Is your nonprofit brand real or ideal?

According to Plato, the world as we perceive it is only a shadow of a higher ideal reality. Our world is just “shadows on the wall” — vague, inferior echoes of the Real Thing.

It seems some fundraisers agree. Tell me if you’ve heard this statement: Effective fundraising might raise us a lot of revenue, but it damages our brand.

Apparently, it means something like this: Some of the things we do to motivate people to give (direct asking, strong calls to action, urgency, old-fashioned design) seem to be less than the platonic ideal of who we really are. Or, even more bluntly: Our brand standards are so cool — why can’t our fundraising be like that?

You can agree or disagree with Plato’s belief about the nature of reality, but if you have a platonic view of your nonprofit brand, you’re choosing image over mission, or abstraction over reality. Here’s why:

• Effective fundraising tends to be simple, urgent, emotional, often old-fashioned. It’s seldom pretty (sometimes it’s flat-out ugly), and it’s almost never cool.
• Brand standards tend to be smart, stylish, happy — things of beauty and purity.
• The more you do of one, the less you do of the other.

If you’re separating your brand ideal from your ability to raise money, you’re choosing to live in a solipsistic bubble. What you do is what you are. If that includes raising a meaningful amount of funds from the public, that means fundraising.

Fundraising is the way it is for a number of reasons.

• Fundraising targets older (that is, unfashionable) people. That’s who gives, and if you want to reach them, like anyone else, you have to speak their language.
• Fundraising targets the heart more than the mind. The motivation to give is an emotional one.
• Fundraising is (and should be) accountable for measurable, real-world monetary outcomes. That gives it a no-nonsense attitude and a healthy ability to avoid BS.

A strong, well-defined brand is a huge asset. It’s worth putting effort into. But if the brand gets in the way of real-world fundraising — it’s going to hurt you. Define your brand carefully.