 Welcome to another episode of the nonprofit show. Now that I say this Karen, you know, we have a lot of guests that are coming to us from around the world. So for some of our viewers, it might be good afternoon or good evening. Yesterday we had a guest from Jerusalem and it was past dinner time. So I have to like change my mindset here. But today we have somebody that's joining us, I think here more from our region. So I get to say good morning to Karen Loomis, NoMoss Brands. We're really excited because we're gonna talk about something that's pretty ding dang serious today. And that's the discussion of whether or not it might be time to rebrand. So we have a lot of questions for our guests today. If you don't know me, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. My trusty sidekick and co-host, Jared Ransom is off today. She'll be back with us tomorrow. Again, we wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors without them. We would not be here having this amazing discussion, which was great in the green room chatter. If you missed it, I'm sorry because we were talking about some fun things. But we wanna thank Blumerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit nerd, fundraising academy, staffing boutique, and the non-profit thought leader. And again, we are marching towards our 600 episode. You can find us on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, Vimeo. And now our episodes are also being put into podcast format so you can queue us up wherever you like to get your podcast content. We wanna give a special shout out to our executive producer, Kevin Pace, who's gotten us on that path, which has been really exciting. So, okay, Karen, this is a really cool time to have you with us. As we were talking about in the green room chatter, so many of us in the non-profit sector, we wrestle with rebranding. And it's really one of those things that we're good at so many things. Solving issues of, you know, food and shelter and hunger and education, but branding not so much. So thank you for joining us today. Of course. So give me a really quick look at your life as a branding expert and what drew you to this, I would say, thought process because somebody that can think about rebranding I think has a special brain. Yeah, I do, would agree with you that the special brain that I have and the special way that I relate to the world is in the form of storytelling. And, you know, storytelling has been around forever, but it's become one of those things that we're using in marketing and talking about in marketing so much more. And it's really critical to the personality of the organization. And with that being said, what happens with the organization is the personality may change or the products or services offered may change. And so I've had this experience of starting off as a storyteller in the world of the corporate world and spent many, many years in the corporate world doing that type of thing. And ultimately when I left the corporate world I started to recognize that maybe I could use my marketing skills in a much more helpful kind of progressive way and started to really look more into the social change, social justice, nonprofit kind of work. Of course there's a balancing act, you know, for myself between the nonprofit and the profit. So, you know, but truthfully, I started off in the world of car sales as a marketer for car sales. And so there's not a more predatory group of marketers in the world than those that are in the automotive industry. And so that's kind of where, you know, the shift kind of started for me when I started to say, you know, how can I use my powers of my special powers in a good positive way? And that's how I landed into kind of pursuing more of the nonprofit space. You know, I love that because I think when you have been on the other side of the table, you can really understand a lot more about the ecosystem of making a change and understanding how to reevaluate change. And it seems to me that this time, in culture has been fraught with so much change, right? So many things upside down, how we live, how we work, how we love, how we make money, all of these things. That has to factor in to our nonprofit branding. And so can you help us understand some aspects of where we even get to that point where we say it's time for rebranding? So because this is such a huge topic. And I think the first thing I wanna ask you about with so many nonprofits, 1.8 million in our country, there's gotta be some like confusion, right? Yeah. And I think the confusion, I'm gonna kind of go into this idea that the confusion is equal in the profit for profit space and the nonprofit space. So this isn't something that is just specific to nonprofits. And what typically happens is when you start your business, you can't afford to bring in the specialist to help guide you with those important decisions on what should your name be and how does your name that you are really falling in love with relate in the marketplace. And when people start to make decisions about their marketing and branding without considering the marketplace, that's how we easily end up where we're at, whether you're a profit or not for a profit or for a nonprofit, is you end up with some of these market problems that occur like a group that I'm working with out of the Sedona area, what they discovered, and this happens a lot, is their name is so close to another organization's name in the same community that the other organization had been around for a lot longer. So they had much more brand awareness. And so the frustration of constantly being going, oh, well, so at the time had they had an expert at the time I would have said, oh, no, you don't because there is another organization with the exact same first two parts of your name. You cannot fight that because we are an alphabetized world. We even with the internet, we are Google searching. All of that stuff is coming up based on what everybody else is searching for. So you are gonna lose that battle every single fricking time. And so this is why I always say to organizations, the earlier you can bring on a specialist or somebody who is in the marketing, especially the branding space, the better equipped your organization is going to be in those early years to overcome a lot of those things that are tough in the first five years. And in this particular organization that I'm talking about, we