The Promises Kept in Service to Others:
Nonprofits, Brand and the Internet

Part Two in a Two Part Series: Considerations of Brand on Internet Strategy

Part One of this two-part series (see Convio Monthly, February 2002, for Part One) articulated a working concept of nonprofit brands as the special promises of value that a nonprofit organization makes and keeps to its community.  This concept stresses the burden placed upon an organization to understand and deliver on the expectations of the organization's community--a very tall but important order indeed.  In return, the nonprofit's community of stakeholders gives back loyalty to and support for the organization's mission and vision. The value or strength of a nonprofit's brand reflects the quality of relationship between the organization and its constituents.

Broadening and enhancing this quality of relationship should be what the Internet is all about for nonprofit organizations.  Unfortunately, the late 1990s hubbub and myopic focus on e-commerce transactionalism overshadowed and obscured this simple truth.  The subsequent dot-com crash has further put a pall on what should be a vigorous consideration and staged implementation of technology to help nonprofits perform their missions while also strengthening their brands.

But it would be an equally grave mistake now to reject the power of Internet technologies to extend and deepen the impact of most nonprofit organizations.  In fact, extending and deepening impact should be the driver of an organization's Internet strategy with the goal of supporting its organizational mission and vision. There are many ways for nonprofits to leverage cyberspace for achieving success--hindsight over the last few years shows that there is no one-way street to executing an effective Internet strategy. 

That said, the lack of a single "best way" to use Internet technologies doesn't mean there are indefinite strategies of equal value to design and implement an Internet plan.  Certainly, nonprofits will reject many strategies because of cost and/or reliability issues (1).  But well before these issues come into play, organizational leadership should consider how an Internet strategy best enables an organization to build the quality of relationship necessary to sustain mission and realize vision.

A hypothetical example illustrates this important point.  Table One describes two organizations with their respective brand promises. Suppose that organizations A and B are involved in the same domain (environment, healthcare, social advocacy or whatever), but each has very different promises to uphold.  These promises will place severe constraints on the kind of Internet strategy suitable for and expected by that organization's constituents.  Organization A, as a low overhead, grassroots fundraising organization, would have a difficult time justifying a high-overhead, community-enhancing Internet strategy that Organization B might use.  This might hold true even if there are Internet-based solutions for online community building that do not require a lot of personnel and money to maintain:  the appearance of an elaborate Web presence may run counter to the expectations of constituents.  On the other hand, Organization B would likely lose constituents if it were only to communicate with them to ask for money.

Table One:  Simple Illustration of Brand Consideration on Strategy

 

	Organization A	Organization B
Nature of stakeholder relationships	"Mile-wide" informal network of annual members	"Mile-deep" community of invested volunteers and donors
Brand Promise to Constituents	Dedicated to channeling dollars to solutions that work	Dedicated to organizing concerned citizens to speak as one politically powerful voice
Considerations on Internet Strategy	Use highly cost-effective, scalable technology to handle heavy transaction processing	Use various technologies to build community member interaction and loyalty around content

Table One illustrates the point that the nature and scale of promises made and kept to constituents remain front-and-center for nonprofits as they consider Internet strategy development and execution.  In particular, nonprofit leadership should ask and answer two  "brand" questions before considering and selecting specific technology solutions:

1. What are the relationship qualities that our constituents (or certain strategic segments of our constituent community) experience with and expect from us?
2. How can we use technology's scalability to enrich our constituent relationships to instill a deeper sense of trust and loyalty in us?

With respect to the first question on quality of relationship, organizations all too often complacently permit sub-standard experiences.  Consider a prestigious university or college that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on its faculty, facilities and programs to create a special experience for each community member.  Few people in such settings would argue with spending millions on grounds keeping to maintain a special environment of learning and scholarship.  And yet, many of our elite institutions have virtual campuses that are disorienting, chaotic and vastly unlike the pristine grounds of the physical campus. As more people move online, an organization's constituency increasingly will come to expect a comparable quality experience from institutional Web sites and digital interchanges, and the failure to meet these expectations will most assuredly take a toll on the organization's brand.

As for the second question -- on building trust and loyalty, the key to success is how Internet technologies aid in moving the underlying stakeholder relationship forward.  A good relationship doesn't stand still -- like an evolving story, it starts with a point of acquaintance and progresses to building deep bonds of trust.  Internet technologies can be a bigger or smaller part of this story building, depending on the scope of mission, the expectations of stakeholders, and the internal capacity and competencies of the organization to utilize technologies as part of its broader relationship management practices.   The bottom line:  the thousands of dollars spent on a couple of beautiful Web pages will amount to little in brand equity if the total site does not play a key role in nurturing relationships.

Although it's often overlooked, brand is critically important for nonprofit organizations.   Brand is the glue that holds together the group's leaders, staff and constituents, keeping everyone focused and moving forward with purpose toward mission fulfillment.   When strategically deployed, Internet technology can be one of today's most effective tools for strengthening brand.  Nonprofit organizations that step back, take stock of their brand and ask the right questions will be better poised to make cyberspace work to their advantage.