 Welcome back to the nonprofit show. You know, I like to say welcome back because I'm making a really broad assumption that all of you have been here before, but if this is truly your first time, your first introduction to us, welcome. We are glad that you found your way to the nonprofit show. And specifically for today's conversation because we have with us today, Eric Wrestler. Eric is here as the founder and creative director from Design by Cosmic. And Eric's gonna share with us about the return on investment of your brand building. So stay with us. He's got some really good insight to share. But before we jump into conversation, wanna say thank you to Julia Patrick. You might notice she's out today and I hope she's having a lovely day. If you joined us in the green room chatter, she might be having her own Miss Astrid Day. So she might be doing whatever it is that she wants to be doing today, but thank you Julia for creating the nonprofit show and allowing me, Jarrett Ransum, nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group to join you day in and day out as a host here of the show. Really excited because together we have produced over 900 episodes with these amazing presenting sponsors that said yes in March of 2020 and have said yes since March of 2020 to help us have such high level conversations. So thank you to our friends over at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd as well as nonprofit tech talk. Please do check out their companies. These companies are amazing. They're here to help you elevate your company and your mission to do more good for your community. So I like to say their mission is your mission. But you can find all of those previous episodes including the one now with Eric in just a few hours later this afternoon on all of these platforms and channels. So you can find us on streaming broadcast and podcast platforms as well as an app. So if you don't have enough apps on your phone already, go ahead and add one more. It's not gonna hurt, right? We can do that all day long but go ahead and scan that QR code. Okay, Eric, I am excited to have you and thank you for saying yes because we had really a short window to get you on the show, to have your expertise shared with us. So again, for all of our viewers and listeners around the globe, really excited to have with us today Eric Ressler, founder, creative director designed by Cosmic. Welcome, Eric. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, really excited. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Eric and a little bit about design by Cosmic because as you know, our audience truly is the heartbeat of our nonprofits. 1.8 million nonprofits registered in the US. What role does design by choice and specifically you, Eric, play in that industry? Sure. So I'm Eric Ressler, the founder and creative director at Cosmic. We're a social impact creative agency. So we work with social impact leaders, many of whom are nonprofits to help with nailing their impact story, build brand awareness and inspire action. And that looks a little different depending on the nonprofit that we're working with and their unique needs and where they are in their journey as an organization. So I think we're really excited to be able to collaborate and strategically support organizations that are doing some of the most important work in the world, some of the most intractable work in the world when it seems like we need more and more of it these days. So we're really just grateful to be able to partner with some of these really passionate, impactful people. Yeah, absolutely. And I asked you a question before we even went live and I said, so do you serve across the nation? And your answer was, what was it, Eric? Yeah, we actually work internationally. We have a client in Morocco right now, a client in Amsterdam. We work across all the coasts in the US as well, which is really exciting. And we are based unofficially in Santa Cruz, California near Silicon Valley, but our team is remote and distributed across the US. So we have a team member in every time zone at this point, which has its own set of challenges and benefits, but has largely really, I think challenged us to expand our reach and our brand awareness. And it's been really awesome because it's expanded our ability to work with organizations across the globe and to get that more diverse perspective by doing so. What great insight, you're right. Like so many of us now have a distributed workforce and to expand that brand into this distributed community, right? I mean, that's something we're all working towards. So let's talk about this, let's dive deep, right? Like I always like to say, Eric, I don't like to play in the shallow end in the kiddie pool. Like I like to go deep, let's have some really thoughtful conversations, but start us off with this one, that our nonprofit brand as a concept and help us conceptualize what this means. I love this question and this topic because I think until somewhat recently, even describing a nonprofit as a brand was somewhat controversial or at least maybe a little uncomfortable for nonprofit leaders and organizations. Brands are traditionally thought of as like corporate entities selling products and services to consumers or to businesses, right? And the nonprofit sector doesn't fit neatly into that story of a brand. But if we think about the concept of a brand being more than just a logo, more than just colors and type and all those things are part of a brand's identity system, their visual identity system more specifically. When you think about a brand a little bit more broadly and a little bit more strategically, a brand is really a relationship between a community and an organization. And what builds a brand versus, you know, a good brand versus a bad brand or what strengthens a brand versus weakens a brand. These are things that I think are really critical for nonprofit