In London earlier this week Adrian Sargeant and Alan Clayton publicly presented the findings of their report Brand and Great Fundraising: Help or Hindrance?

Here’s a summary of the Report’s findings that The Agitator shared with its readers:

• Spending on a charity’s brand is most effective when it is used to support fundraising.
• Fundraising expenditure alone could account for 87% of a change in income, whereas spending on brand only accounted for an additional 1%. The report notes, “we found that increasing brand expenditure has only a modest impact on fundraising success while increasing expenditure on fundraising is massively impactful.”
• Successful organizations found brand positioned as the servant of fundraising: “Great fundraising brands were there to drive great fundraising growth.”

Given the time and energy that often accompanies brand discussions, it’s refreshing to know much they matter:  not much.

Note that researchers Sargeant and Day do not say brand has no value; just that effective organizations, like effective dancers, know who or what should be leading.  This means none of this “it may be effective fundraising, but it doesn’t fit our brand” stuff we’ve been railing against.

As you might guess, this riled up some in the branding community, which led to this LinkedIn post by Max du Bois of the UK branding firm Spencer du Bois Ltd.

In case Max’s arguments are similar to those you hear from other brand-inclined evangelists, here are some points/counterpoints worth considering:

MAX’S POINT:  But big fundraising organizations focus on brand: “organisations with the strongest fundraising and most impactful fundraising propositions do place brand at their heart.”

COUNTERPOINT:  Yes, they do. They also spend more on fundraising. That’s why the Sargeant and Day study is so important.  Their research controls for that, separating the impact of fundraising spend and brand spend.  Fundraising spend = almost all the impact; brand spend = almost no impact.

Saying large organizations spend more on brand and on fundraising and therefore both are responsible is like saying the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and I combined to win the World Cup.  It’s true, but one had more to do with it than the other.

POINT:  But this organization did well after rebranding: “Recent examples of this include Samaritans rebranding to reassert their role and relevance…. Similarly, Kidney Care UK have seen a 77% spike in fundraising income, after renaming and rebranding to make sure no one suffers with kidney disease alone.”

COUNTERPOINT:  First, it’s sample size of two at a point in time versus Sargeant/Day’s 30 UK charities over 10 years.  Second, it’s survivor bias.  Like doctors, I’ve seen branding consultants who bury their mistakes.  (In fairness, I’ve also seen fundraising consultants do the same thing.)  Third, critically, there’s no report on whether Max’s organizations also increased fundraising income.  That’s why the Sargeant and Day study controlled for this.

POINT:  But boards don’t really pay too much attention to brand:“The report also suggests image and personality (brand) is given strategic preference over fundraising, which is deemed to be more tactical, and thus receives less attention from the board. Evidence from our soon to be published Brand benchmarking report, which has been contributed to by over 350 charity communications professionals, would refute this. When asked to identify the major challenges their charities faced, income generation came out top, with as many as 63% citing it as their major challenge.”

COUNTERPOINT:  So, to be clear, Max is trying to refute the fact that boards pay too much attention to brand by saying communications professionals think income is the central challenge?  Thank you for illustrating this central point in the Sargeant/Day Report – that there is a disconnect between nonprofit professionals – who know that raising funds is an existential challenge right now – and boards – who sometimes are attracted by shiny objects.

POINT:  But fundraising isn’t actually important:“Fundraising doesn’t challenge attitudes, doesn’t change minds, it doesn’t change legislation. Importantly, fundraising doesn’t commission services.”

(Yes, seriously, this point that fundraising isn’t actually important did come right after the part of the piece where Max said that fundraising is a major challenge for all nonprofits.)

COUNTERPOINT:  Fundraising can change attitudes and minds.  Look at door-to-door canvassing reducing transphobia.  Or the fact that with any acquisition gift, someone who wasn’t going to give gave.

Fundraising cured polio. Yes, medical professionals had to do the work.  But it was March of Dimes that raised the money and the consciousness through their fundraising.  Yes, they had a brand, but as Sergeant and Day advocate, it was a brand in service of fundraising – in the case of March of Dimes money itself is even included in the name of the organization.

The institutions that shape our discourse today from the ACLU to the NRA would not be here without fundraising.

If you had to choose between fundraising without a brand, and branding without fundraising, you would absolutely choose the former.  There are scam organizations shut down every year who manage to raise money who no one has heard of before.  Conversely, the “brand-it-and-they-will-come approach” leads to Waiting for Godot.

POINT:  But they are just talking about bad branding. “As we’ve mentioned, brand isn’t a magic wand. However, when the right brand, and a compelling fundraising proposition come together, the results can be spectacular.”

COUNTERPOINT: Yes.  There is good branding and bad branding.  Good branding, as Sargeant and Day indicate, is in service of fundraising.  Saying that good branding works and bad branding doesn’t, and the net effect of branding overall is neutral means that your branding spend is equivalent to putting your money on red at the roulette table.  Whereas your fundraising investment will be returned with interest.

Roger