Why Social Impact Brands Under Invest in Brand and Marketing

Social impact orgs aren’t known for being great at branding and marketing.

But it's NOT just about limited resources — there's a deeper story here.

There’s some big obstacles in the way, like:

→ The "overhead myth" that just won't die (KILL IT WITH FIRE)

→ A false dichotomy between choosing to invest in fundraising OR marketing (you need both)

→ The "scrappiness fallacy" worn as a badge of honor (you don’t look more “authentic” because your brand sucks, sorry!)

→ Challenges connecting the ROI to the mission (not always easy!)

→ A cultural zeitgeist that views marketing as "dirty" (bad marketing ruining it for all of us)

But the culture around this is changing, and it’s happening fast. More organizations are recognizing the power of strategic brand building and storytelling. And the ones that are investing accordingly are outpacing their peers massively. 

In this week’s episode Jonathan and Eric dive into all of this, and:

• Why marketing should be considered a program cost, not overhead

• How fundraising and marketing can (and should) work synergistically

• The importance of internal champions for brand/marketing efforts

• Why "staying hidden" rarely serves your mission

For leaders in the space: If you're struggling to get buy-in or funding for this work, you might be pitching it wrong. We discuss how to make a bulletproof case that connects to your impact and financial sustainability.

The social impact sector needs to embrace brand and marketing as important tools that help us reach more people, tell better stories, and ultimately, create more impact.

Episode Highlights 

• [02:07] Prioritizing Marketing
• [03:32] The Internal Champion
• [04:33] Breaking the Overhead Myth
• [06:40] Marketing's ROI is Misunderstood
• [07:33] Branding Beyond the Visual Identity
• [09:09] The Synergy of Marketing and Fundraising
• [11:06] Examples of Successful Brand Building
• [13:31] Overcoming Your Resistance to Marketing
• [15:41] The Role of Digital Tools in Brand Building
• [17:11] Final Thoughts

Quotes

• “I've noticed that there's… a wildly stark difference between the kinds of conversations that I see in the social impact space and the kinds of conversations I see outside of it.” - Eric Ressler [00:17]
• “Sometimes these organizations are just under-resourced... they want to invest in brand building, but they just don’t have the ability.” - Eric Ressler [01:40]
• “Sometimes we will say we're under-resourced and so we can't invest in marketing as opposed to I've decided not to invest in marketing.” - Jonathan Hicken [02:08]
• “There is nothing morally wrong about sharing your story and your impact loudly and proudly.” - Jonathan Hicken [05:22]
• “The overhead myth that is apparently never going to fully die in the space [and it] is partially responsible for this.” - Eric Ressler [05:37]
• “You don't need to choose between investing in fundraising and marketing. Ideally, you're investing in both, and they work together.” - Eric Ressler [09:43]
• “If you're fundraising and your marketing teams are not playing well together, you as executive director are failing.” - Jonathan Hicken [10:29]
• “The minute we sit down [with a donor], we’re having a different kind of conversation... How can we accelerate this?” - Jonathan Hicken [12:31]

Resources

• Dan Pallotta’s website
• Beyond Aesthetics: The ROI of Brand Building
• Rethinking Your Unhealthy Relationship with Social Impact Marketing
• Is Your Social Impact Marketing Strategy Built on a Strong Foundation or a House of Cards?

Transcript

Eric Ressler [00:00]:

Jonathan, I follow a lot of social impact branding people and social impact marketing people. I still follow a lot of B2B and B2C marketers and branding people, and I've noticed that there's kind of like a wildly stark difference between the kinds of conversations that I see in the social impact space and the kinds of conversations I see outside of the social impact space. It kind of got me thinking about why is there this stark difference? Why is it that so many social impact brands under invest in brand building and marketing in general. I thought maybe we could do an episode where we kind of explore what's the cause of this issue, although I think there's some positive traction and we're starting to see more adoption of brand building and marketing in the social impact space. In my opinion, we're still wildly behind what other organizations are doing and I hope we can help bridge that gap, but I don't know, are you down to talk about it?

Jonathan Hicken [00:53]:

Yeah, I've seen this myself. So let's get to it.

Eric Ressler [01:00]:

Okay, so we're talking about what are some of the reasons why social impact organizations are kind of falling behind in their branding and their marketing, and I think there's a lot of really kind of structural issues that are the root cause of some of this, but then I think there's also some more specific issues within people in these organizations and organizations themselves. But let's start with one of the more structural issues here, and the first is that sometimes these organizations are just under-resourced. They don't have the capacity, the funding or even the discretionary income. They might have funding, but it's tied up in program work and so they want to invest in marketing, they want to invest in brand building, but they just don't have the money or the ability to spend the money where it needs to be spent. Is that something that you've run into before?