leaders to be thinking about because this is really the relationship that you have with your community, whether that's donors, supporters, volunteers, partner organizations, even staff. Branding goes internally as well for internal culture. So we think about brand as being a set of values, a promise as an organization, a mission and that any action that you take as an organization is either strengthening that brand perception, that brand promise or it's going against it and moving away from some of those things that your brand stands for and that your brand has promised. So it's really, we think about it more as like a container that you're filling every day with the actions that you take in the real world and the reactions that your community has to those actions. Eric, say that again. A brand is a relationship between the community and the company. Is that, did I hear that right or did I misquote it? Yeah, the community and the organization that is the brand represents. Yeah, that really speaks to me and I appreciate it so much and especially you coming in to say, nonprofits in particular don't necessarily see into their brand and I'm paraphrasing. I know that's not exactly what you said, but moving from that concept into awareness, how can we use that concept to expand our awareness? Even as you said, you have a distributed team, many organizations, many companies do now. So how can we take that brand building to expand this awareness beyond our little work zone, if you will. So the way that we think about brand building and even this term brand building, it hints at this I think in a nice way, which is that your brand is not something you just do and then it's done and you just like get back to your normal day job, right? It's something that requires constant building, curation and attention. And when we're in this very digital first culture and playing in this broader attention economy where our attention is becoming very scarce and difficult to capture and difficult to maintain, it's being literally bought and sold by corporations, brand building is the action that you need to take to strengthen that relationship between your community and your organization. And one of the most important things that I think everyone's trying to do in whatever way is appropriate for their organization is to expand awareness, to build brand awareness because the first step in playing and winning in the attention economy is breaking through all of the noise that's out there and getting noticed and getting someone who's a potential supporter or a potential volunteer or a potential partner to even be aware that your organization exists in the first place. And so what are the things that build brand awareness or that works towards brand building in general? It's about having that really core foundational brand work done strategically, professionally at a high level so that your foundation is really strong. That's step one. But then that's not the end. Think about that like you've planted a garden but you don't stop there, right? You have to constantly maintain that and if you wanna reap the benefits of the garden. And so this looks different for different organizations but publishing content, sharing ideas, sharing impact stories, putting out calls to action for supporters to actually engage educating your community. These are all things that are both brand building because they're again strengthening that promise or that vision for the brand in the minds of your community and also expanding awareness because we can't just announce our organizations and say, please remember to come back to our website every week and learn what we're up to. We have to reach people where they are in their digital channels, mostly these days, in their inboxes, in their social feeds or in the community that you've built and whatever that looks like. And so brand building and expanding awareness kind of go hand in hand in that way. You know, I have a question, Eric and I warned you, right? Completely unscripted. So I'm really curious. I've predominantly worked in the nonprofit sector, you know, all my adult life. And I still hear of organizations that I've never heard of before. And I hear, and I'm talking local community and I hear from organization leaders that say, oh, we are the best kept secret, right? And I don't think anyone really wants to be a secret, especially, you know, when you're wanting to build awareness in brands, what's it you think that that happens? I mean, to me, that tags into this conversation we're having about branding and awareness, but we don't want to be a best kept secret. No, I'm so glad you asked this question. I mean, I do think this is starting to shift a little bit, but there is this kind of perception, almost this like stamp of pride of like, oh, we're a scrappy nonprofit doing good work behind the scenes. It's thankless work. Like we don't need recognition for it because we know it's right and it's good. And you know, there may be some situations where that's fine. And you know, the need is being met and things are going well, funding is strong, the organization is sustainable. I would say that is by far the edge case though. You know, we know that so many nonprofit organizations are underfunded, stuck in a starvation cycle, having, you know, issues hanging on to staff, growing to meet the needs that they're trying to serve. And so in those kinds of situations, yeah, you do not want to be a secret. That's the last thing you want to be. You want to be top of mind. You want to be expanding awareness around, A, the importance of the cause that you're serving. B, the need for people to contribute, whether that's time or money or networking or whatever it is. And so I think that's where we see branding, marketing, you know, technology, strategy and all the work that we help our clients with really come in to become an impact multiplier if it's done