kind of came to a real hard stop 18 months in. So 18 months in, they had brought me on at some point and I'm like, this is a problem you guys. And this is a problem we need to solve. And we had some other like typical organization, right? We had other things that came up, that problems came up at the same time. And we ultimately came up with the decision that we've got to change this name. And so the naming process is very complex. And we don't as business owners give it that thought process that it really needs and deserves, especially in the world of the internet. The internet has changed the game massively. And I just had this conversation with another nonprofit about their URL. I'm like, I will hard stop you, know all the way back and forth inside and out if you insist on going down this path because you're just creating bigger problems. And so I have to be kind of the bad guy at times which I don't want to be the bad guy. Branding is a really fun part. It's the storytelling, it's creating this image of what you are trying to accomplish with your organization. And so if you minimize the importance of that then you're gonna get to the point where your nonprofit may be off base a little bit. You know, I think it's such an interesting thing that you bring this up because one of the outcomes of the pandemic has been this push to digital donor relations. And so the number of donors that would have never gone through the web to make a donation, it has just skyrocketed. And so I've gotta believe it's even more important to make sure these branding protocols are really well thought of because at the end of the day somebody else could be getting your money. And then that donor could be like, well, wait a minute. I thought I donated to you, I went online. And you know, all of those things. So that confusion I think is real and it's going to become more prevalent as we have fewer, not I'm gonna say fewer, but we have less of that personal one-on-one engagement than it is digital, right? You know, it's so interesting that you would be in this space at this time. Now my next question I wanna ask you, it's kind of an interesting thing because I don't know if you've been seeing this, but we've been seeing this because of the pandemic. We've seen a lot of mission service change, meaning that what somebody started out to serve their community is all of a sudden navigating in sometimes a totally different area or just, you know, taking on more work. I'm wondering if you're seeing that and how that would impact, you know, a rebranding decision. I think the concept of what you're talking about is called pivoting, right? And so every business has to pivot. If you look at any business on what they originally started off at and what they are today as most successful businesses, who they are today is not who they started off with. It is the natural progression of a business foundation, a business model, a business maturity that change occurs. Pivot is a necessary thing to keep your business strong and to allow you to ebb and flow with what's going on in the market conditions. Yeah, sure. You can go ahead and pretend that the pandemic didn't occur, but it's gonna hit you somewhere along the line because when you don't do those in person, if you were an organization that depended on as you were talking about in-person activities, events, donations to come in, all as a result of one or two major, you know, breakfasts or whatever, you know, the event is, the pandemic hit hard. And I find that the bigger the organization, the harder the time they have with this. And I don't know if maybe it's just my, the numbers that I'm looking at, but I find that, and this just turned the profit, the for-profit space as well. And we used to always say in the corporate world, it's hard to turn and re-steer the Queen Mary. That's right. She's not turning easy, right? And it's the same thing in the harder space, but I think that we as humans need to be more aware of the fact that business maturity does pivot and change. I mean, you can look at LinkedIn, which is a big part of our business platform. LinkedIn is totally different than what it started off. I mean, we could go on and on and on with all these businesses. And truthfully, the reason it's occurring is because our needs as humans are changing. And we humans are constantly changing. And so if you think that you, and this is a perfect example, I do websites all the time, right? And so people are like, okay, the website's done. I'm looking at them like the website is never done, never. Because you're constantly evaluating, analyzing, adjusting, you've got maintenance, you've got all these things. And so if you as a client have that mentality, at same with your branding or your naming or whatever, that, oh, we're done, we're done. And no more, you're gonna stunt your growth. And that's a hard, hard lesson to learn. And it's especially hard in the nonprofit space because you just don't have the money to play with. You know, it's, it kind of, you said so many things that have really made me think about this in a different way. And my first reaction to what you said is that, you know, in a time of crisis, and I would say we've had a lot of crisis. We haven't just had the pandemic of COVID. We've had, you know, civil unrest, social injustice. We have economic change. We have the great resignation. I mean, there are a lot of things that are happening. And what I'm seeing is that that's driving even more, if you will, business to our nonprofits. Our nonprofits are having to serve more people and do more things. It's not like, oh, it's quiet. I mean, so it speaks to what you're saying about how we change and how we morph and societal problems emerge and then we want to tackle them. And it's kind of one of those things we don't talk about. We don't talk about it, but we do talk about it. But we as humans are really good about if it's not impacting me, I just don't worry about it. Right? If it's not until it impacts me, does it all of a sudden become this big problem? Oh my God, when did this happen? This is a big problem. Yeah, this has been a big problem for decades. You're just now starting to notice because it impacted you. So we as humans, I'm not saying it's good and bad. We're self-centered. I'm just saying we protect ourselves. We're self-centered. We think about things in the layers as they kind of go out. And until we