Apple, Google and Starbucks all are famous brands in the for-profit sector. Goodwill, AmeriCorps and Girl Scouts are good examples in the nonprofit sector. These are big ones, with big brands. But what about most nonprofits, without national recognition? There are more than one million nonprofits in the U.S. Why is building a strong brand important for them? 

There are some remarkable authors, like Peter Frumkin, who consider that a nonprofit brand is the principal asset of the organization. An effective brand can be a positive influence on an organization’s assets (human and financial). It can impact their capacities to achieve goals, their social impact and their missions. 

A strong brand is important because it facilitates opportunities, resources and results. These nourish the brand to attract more funding, helping the organization become stronger and more successful. Professors Nathalie Kylander and Christopher Stone state that a strong brand is critical to attracting donors and key stakeholders.  

Additionally, having effective branding benefits nonprofits in other ways, such as credibility, authority, recognition and consistency. It helps nonprofits maintain a good reputation with stakeholders. Matthew Schwartz, the founder…

A windfall is fabulous, right? After all, what nonprofit leader wouldn’t want to walk into work one Monday morning to find a pile of money, an unexpected gift, on their doorstep? Think of all that you could do with those extra funds—give your hard-working staff a well-deserved raise, pay off your organization’s debt, replace your cobbled-together computer systems, serve 10 times the number of clients whom you served last month, even provide the employee training and education that you’ve deferred for the past decade. In reality, however, a windfall is often accompanied by a unique set of challenges. Take for example what happened to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a small nonprofit that has been serving immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Texas for decades. 

One Monday morning in June 2018, RAICES’ CEO, Jonathon Ryan, awakened to find an email message notifying him that his organization was the recipient of a fundraising campaign to reunite asylum-seeking families who had been separated at the border. The timing was fortuitous, as he had recently learned that the federal government was canceling the primary source of RAICES’ funding, contracts to assist unaccompanied minors with legal representation during their immigration hearings. 

Thinking that the organization would…

Have you ever gone through the process of baking a cake from scratch? Pulling out all the ingredients, measuring everything, mixing, scraping the sides of the bowl, mixing again? Pouring the batter into the pan, sliding it into the oven and then just when it begins to rise a little, pull it out of the oven? Before it’s done? No? That is what diversity is without inclusion, a half-baked cake. A cake that will not stand on its own, that would probably make you sick if you tried to eat it. 

How then, can we expect diversity, one-half of a process, to be enough to keep organizations sustainable and relatable? Diversity is great for getting many different experiences and voices in the same room, but inclusion is making sure they all have what they need to be successful. That process would look like hiring someone in a wheelchair but not installing ramps that would make getting inside the building easier or hiring someone who is Muslim but not providing a private, quiet space for prayer. The old method of introducing diversity with outdated trainings and threats for non-compliance have proven to not work well, so what is the new way?

How can organizations institute change that keeps their organizations thriving? According to J. Nortz…

Public Allies Arizona’s 13th class will graduate in June, the completion of a 10-month AmeriCorps program that places emerging young leaders at local nonprofits for full-time paid apprenticeships. (Find out how you can get involved as an Ally or a Partner Organization.) In this post, which appeared in condensed form at PublicAllies.org, meet Class 13 Ally Iyamidé May  , who was placed at Experience Matters .

What were you doing before you enrolled in Public Allies? What drew you to Public Allies?

Before Public Allies I was working as a program manager for an environmental & infrastructure company in the disaster management sector.

What drew me to Public Allies was that it was an answer to a prayer; my life had been centralized around pursuing more, doing more, being more--all related to being “successful”- well at least my perceived ideas of what success looked like by societal standards. I reached a pinnacle point in my life, where I felt empty in the midst of being busy and full of tasks. I was yearning for something that could cause me to grow into more of a servant leader, to be selfless, to pour out the love that overflows from within my…

Unlike for-profits, nonprofits must do more with less. With limited people and financial resources, leaders of nonprofit organizations must execute strong management styles that develop the talent of their teams, foster healthy working environments and encourage retention of valuable employees. While the definition of a high-performing team varies based on outcomes desired, subsector and performance metrics, they typically embody five key characteristics: “a shared, meaningful, and clearly understood purpose or vision, requisite talent to be successful in accomplishing the purpose, interdependent team members, accountability and support among team members and a high level of mutual trust among all team members.” 

There are no shortcuts to cultivating such teams, but best practices involve hiring with intention, motivating performance and retaining top talent. In an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Monisha Kapila says, “The nonprofit sector is known for underinvesting in talent. From low compensation to lack of training, the pursuit of minimal overhead has resulted in anemic spending on human capital.”

Budgetary constraints shaped by charity watchdog organizations also impose limits that encourage decreasing…