right and in the right time and in the right way. And so, you know, the last thing you want to be in the attention economy is a secret. Right, right. So much so, you know, I love that you said, you know, we show up in inboxes, we show up on social feeds, right? Like there's so many ways to really expand our awareness as we look at this and we talk about the noise. There's a lot happening, right? There's a lot of ways for us to consume information. But then there's this engagement in real world action. Apologize, I'm tripping over my words, but looking at this in a way of there, there really are so many ways that we can engage and there's a lot of real world action. I mean, I'm even looking at your image behind you there, Eric, right? Like even that evokes some action, some real world action, you know? So I would love to ask this question, where does it come, where does our brand fit when it comes to taking action, real world action in current events, right? Whether it's social justice or climate change, campaigning, things like that. How should we engage in those areas as it relates to our brand? So I think this is where brand building is so critical and it's really fundamental to the success and in our opinion, ultimately for an organization because most organizations, and I would say, I can even argue all organizations in one way or another need help from their community to take action in the real world. And I think traditionally branding and marketing and building websites and some of these things used to feel kind of static. It was like an informational exercise. We're building our digital brochure and you can go to our website and read about us and learn about our work and maybe you'll support us. And I think that that is no longer how you should think about your digital strategy or brand strategy because the way that technology has evolved allows for our digital channels to become operational assets for our organizations that actually drive real world change that are not just about telling your story. You're telling your story is important. You need to tell your story but that's not where the experience should end. That's not where the opportunity should end for your audience. Where brand building fits into this is people are much more likely to take action with a brand that they trust and that they know than a brand that they've just heard of. And so there's this kind of backlog of action or information that needs to be shared. This relationship that needs to be built with your supporting group before they're going to take a meaningful action like donating or volunteering or even reading and consuming information. And so I think, again, this is where we see brand building and building up an expanded awareness of your organization is kind of that critical first step and it may be a month or six months or a year before any one of those people takes an action with your organization. But this kind of comes back to like what's the best time to plant a tree? Well, the best time was 15 years ago. The second best time is today. You have to get that foundational work in place and it is a long game sometimes. Other times it's not, but we hear stories from some of our clients where they've been building a relationship with a donor going back sometimes years and then all of a sudden seemingly out of the blue, a very large gift comes in, but it's really not out of the blue. It's just that moment was right for all of the different reasons because they're feeling especially altruistic or something really touched them or a particular story really grabbed and pulled at their heartstrings. But if they hadn't already forged a relationship with your organization for months, if not years, there would be too much friction, too much barrier, not enough trust to actually take that action. So this is how brand building supports building out real world action. And then I think we can even, if it'd be helpful, get more into like what are some of the opportunities for kind of converting attention into action digitally especially? Yeah, I would really love to know that as well. And one of my questions, perhaps before we jump there, and I don't wanna forgo the revenue conversation because that's after this. So let's not forget that one. But I'm curious with this real world action and engagement, there's so many ways where we as an organization can speak up, right? Whether it's the political climate, whether it's even a local kind of like city vote. Let's say we're an education organization and there's an educational vote that's like at our city voting opportunity. Is that an opportunity? I'm gonna say for us to flex our brand, right? For us to really say, here's where we are as an organization. This is what we believe. This is an alignment with our values and our mission. I mean, am I on track here, Eric? Because I'm curious if those are real-time actions where nonprofits can flex their brand to say support this because this is going to support a greater community. Yeah, exactly. You're right on track. And I think that this relates to a couple other concepts that might be worth speaking to. One is there are so many nonprofit organizations and often dozens of not hundreds even working on the same issue area. And so I think one of the things we believe strongly in this is part of that kind of core foundational branding is really getting clear about your niche within that larger social impact ecosystem. Is it a region that you serve? Is it a particular angle that you bring to the table? What is your unique strength as an organization that's different? So what's your differentiation compared to another organization maybe even working on the same issue? And it's different than in kind of the business world where those folks are your competitors and you're like looking for market share. You can make an argument that's still true to some degree about dollars raised or