Jonathan Hicken [02:10]:

And I think sometimes that reason can also be a cover for what is really a prioritization decision where the money might exist and the leader or the organization has decided to spend it elsewhere. And sometimes we will say, and so we can't invest in marketing as opposed to I've decided not to invest in marketing.

Eric Ressler [02:32]:

So you're saying sometimes it might even just be like a cover

Jonathan Hicken [02:35]:

And sometimes that might be a conscious cover, sometimes it might be an unconscious one, but at the end of the day, any sort of decision around spend, unless the money is truly restricted, which is real, then it's almost always a prioritization decision.

Eric Ressler [02:50]:

Yeah. Okay. So this is something you've run into. The second thing that I've seen that is definitely not as much of a structural issue in my opinion, is an internal champion for this work when I've seen really effective brand building and marketing outside of the social impact space, but even inside the social impact space, there's usually at least one internal champion that deeply believes in the work either because they've seen it work really well for themselves before or they trust that it's important because they've observed the positive impact looking outside at other organizations. And I think sometimes there's just not an internal champion who understands that value and can champion the idea within the organization. Have you run into that?

Jonathan Hicken [03:32]:

I have, and I would kind of break that into two pieces, which is I would say most organizations out there have at least one person who is passionate about telling stories about the work. The question is, does that person themselves have what it takes to turn that into content that can be distributed or can they be surrounded with what it takes to distribute those stories? But I would say most organizations have that storyteller somewhere and it's just a matter of unlocking their storytelling.

Eric Ressler [04:01]:

So they might be in the organization, they might try to champion it, but maybe they're not in a position of enough influence to do that or they can't secure the budget to do it or leadership doesn't have buy-in on it.

Jonathan Hicken [04:12]:

That's right.

Eric Ressler [04:22]:

The third thing that I've seen block organizations from investing in brand building and marketing is that they don't know how to connect the return on that investment to their mission. It's something maybe they want to do and they start exploring the path, but then they start to get some questions, some valid questions, even from board members or funders around, well, how is this work going to actually move the mission forward? And then they get caught sort of flatfooted. They don't have a solid answer or a convincing, compelling answer, and we can get into maybe why that's the case, but I'm just curious, have you seen that happen?

Jonathan Hicken [04:56]:

I have seen that happen, and oftentimes it comes with this undertone of that it is somehow immoral or UNC to go and celebrate or to shout your story from the rooftop that somehow that solely is your impact or your mission. True social good comes with a quiet tongue and I don't necessarily think that that is the best way to advance impact. Now sure, there could be organizations where that exists, where actually it is best to stay low key, but I would say for the vast majority of organizations, there is nothing morally wrong about sharing your story and your impact loudly and proudly.

Eric Ressler [05:37]:

Yeah, I mean I think that would be a rare exception where there's an argument to make that you should stay hidden behind the scenes in the work that you're doing. So that actually is kind of a nice tie in to my next point, which is I do think that the overhead myth that is apparently never going to fully die in the space is partially responsible for this, right? Because this work, and by this work I mean investing in branding, investing in marketing, even potentially investing in communications can sometimes be lumped into this kind of overhead category of not being true program work or work that is directly related to the impact. Even if that is true, I don't think that's a good reason to not invest in the work, but I also think it's not true. I think especially for a lot of program work, storytelling and communications is integral to the work being effective in the first place. A great example of this would be a public health campaign where you need to create behavior change or spread knowledge about something. How are you going to do that without investing in marketing and communications and branding even to some degree, but I would argue that even for less obvious use cases to compartmentalize this into the overhead category is maybe a little bit of a fallacy. What do you think about that? I

Jonathan Hicken [06:53]:

Could not agree more, and there are a lot of brilliant people who have spoken about the overhead myth, Dan Palata being one of them, and I fully agree with one of his thesis, which is that at the end of the day, all that matters is impact and why our for-profit, maybe non-social impact oriented organizations are being held to a set of standards around delivering a great product or a great service and showing returns in that way and how they're not scrutinized for their spend in marketing and sales. The same standards should be applied to the social impact space. And I'm a full-on believer, and I actually think there's a trick for some of the executives listening that when we're applying for grants or we're putting proposals in front of major donors, we need to stop putting marketing in the overhead bucket. We need to start lumping that in with our program costs or our program delivery costs and just standing behind that and saying, no, this is part of the impact we deliver. This is not an overhead, this is a necessary spend for impact.

