We love nonprofits, however generally you are likely to get a bit carried away with fancy phrases and lengthy sentences. This verbosity can create boundaries, making it powerful for individuals with restricted time and brief consideration spans to know your mission.
Nonprofit Namesplaining
This tendency transfers on to naming – nonprofit names are sometimes a mouthful. In the event you take an inventory of fifty giant nonprofits within the US, the common title is a whopping 22 characters lengthy, with 3.6 phrases and 7 syllables! Evaluate that to an inventory of fifty globally acknowledged manufacturers like Apple, Google, Nike, or Coca-Cola, which common simply seven characters, two syllables, and barely over one phrase.
Nonprofit names are 3 times longer on common than the manufacturers everybody remembers most.
Why Does it Matter?
Your title is among the many most beneficial belongings your group owns. Efficient model names must be straightforward to say, keep in mind, distinguish, relate to, and use.
Your title won’t be serving to your model be remembered. A full title change can threat your model fairness, price some huge cash and confuse your individuals.
Typically, shortening your title can function the repair. Let’s have a look at the three attributes we will transfer the needle on: memorability, relevance, and adaptability.
Shorter Names are Often Simpler to Keep in mind
Analysis on client manufacturers reveals that shorter, easier names carry out higher financially and are most popular by shoppers.
It’s not onerous to think about why. We’re all always subjected to a firehose of data – 5 instances extra information every day than we had been 30 years in the past, in response to research. Cognitively, we’re challenged now in contrast to by no means earlier than. Our working reminiscence, which is like our mind’s scratchpad on which we shortly file and erase data for short-term use, is continually pushed past its restricted capability.
Longer, hard-to-pronounce names improve the probabilities of being forgotten or misremembered since you’re working towards human biology. They will additionally sign old-school or elitist vibes (suppose heritage and luxurious manufacturers like Yves Saint Laurent or Bruichladdich Scotch), which seemingly don’t align together with your nonprofit objectives.
What’s the perfect size then you definately ask? Usually, names with over 10 characters or 4 syllables are too lengthy.
Your model’s job is to create a container crammed with associations, representing your imaginative and prescient, mission, and repute. Whereas it’s tempting to incorporate all the things, brevity enhances memorability.
Familiarity Creates Connection
In on a regular basis dialog, individuals often name you by your first title or a nickname, not your full title, center title and final title. That will be weirdly formal in most contexts. Equally, nonprofits usually use a colloquial shorthand title internally and with companions. Nonetheless, many preserve their prolonged formal names of their logos, fearing lack of recognition or credibility.
These considerations are legitimate, but when your group already makes use of a brief title informally, it’s a superb signal that it holds relevance and which means inside your group.
Your individuals need to change into invested within the historical past and persona of your model, quite than having an impersonal, formal relationship to it. They need a extra human connection. Formally elevating a shorthand title already in use to your emblem makes your group extra approachable. Your viewers will really feel like they will relate to your model on a primary title foundation.
Performance Issues
While you go to the optometrist to take a imaginative and prescient take a look at, it’s so much simpler to see the letters above the inexperienced line, which max out at six per line, than it’s to see the letters beneath the purple line, which start at 9 letters per line. Given the constraint of getting the identical width, much less letters means greater letters and extra readability. Extra letters, means smaller and blurrier, and extra pressure on the eyes.
Now contemplate a number of the busy, constrained areas the place your emblem might want to stand out: web site headers, supporter emblem partitions, social media tiles, movies, and newsletters.
Lengthy names require logos with textual content set on a number of traces, making them seem smaller and tougher to learn alongside single-line logos with fewer letters. Functionally talking, that is equal to self-sabotage. Your model must be serving to you create affect, not getting in the way in which of it.
Practical logos ought to work nicely in numerous contexts, from tiny to massive sizes. These sensible issues received’t simply make your design group’s life simpler – they’ll guarantee your model stands out and affords you the pliability you want in co-branded accomplice coalitions with out the fixed headache of wrestling with an advanced emblem.
Your Choices
Now that we’ve explored memorability, relevance, and adaptability, let’s focus on your choices: shorthands and acronyms.
Acquainted Shorthands
Many nonprofits shorten their names utilizing one- or two-word shorthands. These work nicely as a result of they’re already acquainted to your viewers. Examples you may be aware of: The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Artwork) or Ford (Ford Motor Firm). In our consumer work, a number of comparable examples embrace Vera (Vera Institute of Justice) and Osborne (Osborne Affiliation). Shorter names really feel extra personable and are simpler to recollect.
Some shorthands barely alter the main target of a reputation, in advantageous methods. For instance we up to date Brooklyn Defender Providers to Brooklyn Defenders and Gotham Writers’ Workshop to Gotham Writers. In each instances, we shifted the emphasis from describing what the entity does to highlighting the individuals behind the group, making the names not solely shorter, but additionally extra relatable.
To Acronym or Not
Acronyms are sensible, economical, and broadly used throughout industries (ACLU, CNN, NBA, MoMA, AT&T and so forth). They’re useful when the unique title creates undesirable limitations. The unique title may be in one other language (BMW was Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH), in a restricted geography (KFC was Kentucky Fried Hen), or speaks to a restricted demographic (YMCA was Younger Males’s Christian Affiliation). In these instances it is sensible to retain fairness constructed into the unique title by evolving to utilization of its initials.
Acronyms also can add intelligent double meanings to names. For instance, one in every of our shoppers, the Middle for Employment Alternatives makes use of CEO as its acronym—a wink to the best employment alternative there may be.
This method is never as evocative as a shorthand title, however when shorthands aren’t a viable possibility, and if the acronym is already in widespread use inside your group, it’s honest recreation.
Right here’s a fast acronym viability intestine examine:
- Is the acronym already in use inside your group?
- Does it profit your group to take away emphasis out of your full title?
- Can you retain it to a max of 4 letters (or syllables)?
Bonus factors for utilizing vowels to create a pronounceable phrase as in NASA or UNICEF (5 letters, however solely three syllables when learn as a phrase).
Authorized Ease
Authorized considerations usually deter nonprofits from shortening their names. The worry is that such modifications may require structural modifications, fiscal modifications, limitless approvals, and costly authorized charges. It doesn’t should be that method.
There are conditions when it would make sense to undergo the hoops of legally altering your official names and going via the hoops that entails, however more often than not, a easy “doing enterprise as” (DBA) can do the trick. DBAs aren’t formal enterprise buildings in order that they don’t provide legal responsibility safety, however they’re a easy, price efficient mechanism designed to supply the branding flexibility your group wants. DBAs mean you can use an alias that’s completely different out of your official registered title to extra successfully place your model.
Maintain it Easy
In a world the place flexibility and flexibility are important, your title may be attempting to say an excessive amount of.
In the event you’re on the cusp of reimagining your model, it’s the right time to be sure you’re beginning with probably the most concise model title attainable. Your choices are seemingly proper in entrance of you and in each day use by your individuals. Maybe now could be the time to take your nonprofit’s shorthand title from the water cooler to the world.
In case your nonprofit is able to discover a model refresh and title trim, let’s speak.
This essay is by Deroy Peraza, Companion at Hyperakt, a purpose-driven design and innovation studio that elevates human dignity and ignites curiosity. Initially posted of their publication, Insights by Hyperakt.
Illustration by Benefit Myers.