whatever. But really we look at it more like partnerships. And I think especially if you can figure out what your unique strengths are as an organization and that often stems from kind of the origin story of the organization. And really like doubling down on that getting clear on that and avoiding mission creep and starting to do too many things which is so common because of how restricted grants work in the nonprofit space. And all of a sudden you have to kind of spin up a new program to kind of appease the donor who and this is I think an old school way of grant making that's hopefully on its way out soon with more like trust-based philanthropy in the mix. Hopefully, yeah. But it's still very prevalent at least in our experience unfortunately we see a lot of organizations who have a very clear origin story that's kind of started to almost like spiral out of control even in some situations. And so we help organizations get more clear about what their niche is and get really clear about that that sometimes even means some like restructuring of programs and that can free up capacity in a really great way too if we can start to be clear about what we say yes and no to for example, if you're clear about those things and then you develop a very keen and distinct point of view as an organization then you have a very clear idea of what you can say and what you should say and what you shouldn't say what you should support and what you can get in front of your supporters. I think one of the things that nonprofit organizations have as almost like a secret weapon is they are on the front lines of this work they're experts in this work and you have a bunch of supporters who care about your cause area or your issue area but they're not likely as you know they don't have as much experience or expertise in the work because they're doing something else for a living possibly right? And so you have this opportunity to educate and inspire your community and that's what your supporters want. So it's like that's something you can give back to your community because you're often going to have to ask them for stuff in return time money whatever it is and if you can provide value in the form of education and like helping your community understand what are the current issues what are the current challenges and barriers to making progress on this? That's really valuable content. So that's a bit of a broad answer but I think it all relates so clearly at least in my brain that it's worth getting through all of it. Yeah, no my brain too I appreciate the collaboration concept right? Like really working with our partners and our communities often many of us let's say are working to eradicate hunger right? Well, let's all come together let's talk about this as it relates to there's so many things if you're an agriculture community what are some of the voting and the farmers conversations that are taking place and then using this opportunity to galvanize the support galvanize the community and the partners for that awareness and the education I think you're just right on the money there Eric and I also feel like sometimes organizations nonprofits in particular are a little hesitant to wave their flag on an issue for fear right? That we're waving a flag that someone else doesn't want us to wave and so as we move into brand building and how it helps to drive nonprofit revenue I still think we have a bit of a fear factor when it comes to speaking up waving a flag really educating from a certain standpoint that it might ostracize some of our supporters can you speak to that? Yeah, I mean I do think this is something that comes up a lot and it really kind of depends on your issue area and how politically charged it is but I think as more and more things are politically charged and there is a deeper and deeper polarization especially here within America and I think growing outside of America as well which luckily I think there are a lot of really great organizations working on including some of our clients who I'd be happy to shout out. It is a concern I don't wanna pretend it's not and I think this is where having a very clear foundational brand and point of view and niche established and vision established for your brand can be a super helpful tool because then it's very logical what is and isn't something that you support as an organization as much as it can be and so I don't wanna diminish that sometimes this is gonna get sticky and difficult to work through and there may even be disagreement within your own team around what side to take on a particular issue to kind of put it into very divisive terms. So I don't think organizations need to weigh in on every cultural issue and that might be a little controversial to say because there is a counter argument that if we're fighting for justice that there's a certain right form of justice that is like human and innate but I actually don't think it's quite that simple if it were I think we'd have solved a lot more of these cultural issues at this point. So I think it is important though that if you are a hunger-based organization for example you're working on food insecurity or sustainable agriculture or whatever it is within that space and there is a political opportunity in the sense of like a bill or something that can create real world change on the table I do think it is your responsibility and your obligation to kind of weigh in with your opinions even if the opinions are nuanced and not black and white and cut and dry like we all hope and expect for these days because you are an expert you're a trusted expert in the space you've seen how these kinds of things affect real people through lived experience and through human connection with boots on the ground work in a way that someone who's not doing that work every day will never have that same experience or opportunities. So in my opinion there is an obligation to weigh in on