Nonprofit brand identity and visual guidelines
Your visual identity is inconsistent across documents, social media, and presentations — it looks amateurish and undermines the credibility of serious work.
What you'll achieve
A cohesive, professional visual identity with clear guidelines that any staff member or designer can follow.
How a Nonprofit Builder consultant helps
- Review your current brand assets, facilitate a brand values session, develop a new or refreshed identity, and produce a practical guidelines document.
Key deliverables
- Brand audit, logo and visual identity suite, colour and typography system, brand guidelines document, core template set.
Related projects
More from Communications & messaging
Advocacy campaign strategy & design
“You want to influence policy or shift public discourse but your advocacy efforts are unfocused — you don't know who to target, what to say, or how to mobilise others.”See project
Communications strategy development
“Your communications are completely reactive — you lurch from one announcement to the next with no plan, no consistency, and no shared sense of what you are trying to say.”See project
Crisis communications support
“A reputational threat has emerged and you have no plan, no designated spokesperson, and no agreed message — and the clock is ticking.”See project
Often paired with
Culture audit & values alignment
“There is a palpable gap between the values on your website and what it actually feels like to work there — staff notice it even if leadership doesn't.”See project
Case for support development
“Donors don't fully understand why your work matters — your pitch is different every time and never quite lands the way you want it to.”See project
From the resource library
Free tools and guides to get started
- 9.1C114
The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector
An article from the Spring 2012 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review for nonprofit leaders, communicators and funders. The authors observe that many nonprofits still use their brand mainly for fundraising. They describe a shift toward using brand to pursue long-term social goals and to build internal identity, cohesion and capacity. They set out the brand IDEA framework: brand integrity, brand democracy, brand ethics and brand affinity. Readers use it to rethink the job of a brand.
ClassicShort readFree with sign-up - 9.2C121
Putting the people in the pictures first
Guidelines from Bond, the UK network for international development organisations, on gathering and using images and stories ethically. The 2024 update reviews the 2019 original and brings it in line with Bond's core values, including anti-racism, do no harm and locally led development. It addresses colonial legacies and racism in NGO imagery and adds a new resources section. A 1-page Statement of Ethical Practice comes with the full PDF.
CurrentKey manual or guideFree