ourselves are in need, we don't often think about some of these social organizations. I do a lot of work with performing art organizations. And so what they're trying to do in that light is change your viewpoint about some of these big societal things that nonprofits have been really great about working for and towards. And that is ultimately one of the reasons why I like working with nonprofits is because they are trying to address some of these bigger societal issues that are not gonna be changed overnight. They're not gonna be changed by one organization. But darn it, we're gonna try anyways because that's what humans do. Right, it's so interesting. And it's a fascinating thing. It kind of links back to how we started this conversation and how your brand tells that story. Can your brand really communicate all of this and within the organization? I mean, that's such a heavy lift to be telling that story. I mean, how does that factor in to this evolving, changing ecosystem that we're in? Well, and I think one of the things when we talk about brand, we often lump it all into one kind of big pot, right? But the fact of the matter is external branding is the branding that we're often talking about. It's the logo, it's the colors, it's the tone, the message, all of that kind of stuff. But what we forget is the most important part. The most important part of our brand is our internal brand. It's our employees, it's the vendors we work for. It's our board members, it's all of those people. That word of mouth is what grows your nonprofit. Because nonprofits aren't the corporate world where we have money and we're gonna spend $15 million just to shout out our message. Listen to me, right? Nonprofits can't do that. So nonprofits have to really look at their internal brand and how they're connecting with their internal organizational connections, whomever it might be, because and how do we, what's the experience that they have when they interact, when they go to one event, maybe it's not even there, when they stop and all of those interactions are really the brand. All the pretty stuff I do, that's lipstick. I love that you said that because I think that we can easily become fatigued with what we think is our branding and we forget really what it's doing and how it's impacting everyone around us. And I think, Karen and I, I can't wait to get your opinion about this, but I think a lot of times we look at our branding as a message to our donors and our stakeholders and not our clients, right? You know, like, who are we trying to serve and who are we trying to get money from? And I know that's a little bit of a curveball, but I'm wondering if you ever see that. You know, it is a curveball, but let's, I am as much a true speaker as anybody on this page of the earth, the fact of the matter is this country is built on capital greed. Yeah, yeah. And so capitalism has changed how we interact with every aspect of our lives and it has changed how people relate to each other for fear that that capital, what gain is not gonna be available to them if somebody else gets it. So it's a very complex question, but yes, what you're saying has some truth to it. But what we as organizations have to understand is people aren't giving us money for any reason other than they want us to do the change that we've promised them we're gonna do, which kind of circles us back to our brand. What are we promising? Nobody cares about your missionary value statement. They wanna know that you're actually accomplishing and using their money the way you said you're going to and it's having an impact. If you could sum it up in any other way, simple or great, but that's the best way I know how to sum it up. It's all about is your money working for them? Right, right. Yeah, I think it's a really important word to start using the word investment, like donor investment to your point. I think people are saying, yeah, I mean, I worked hard for this money and handing it over to you is not just an act of benevolence. It's an act of faith that you are going to navigate this problem or change or whatever. And so yeah, I like that you said that. I think that's a really important message. I'm gonna talk to you and shift gears. This is maybe a little bit more of the technical side, but for those of our nonprofits that have maybe outgrown their current branding, and this could be everything from the visual to the way, I mean, their cousin's nephew designed something in the 70s and it was a bubble font with like- It happens. Avocado, gold and burnt orange. I mean, how do we look at that? Do we just say, oh, that's our brand. Those are our colors and we gotta stick with it? Or what are your thoughts on this? Sometimes when we hear the word rebrand, we don't realize that there's a variety of executions of that. Is it a total rebrand where we're changing your name or changing everything? That's a total rebrand in my opinion. Is it not changing the name but just changing the tone and reputation around it? Suddler, much more overwhelmingly difficult because it's not something that people see immediately when you start to change like I was talking about, getting people to change the thought process on the internal branding side of it. So there's a number of different facets of your brand that may need to be adjusted. And so often I say to prospects who are looking for, somebody to come in every brand is, I say, I wanna be in on the front end when you're still talking about what it is you wanna achieve. Yeah. Because one of the beauties of being a marketer and a brander and have done this for so many years is I've been on the back end of many business conversations. So it's different than your basic graphic designer who's just turning something in pretty. I spend more time on the consulting side trying to talk them through all the pros and cons of everything that they're throwing at the board like let's try this, let's pros and cons all of it. Let's measure it to what our objectives are short and long term. I mean, this is the part where I'm not only a creative but in this role I play the analytical side, the much more marketing, let's look at the data. What is the data showing? Let's look at the broader data. So it becomes much more analytical than it is, I like that color. Yeah. That has nothing to do with the price of tea in China. If I, you know, like when I create logos I'm one of the reasons why I do a