issues or opportunities that are in your lane so to speak. Do you need to do that on things that are outside of your lane? I don't think that that is a requirement in my opinion. Oh that's interesting yeah. We don't have too much time but we have covered our key talking point so I really appreciate that right? When I think of have we met the mark check, check, check but I wanna go back to something you said earlier Eric and that is really that we create a brand but we don't really set it and forget it. It's something that we really need to nurture. You mentioned the garden we need to go back and work with it. How often should we perhaps be assessing our brand? And when I think of an assessment I'm also thinking we see our brand internally one way but then there's so many different communities that might see it differently. So we have our clients, we have our partners, we have our donors. How do we assess our brand? And when do we like, what if it's time to say uh-oh I really think our brand needs a lot more attention? Yeah I mean as with many things it depends is the short answer but I can try and be a little bit more specific than that. So I would recommend that all organizations do like an annual brand audit and what I mean by brand audit is like looking at material that you've put out as an organization content that you've published whether that's internal or external and just kind of looking at like does this reflect who we are today and who we want to be tomorrow? And that can be a good way to kind of think about are there potentially some changes that need to be made here? We wouldn't recommend a rebrand like a full on like starting you know not necessarily even starting from scratch but like rethinking the whole machine. That's not something you need to do all the time and hopefully you shouldn't do it all the time because one really important thing about brand building is that you're building this entity, this container and every time you rebuild it you do kind of have to not start from scratch but you're taking a couple steps back to ultimately take many more steps forward. So it's a lot of work. And so you don't want to do that any more than you have to really. And I think that's why it's so important if you are doing a rebrand to do it thoughtfully to do it intentionally to do it right even if it's more expensive that way to make sure that you're going to get more of an ROI out of it in the longterm. However, there are elements of a brand especially if we're using kind of brand with a capital B that should be rethought more consistently. I would say the most consistent change in a brand would be the messaging specifically kind of like the message, the key messaging points. And that's going to change with culture and with real world change that's happening. When we talk more about like the website like yes, the website and social channels and your content should be changing and iterative to what's happening all the time but kind of like the core entity of the website like you should not have to redo a website every two to three years. Usually when we see that happen it's because there hasn't been a good maintenance plan and when I say maintenance I don't mean just like tactical maintenance but just like iterative maintenance of the website building out new features, sections, things like that. The logo, the colors, the name those things should change almost never maybe once a decade and only because of a really good reason because you're putting so much time and effort and energy into training people what this name what this logo stands for and every time you change that you have to redo all that work. Yeah, it's a lot of work as you said that goes into that. Well, Eric, this has been very insightful. I appreciate it a lot. You know, one of the things we kind of joke about here Julia and I on the nonprofit show is no one really starts a nonprofit because they say, I love asking for money or I really want to build a solid brand, right? Like we get into this work because it's part of the holistic approach of who we are and what we're doing. So to have an expert like yourself, Eric Restler to join us and to share about, you know the ROI of brand building why that's critically important. We are so grateful to you, your time, your talent. So again, I just want to reiterate for those of you watching and listening around the globe and Eric has clients around the globe so excited for you. Founder, creative director, Eric Restler has joined us today from Design by Cosmic and you can check out him, his team at designbycosmic.com you're doing some really good work Eric and so grateful again to have your time and your talent for this conversation. So thank you. Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, it goes by fast but Julia, when she created this, yeah this opportunity almost four years ago now so grateful that she did because we're able to bring in thought leaders like yourself, but thank you to Julia Patrick and I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd. Again, shout out of gratitude to our amazing presenting sponsors that allow us these opportunities to have some really thought provoking conversations like you just heard here with Eric. So thank you to Bloomerang, American nonprofit academy fundraising academy at National University. Also thank you to nonprofit thought leader your part-time controller staffing boutique nonprofit nerd as well as nonprofit tech talks. These are the companies that help us build our brand here at the nonprofit show really grateful to have their support. Eric, again, grateful to have you joining us today. Thanks to all of you that joined us. If you are watching this on the recording we're glad that you found our way or your way to us. And as we end every episode we want to remind all of you including our guests to please stay well so you can continue to do well. Thank you so much Eric.