trompeter  58:35  
So we love Yeah, make sure you check out acronym finder.com. If you're an acronym organization, you might find something interesting and entertaining.

Abby Jarvis  58:45  
I love that it's such it's I never would have thought of that at all. So yeah. Well, I think a lot of people have a lot of food for thought, I want to thank everybody for being here. I know that this is a really busy time of year and thinking about branding right now probably feels really overwhelming. But we can't thank you enough for being here for sharing your thoughts with us and for just spending time with us. So thank you so much for your time. I hope you all have a really wonderful Tuesday in a great rest of the week. We will email you tomorrow. I'll make sure that article The Farah mentioned is in that email, we included some other resources for you. You'll also get a link to the recording that page will have a link to the slides. We'll get you all squared away. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Farah. I will talk to you all very soon. Thanks, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai