Volunteers: brand assassins or ambassadors?
By The Team 29 Mar 2010.
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If you are responsible for managing your charity’s brand volunteers can present a bit of a quandary. The fact that they are ‘unpaid’ helpers means you are unlikely to have control over them, and yet the way they behave can impact on your charity’s reputation.
Over recent years the charity sector has woken up to the power of a consistent brand identity, and yet getting volunteers to stay on-brand is still an uphill battle. You’ve invested in developing a shiny new identity, and yet frequently supporters at a grass roots level still insist on using clip art – a Brand Manager’s nightmare.
At a recent CharityComms brand breakfast, communications professionals from across the sector debated how to best keep tabs on their volunteers, resulting in the following handy hints.
- The first challenge appears to be finding out exactly who your volunteers are, let alone reaching them. Find out who within your charity holds the data on them, and whether you can use it.
- If you can’t reach your volunteers directly build relationships with the staff that can, such as local fundraising teams. They should be able to guide you on any mechanisms – meetings or mailings – you can piggyback off to bridge the gap. This in itself gives you a good opportunity to explain to essential gatekeepers why your brand is worth protecting.
- When you do engage with volunteers about your brand be careful not to stifle them with too much information. Remember, you may be obsessed with raising your brand's profile, but volunteers are giving up their time for free. They probably don’t need to know all the ins and outs of the brand guidelines, so just feed them the basics.
- You might want to avoid using the brand word altogether. For some volunteers "branding" sounds very commercial, and will make them thinks of products on supermarket shops, not the good work of charities.
- In line with keeping it simple pocket-sized crib sheets with key facts and messages are a popular devise to help volunteers spread the word about what your charity does accurately.
- A common mistake appears to be only talking to volunteers following re-branding. Don’t fall into this hole and make sure you sustain regular dialogue to keep volunteers enthused and up to date.
- Remember, branding is much more than just a logo, words and images. Your brand is your reputation, and reputations are based on experiences. Every single experience someone has of your charity will impact on their view of you, including your volunteers. So, more than anything make sure your volunteers are well looked after and have a great time working for you, then their enjoyment and enthusiasm will shine through when they tell people about their volunteering, having a positive impact on your brand profile.
- Above all else, avoid acting like the brand police – telling people off when they break the rules around how to use the logo and visual identity. Instead, take the time to explain why staying on-brand is important, and provide them with the tools to make that easy. Templates are a popular tool, as are brand microsites where people can download or create what they need.
- A brand microsite is a great place to show video clips to help engage people in the brand and why it is important. If the videos feature volunteers themselves all the better as peer-to-peer communication is commonly well received.
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