Eric Ressler [07:52]:

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, it would be really fun to just spend the rest of the episode talking about how broken the overhead myth is. Maybe we'll save that for another one, but let's keep going. So this next one is kind of interesting. I'm curious to hear if this is something you've come across. I have it written down as the scrappiness fallacy, which I made up when I was doing this outline, and the way I would describe this is social impact organizations who are kind of almost like wearing a badge of honor around, no, we're scrappy. We're doing work behind the scenes. We don't need to talk about our work. It's so important. It doesn't even need to be marketed. I think that's a huge fallacy. Have you seen this happen?

Jonathan Hicken [08:30]:

Yeah, pretty much every organization I've ever worked at. In fact, I probably unintentionally perpetuate some of that as executive director today, so I'm certainly not innocent of this mentality, but it's absolutely true that we sometimes believe that we earn credibility as an organization for just white knuckling it and getting the job done at whatever it takes, and sometimes that means just putting our heads down and grinding it out and not telling the story, and I think that that exists in lots of organizations, frankly, not just social impact ones.

Eric Ressler [09:00]:

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that looking at maybe startup culture, there's a similar hustle culture around not needing to do marketing. However, I think a lot of startups build marketing budgets into even their angel funding round, and I think that that's something that traditionally we've seen come a lot later in the social impact life cycle. Of course, I'm biased here, but I'm a big believer in the best time to start marketing was at the very beginning, but the second best time is as soon as you possibly can. So I think that hopefully that starts to change.

[09:43]:

The next fallacy that I see, or the thing that's stopping organizations from investing is this false dichotomy between fundraising and marketing. Marketing and fundraising are competing for resources or that they aren't supporting one another. I think we've talked about this before, but we really see fundraising and marketing as kind of two sides of a similar coin working together synergistically, and I think that you don't need to choose between investing in fundraising and marketing. Ideally, you're investing in both and they're working together. I know you've sat on the fundraising side, still do, even as executive director, you've sat on the marketing side. Tell me a little bit about how you've seen this work well and have you ever seen this not work well and kind of get in the way of investing in branding and marketing?

Jonathan Hicken [10:29]:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, outright, if you're fundraising and your marketing teams are not playing well together, you as executive director are failing. They can be more than the sum of their parts when they're working together and working together. Well, a couple of examples of this, right? As a fundraiser, what I'm looking for is I'm looking for people to talk to, the right people to talk to, and I want to tell great stories of impact and get this donor to buy in, and I need the marketing team to be doing both of those things to be producing the quantitative result, which is kind of leads right? Warm qualified donor leads, and also crafting these wonderful stories and vice versa. The marketing teams need to hear from me what's working and what's not, right? What stories are landing, which ones aren't, which cases, which scenarios need a story behind them that we don't have yet? Go find it. These teams and these functions, it is an absolute must that they're working side by side, hand in hand. Otherwise, I don't think you're succeeding as a leader if those things aren't happening.

Eric Ressler [11:34]:

Yeah, I would agree, and I think that the reason I kind of frame this as a false dichotomy is because I've seen so many times organizations choosing to either invest in fundraising or in marketing as if you need to make one of those two choices. Maybe sometimes you only have so much you can invest, and so you do need to make one of those two choices, but obviously, ideally, you're able to build both of those teams together so they work together, they support one another, they learn from one another. I've never been a fundraiser. I've worked with a lot of fundraisers, but one of the things I've heard over and over again from fundraisers within organizations that we've helped is just how grateful they are for all of the pre-work that marketing does. When marketing has done well. The thing that I hear is this makes my job so much easier now because I don't have to spend 2, 3, 4 meetings building credibility, building reputation for the organization at the same level. I'm starting three or four steps ahead where I used to start before. Has that happened for you?

Jonathan Hicken [12:31]:

Absolutely. If I'm coming to the table with a donor who has already become familiar with the impact that we deliver from our content and from our storytelling, the minute we sit down, we're having a different kind of conversation. It's less about who are we, what do we do, what are we about, what's our vision? And it's more like, Hey, how can we accelerate this? How can we hit the ground running? Especially for a fundraiser who's on a quota, being able to jump a couple of steps ahead is a massive win.