little bit more nonprofit than I do for profit today is one of the logos I created one time and I had presented some options to the client. Her response was, oh, well I thought it was gonna have the same reaction I did when I saw my wedding dress. Oh no. No, you're missing what we're trying to achieve from a business perspective. And so everything we do creatively is all strategically aligned with what you're trying to do business-wise. And if somebody doesn't allow those conversations to occur then they're probably not the right prospect or client for me because I really want to help them from a business perspective, not just from a lipstick perspective. Right. That's so interesting because what I hear you saying is that there's this intellectual emotional side and then there's like the physiological response to color, shape, design, pattern, whatever. But correct me if I'm wrong. I think what I'm hearing you say is we need to like kind of put those visual elements on the back burner and reach out and decide what the branding promise or that story first. Absolutely. I can't write a story until I know what it is that we want the story to be about. Right. Right. And if you don't know, and so this is why I like to go all the way back to that stage because if you as directors, board of directors or whoever is part of that conversation have not arrived to that aligned point where everybody in the organization is saying the same thing, you know how ugly it's gonna be when I present materials to that board? Nobody's gonna approve anything. And then I'm gonna look like crap because they weren't able to decide. Well, they couldn't decide long before I came on board. And that's the challenge is to get everybody on the same page about what it is and that starts early. That doesn't start when we're still going, you know, I really like green. I'm wondering if green would be the right color. You know what green might be the right color but let's back my hell up first and let's go see what we got under the hood, right? It's kind of the same thing as, you know women who watch sports who watch sports because they like the color of some uniform. But that's not how we play the game here people. We're businesses, we're maybe nonprofits, we may be small. And I wanted to back up a minute because you had said something earlier that made me think about the difference in sizes between nonprofits and how I feel like nonprofits that are smaller are much more able to navigate a lot of this change. And I also think that people are getting to the point where they're more likely to support a smaller nonprofit that's local because they know that these smaller organizations are actually doing the physical work. They're not out there with a big brand like I don't mean anything bad by this. They're not a red cross, right? Oh yeah, no, I agree. I agree because I think when you are small it's frustrating in so many ways but you're nimble and you can gather all of the decision makers around the coffee table and bang it out pretty quickly for the most part. Think about the pandemic about how many businesses temporarily shifted what they were doing to help build supplies or whatever. Nonprofits were doing the same thing. All behind the scenes trying to figure out, oh my God, how are we gonna survive? How are we gonna do this? We can't do in person. Can't do in person. How are we gonna, you know all of those kinds of conversations? You know, it's really interesting because one of the things that it's really been amplified during our time today and we don't have much more of it left but I wanna kinda get these final thoughts from you. I think a lot of times we hear the word branding or possibly rebranding and we immediately go to the logo. Yep. It's like a starting point. You know, I hate our logo and it's like, wow, so not what you need to be starting with. That is exactly what, that is exactly my point is I love a good conversation about a logo. Don't get me wrong. I will talk about logos, colors, all that stuff all day long after we've done the dirty work, right? Because otherwise we're just talking about what colors am I gonna choose out of my 64 Crayola box? I mean, you know, what is your strategy? I'm all about strategy. What is the reason we're doing anything? If there's no reason, then we shouldn't be wasting money. Right, right, and it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. I mean, man, the impacts of these changes. It's just so dramatic. Well, you have been a delight to chat with today. I have so enjoyed your energy. I really, really love your mindset and your approach to this and backing up and asking tough questions. I love what you said. It's not just the pretty, it's not just the lipstick. We need to understand more fully what our brand promise is and then we can go from there. So here's Karen Lewis's information, nomossbrandsnomossbrands.com. Check out her website. She's got a lot of really interesting information, a fabulous backstory, including her five board members as I was teasing her this morning that I've been milling about in her office, which has been a lot of fun to have. You've really given us some great thoughts on how we need to look at this and this conversation moves forward. We're a changing society. We're changing needs and we are changing our communication methods. And so this branding issue becomes really important. So I appreciate you sharing your time and your talent with us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here. It's just been lovely. Hey, we get, again, I wanna make sure that you know who we are. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, Jared Ransom, my co-host, the nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. We'll be back with us tomorrow. Again, we wanna thank all of our presenting sponsors who are with us day in and day out. Many of these sponsors actually came on board with us at the very beginning, more than two years ago when we started the nonprofit show. So we wanna give our gratitude to Blue Morang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit nerd, fundraising academy, staffing boutique, and nonprofit thought leader. And as we end this day in this fabulous conversation with Karen Loomis, so I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to chat with you. I wanna remind everyone, as we end every episode, to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.