{Re}Building A Brand: The New Face of Donor Acquisition

Building a brand is a thoughtful process.

Many associate re-branding with a new or updated logo and/or colour scheme, but the actual discipline of branding is much more than that—it’s a discovery and reaffirmation of who you are as an organization and what you’ll represent to your audience.

For us, our own renewal started around the discussion of a new website. Our sense was that, over the course of 10 years, we had matured beyond how our audience might perceive us. The primary example was as apparent as our name: Globalfaces Direct. Where we had been a company founded upon direct marketing techniques, the fundraising landscape over the course of our existence has broadened our one-to-one approach, introducing new strategies, systems and services that serve more diverse media and mediums.

We knew it was time to evolve, but we wanted to do it in a way that didn’t dilute our core discipline of direct donor acquisition and retention.

Exploring Our Brand.

We collaborated with SitePartners, a marketing agency specializing in B2B, for a third-party perspective on our role within face-to-face and to explore our brand positioning. We discussed our growing array of services, our evidence-based approach and our desire for a bolder brand tone. We even published a whitepaper that proved the true impact of face-to-face fundraising that (for us) identified a key realization—the value of conversion versus acquisition.

We realized that we are the faces that form connections. And, that these connections aren’t fleeting; instead, we are the ones responsible for forging and fostering important long-term, sustaining social bonds to mission and cause.

At this moment, we conceived a renewed verbal brand identity: Ambassadors of Acquisition.

This represented a human appeal that exhibited confidence, conveyed devotion, compelled innovation and evoked purpose. It was a powerful message to team members and clients alike, that implied partnership and progression.

The Colour And The Shape.

Next up was the logo itself. We explored typography, wordmarks and iconography, concluding that the inherent brand equity in our existing logo was something that most resonated within our culture. We consulted many charity partners on the use of our name, and how it resonated with them. Ultimately, we decided to keep the core of our visual brand, but finessing colour, orientation and system to convey tone, context and scale.

We streamlined ‘Globalfaces’ by removing ‘Direct’ and the cross (+) that identified with our origins in healthcare advocacy and research. Our collaboration with SitePartners led to an exploration of colour and shape that resulted in a more vibrant use of teal combined with a deep use of navy as our new primary colours. As an interesting brand attribute, we leveraged curly brackets to signify the side-silhouette of the faces we represent (albeit abstract) while becoming a (very literal) part of our narrative. These brackets are sprinkled throughout our site, listing items within a sentence to showcase the powerful progression in ‘ambassadors of {children in crisis; cancer research; mental health; etc.}’ as a feature that builds to our brand positioning.

Bringing It All Together.

The website would put our renewed and refreshed identity into action. Bold colours and brilliant photography of fundraisers in communities across North America would come alive in the design of our new pages.

We’ve now reached the culmination of nearly 6-months of planning, strategizing and conceptualizing—a new site to rally a mindset and spur on our next phase of growth. We’ve renewed our purpose as the faces that form connections, the door-to-door experts that partner with leading charities to fundraise and create long-term, sustaining social bonds.

As your Ambassadors of Acquisition, our fundraising teams are ready to live and breathe your mission. Welcome to the new Globalfaces of face-to-face fundraising, and so much more!

About the Author

Carolyn Soro

Carolyn Soro is a marketer and fundraising specialist with 10 years in the non-profit space, having run successful campaigns at Plan International Canada and UNICEF Canada for many years before coming to Globalfaces to become their VP of Marketing. Now Carolyn heads up all our social efforts and works with multiple charities to provide guidance on campaigns and stewardship efforts.