Eric Ressler [13:07]:

The next barrier to social impact organizations investing in branding and marketing is they can't get organizational. So either leadership wants to do this, but they can't get buy-in from their team or their board or a board member wants to do this, but they can't get buy-in from the team or leadership or someone on the team wants to do this. Maybe a CMO type person wants to do this, but they can't get buy-in from either leadership or the board. So there's just not buy-in organizationally across the board. And if that's not true, then it's going to be really hard to make a case for investing time, energy, money into this. Is this something that you've seen?

Jonathan Hicken [13:45]:

And if you are struggling to get buy-in across the organization, that probably means that you're pitching it incorrectly. So I actually think this is something that you can control and making the right case, which is ultimately going to come back to things like, I need hard evidence that an investment in this place is going to either accelerate or deepen our impact or it's going to bring in more funds. I mean, that's ultimately what it comes down to. Furthering the impact or furthering the financial sustainability of the organization. You need to be making a bulletproof case to your team or your leadership in order to get that buy-in.

Eric Ressler [14:23]:

Right? And I think that can frankly be hard, right? Because it is truthfully not guaranteed to do that, right? It is a bet to some degree that investing in this is likely to create the conditions for that to happen. There are things that you can do strategically to make that more likely, but it is not a guarantee. If it were a guarantee, literally everyone would do this, right? So it kind of points back to our third point, which is that you can't connect the ROI back to the mission in one way or another. So kind of a different way of looking at that. The last point I have on this, and this is kind of a weird thing, I have it written down in the outline as a zeitgeist thing. There's just this overall kind of cultural story about, oh, we don't need to do marketing or Marketing is bad in the social impact space. Marketing is money and time and energy that could better be spent on direct work. Again, kind of back to this overhead or this overhead myth, this overhead framing. Have you run into this kind of what I'm calling a zeitgeist thing?

Jonathan Hicken [15:21]:

Absolutely, and I think in some cases, Eric, it actually makes sense to pump the brakes on investing in marketing. If you've hit the right size, you are solving the problem you set out to solve and you have the right money to do it, and you have the right size team to do it, there is definitely a moment where you can say, Hey, we've done enough. We've invested enough here. For most organizations, that's probably not a satisfactory answer. There's a hunger to do more, to go deeper, to serve more people. I mean, I think this probably goes back decades, this belief that marketing somehow is a moral dark side in social impact work, but it certainly exists. The good news is I think even in my time in social impact, that tone, that tune is changing, and I have more people approaching me, encouraging my organization to undergo, rebrand, or to invest more in marketing, more people approaching me unprompted than ever before in my career in this space. So I do think that there is a growing understanding of the power of this work.

Eric Ressler [16:23]:

Yeah, I mean, I can echo some of that and what I've seen being in the space and being very closely related to marketing and brand building for these organizations and hearing some of the barriers, there's a lot less what I'll call convincing around this is important work to do. I definitely think just the overall culture around this is changing. I hope that that will mean the sector will start to attract more savvy marketers and creatives to the space because I think they are often attracted to organizations that aren't in the social impact space because they have bigger marketing budgets or more marketing positions or more branding positions, whatever it is. But I know that a lot of people, designers, storytellers, strategists, writers, want to be doing this purposeful social impact work and are hungry for these positions. So I hope that we continue to see change in the future and that I believe so strongly that this work can really accelerate the impact for organizations and that creative work can do that. So I'm hoping that these barriers start to shrink a little bit, and there are more and more best in class examples of branding and marketing happening in the social impact space. I'm curious, do you have any other takeaways from this conversation or from your experience that you think would be relevant for this conversation?

Jonathan Hicken [17:39]:

The takeaway that I think is most important and something that I'm actually bouncing around in my head right now, which is the connection between an investment in marketing and being able to tie that really clearly to mission-based outcomes. That's probably the single biggest hurdle of any of the hurdles you've brought up today that would get an organization over the hump and to really starting to invest there. And that is a really, really challenging argument to make for most organizations in our space. But what it comes back to ultimately is coming back to the simplest form of your impact statement and your mission and your niche and your unique solution, all of those things, once you've been able to define those things, I think it becomes a lot easier to measure impact and ultimately then to justify the spend.

Eric Ressler [18:24]:

Totally agree, and I will say measuring some of this work can be difficult. This is a reason why a lot of organizations fall into the trap of transactional marketing because it's a lot easier to measure than a broader, long game brand building approach. I don't think that means it's the right approach, and I know we will be doing an episode on how to best measure the ROI of this work in the future. So definitely stay tuned for that listeners. Until then, I think we're good for today. Thanks, Jonathan. 
Jonathan Hicken:

Thank you, Eric.