What a Nonprofit Rebrand Really Costs Your Team

So you’ve decided to rebrand your nonprofit. (If you’re still deciding, this resource might be helpful.)

You’ve no doubt weighed a lot of pros and cons, talked with your board, and read a few articles on how to rebrand successfully. The fun parts of a rebrand (the new logo! the new colors!) understandably draw most of the attention, but there are some less glamorous realities that you might forget about until after the updated brand guide arrives.

None of these three costs should discourage you from making a change your organization needs, but failing to plan ahead can influence whether that change actually succeeds.

The cost of what you’ve already invested

Take a moment to poke your head in the supply closet.

Between the reams of paper and the folding tables sit four boxes of business cards (reprinted last month), two retractable banners, 3,000 brochures, and a box of t-shirts from the 2019 color run.

You have spent thousands of dollars on materials that may soon carry the wrong logo, colors, or messaging. Some of those materials are practically brand new, while others represent years of fundraising events, outreach campaigns, and organizational history.

Voluntarily making that investment obsolete stings… a lot. The prospect alone is disheartening enough to derail an otherwise worthwhile rebrand.

Psychologists and behavioral economists have a name for this tendency: the sunk cost fallacy. When we have already invested money, time, or effort into something, we tend to feel compelled to keep investing in it, even when a different course of action would serve us better.

For a nonprofit, the old logo can start to feel like an asset simply because so much has been spent putting it everywhere. And the longer the brand has been around, the more evidence you have of that investment. Boxes of brochures and branded merchandise start to sound like a compelling reason to stay put.

I say this as your friend: that money has already been spent whether you rebrand or not. If your reasons for rebranding are legitimate, don’t let the sunk cost fallacy undermine your determination. That doesn’t mean you should throw away perfectly usable materials or ignore the financial realities of your organization.

So what should you do with all of that stuff? First things first: stop buying the old stuff today. Freeze every print order, then sort the closet into three piles:

• Use it up: Internal handouts and other low-visibility materials may have plenty of life left. Your staff can handle looking at the old brand for a while longer, and the consequences of muddled brand communication are much lower.

• Phase it out: If your organization can’t afford to scrap everything and start over, consider a phased approach to your rebrand rollout. Update everything digital first, then begin replacing print materials in groups (i.e., all donor materials, then all community materials, then all volunteer materials).

• Give it a second life: Get creative! Those color run t-shirts might make excellent volunteer painting shirts. Subtly cover up the old logo with stickers on the covers of old folders to give them a new life.

Your next print order can wait until the new brand guidelines have been finalized.

The cost of everything you’ve forgotten about

Most advice on how to rebrand stops at the logo, but your logo lives in far more places than your website. Think about allllll of the places your brand lives right now: email signatures, social profiles, slide decks, donation forms, invoices, name tags, the Google Business listing, the volunteer sign-up sheet, the sign out front…you get the point. It’s a beautiful thing: your brand spreads like glitter! But you don’t realize how far it’s traveled until you start cleaning it up, and you’ll keep finding it for weeks. (And that’s even assuming that your staff follow the brand guidelines.)

The challenge goes beyond swapping out a logo file. Every branded touchpoint needs to communicate the same identity and give people a consistent experience of your organization. A donor who sees your website and then receives an invoice bearing your old logo encounters two versions of the same organization. That inconsistency can make an otherwise thoughtful transition feel unfinished.

Individually, most of these updates only take a few minutes. Collectively, you’re looking at hours of work to hunt down each touchpoint and make the necessary changes. Most organizations forget to account for this when considering how to rebrand: implementation draws on resources your organization already needs for its day-to-day work.

Before launch, ask each department to identify the places where your brand appears. (Someone will need to check the signage, forms, and digital accounts that fall outside anyone’s usual responsibilities.) Build a shared inventory, assign responsibility for updates, and establish priorities. Public-facing materials and essential donor communications will need attention first, but internal documents and presentation slides can be updated on an as-used basis.

The cost of stopping halfway

The most expensive rebrand is the one your team never finishes.

Launch day has a lot of energy. Fail to take advantage of that, and your to-do list will never get fully done. The logo will get updated on the website, but the old one will still haunt the invoices, the lobby sign, and half of the staff emails.

As the excitement fades, so does the momentum, and the remaining updates are forced to compete with regular responsibilities. This is where the earlier costs begin to compound. You have already paid for the creative work and spent staff hours implementing the new identity. If your organization never completes the transition, those investments have less opportunity to deliver their intended value.

A half-implemented brand can also undermine the very goals that prompted the rebrand. If your organization wants a clearer identity, stronger recognition, or a more consistent experience for donors and the people you serve, those benefits depend on people encountering the new brand across the organization. A polished website cannot do all that work alone.

You’ll find the best success by treating implementation as part of the rebrand itself. The creative work establishes the direction, but your team brings that direction to life.

Give implementation its own plan, budget, owners, and deadlines. Make sure staff know where to find the approved files and understand the materials they are responsible for updating. Schedule follow-up checks to ensure unfinished tasks remain visible even after the initial excitement wears off.

Count the cost, then commit

Implementation is where the rubber meets the road. A good rebrand is worth the work, and planning ahead for these costs gives your team a more realistic picture of what the project requires. It also makes it easier to distinguish between a genuine reason to reconsider the rebrand and a temporary discomfort with the work ahead.

A new visual identity can help your organization move forward. Making that change circumspectly also requires understanding the history, relationships, and expectations attached to the old one.

If your organization is navigating a brand transition alongside a change in leadership, our new resource, A Brand Playbook for First-Year Executive Directors, explores how to lead that transition with care for the people and history that came before you.

Download the guide to keep reading.