Building Brands for Maximum Impact

In 2023, Mighty Ally joined Cartier Philanthropy’s pool of organisations dedicated to strengthening the capacity of our grantees, bringing its invaluable brand expertise to the table.

We sat down with Founding Partners Kathleen Souder and Kevin L. Brown to find out how Mighty Ally is supporting our grantees’ work and helping the wider social sector understand the importance of investing in brand.

The development landscape is crowded and competition is fierce. Just one in every 1,000 non-profit organisations grows beyond a small business. This reality is the reason Mighty Ally exists.

A non-profit B Corp organisation, Mighty Ally helps both non-profits and foundations build their brand to maximise funding and advance social justice. Founded in 2017 by Kathleen Souder, Sarah Callaway Brown, Eve Wanjiru, and Kevin L. Brown, Mighty Ally specifically focuses on growth- and early-stage organisations and has worked with nearly 230 clients in 50 countries.

“Our founding spark was: there’s so much investment in brand and organisational strategy in the private sector, why can’t we bring that into the social sector too?” explains Kathleen. “We wanted to introduce that same quality, that same level of thinking to those who are trying to solve much more complex and difficult issues than getting a product to market, or managing a PR campaign.”

“There are so many incredible organisations around that are making incredible impact, but they just can’t raise enough revenue to grow as they deserve,” says Kevin. “Most of them don’t understand what a strong, compelling brand can achieve. This is why we built our Four A’s framework, because a brand is made up of four things: Ambition, your theory of change; Approach, which is positioning strategy; Amplify, marketing communications; and Align, strategic planning.”

By breaking down the concept into these four areas, Mighty Ally hopes to better illustrate the impact of a strong brand. Ultimately, a strong brand helps reach more people and raise more funds. “We use the term ‘maximise funding’ because it can apply to both doers and donors,” states Kevin. “Most of our clients are non-profits, the doers, but we do work with donors as well. We love the idea of brand allowing organisations to make the best use of their resources.”

Within the next 10 years, Mighty Ally’s goal is to catalyse 5,000 brands, with 50 of those reaching $50M or more in size. This would mean 10x more organisations than the current sector rate.

UNSEEN, UNHEARD, UNDERFUNDED

One of the first things Mighty Ally helps non-profits to do is reframe their thinking around brand. The intense focus on fundraising in the social sector can sometimes lead organisations to neglect other areas which can, in fact, have a big effect on their capacity to raise money.

“Most of the organisations we work with would say that they’re unseen, unheard, and underfunded,” says Kevin. “We show them that to get funding, they first have to be fundable, then findable.

“If you nail the fundable work – your theory of change and your strategic plan – then the findable work like positioning strategy, marketing communications, messaging, and storytelling, is the cherry on top.”

MIGHTY ALLY AND CHIC

A good example of the impact Mighty Ally can create is its recent collaboration with the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC). A collective movement of dozens of best in class global health organisations, CHIC aims to make professional community health workers the norm worldwide by changing guidelines, funding, and policy.

“Like many organisations, CHIC came to us thinking that they needed a new website and updated messaging, which they did,” explains Kathleen. “But, as we got into the work, we realised that there were a lot of other opportunities to hone the clarity and confidence of their brand if they wanted to really advance their advocacy agenda.

“As well as fully reimagining their visual identity, we created a new positioning strategy that revolves around CHIC being both technically right and morally sound. Communicating in ways that are evidence-based, backed by research, but also with a moral strength of character. That’s the concept we based their brand voice around.”

“One criticism that funders had of CHIC was that they couldn’t precisely understand the work they were doing,” says Kevin. “So, we really centred on two major elements: work and wins. What does CHIC do and what do they accomplish? And that’s now embedded in the new language and website.”

MIGHTY ALLY AND MUSO

Mighty Ally is currently undertaking a similar collaboration with Muso, a non-profit that champions equitable health access by delivering timely, quality care, supporting national governments to design such healthcare systems, and by influencing policy and practice.

Muso’s rapid care model, implemented in Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, aims to address the issue of healthcare delay by proactively seeking out sick people, treating them at home or rapidly connecting them with health centres if they require advanced care. All services are free at the point of care for all its patients.

“Muso is at a really big inflection point. They’ve just locked in their five-year strategy and have three big challenges to address,” explains Kathleen. “First, they’re thinking deeply about amplifying their voice and their influence on much larger global conversations.

“They’ve also just published the results of a key study which demonstrates dramatically reduced childhood deaths in an active conflict zone in Mali. This is a big opportunity to build a stronger brand and they don’t want to miss it.

“The third challenge is internal communications. The first step to clarifying your external voice and brand is unifying as a team. As an organisation, Muso is growing fast to support its ambitions and deliver on its mission. Building internal clarity and finding a unified voice is critical.”

The year-long collaboration, that comes as part of the suite of services offered by Cartier Philanthropy to its grantees, is still ongoing, but a brand audit, several theory of change workshops, and a field study have already been completed, with brand positioning strategy work currently underway.

“During the positioning and strategy work we assess together the brand’s strengths and weaknesses,” explains Kathleen. “We also do landscape analysis, looking at who else might be operating in a similar space and thinking about the ways Muso can break through the noise and, conversely, about opportunities for collaboration.

“We then address the value propositions. What are Muso’s core brand uniques? Who is their target audience? And then we start to establish their brand’s personality. What is the character that we want the brand to embody? How will their voice and tone be crafted?

“Once this phase completed, we move into more traditional marketing communication aspects like visual identity, messaging, storytelling, and website strategy.”

Even with a lot of work to come, Muso is already seeing the benefits of Mighty Ally’s support.

“The partnership with Mighty Ally comes at an important juncture for Muso,” says Nazanine Scheuer, Chief Partnerships & Communications Officer. “The discussions stemming from this collaboration have proven to be insightful and thought-provoking as we progress on our mission towards universal access to rapid, quality care and the transformation of health systems. Delving into core elements of our branding, including our theory of change, positioning, and visual identity, has been both enlightening and essential. Our team looks forward to continuing this process with the Mighty Ally team, who have been exceptional collaborators, consistently challenging us in constructive ways.”

BRINGING BRANDS INTO FOCUS

While Mighty Ally has already made a significant impact for hundreds of non-profits and foundations, there is a long way to go in making brand a priority in the social sector.

“The social sector needs a little bit of that private sector perspective, where investment in brand isn’t lost overhead but it’s an integral part of the expected ‘return on impact’” says Kathleen.

“We want to help the sector understand that in order to really spread big concepts and bold ideas, you absolutely have to invest in brand. There's no way around it.”