No One Knows You’re A Non-Profit (Sometimes Even After You Tell Them)

While it has sort of been generally known that visitors to arts and cultural organizations aren’t fully aware of whether the organization is a non-profit or not, Colleen Dilenschneider recently posted research that qualifies just how few visitors are able to make that distinction, (subscription required) what the implication of that lack of knowledge is, and how to reverse that perception. Basically, even the disciplines with the best levels of awareness of non-profit status don’t ...

You Probably Need To Be Spending More On Overhead

For decades now there has been a belief that the lower the ratio of non-profit’s overhead expenses to program expense, the better run the non-profit is.  As a result, a low overhead ratio has been viewed as something of a virtue and non-profit organizations have used all sorts of accounting tricks and parsed terminology in an effort to  redefine what constitutes an overhead expense. Likewise, funders have rewarded non-profits who can exhibit low overhead expense ...

Maintaining A Consistent Brand Requires Change

When things have been going poorly for an organization and they seek a fresh start, (perhaps upon emerging from a national epidemic), the impulse is often to rebrand. However, in a Marketing Week piece, Mark Ritson, argues for a revitalization rather than rebranding.  Ritson argues that even if you feel public perception is so bad there is a need to start over from square one, there is actually quite a bit of solid foundation you ...

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