Written on October 9, 2023 at 11:00 PM, by Natasha
Keeping strategy simple It can feel daunting when faced with writing a communications, fundraising, marketing or other flavour of strategy. But we are big fans of keeping strategy writing simple and visual. Particularly for smaller organisations where most of your energies and time is focussed on frontline delivery. Understanding that there are logical steps to […]
Written on April 24, 2023 at 8:00 PM, by Natasha
Can we use gaming and streaming to grow fundraising and help reach our strategic audiences? We are at the early stages of this research project for Mind but it is proving really interesting. Working with Emily Hayes from Semiotics for Brands, we have gone from curious but confused to engaged and excited in a very […]
Written on April 24, 2023 at 9:30 AM, by Natasha
This rebrand was unusual. It was driven by the tragic death of a very special young girl. Emilia, or Lia as she preferred to be called, is the daughter of two trustees at Lucy Air Ambulance for Children who died suddenly last September. She was five. Her parents, Patrick and Melissa Schoennagel, wanted to channel […]
Written on August 14, 2022 at 11:53 AM, by Natasha
In our latest charity branding project, we have worked with Helen Holden Design on the rebrand of Carers Trust Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and Norfolk. From Monday 15 July, Carers Trust CPN will become Caring Together. We chose ‘caring’ to bring both the support the charity offers to carers and the services they provide for people […]
Written on April 4, 2022 at 5:31 PM, by Natasha
We are big fans of the logic model at Red Pencil. This stems from our team’s experience of using logic models to design programmes for international NGOs. We have used logic models to develop fundraising, communications, marketing and digital strategies. We have also used them to design whole-organisation strategies and evaluation frameworks. Doug, formerly of Engineers […]
Written on August 11, 2021 at 5:40 PM, by Natasha
On the anniversary of the death of Carnegie UK Trust’s founder, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, the foundation has launched a rebrand and new strategy. I am thrilled to share this news as Helen Holden of HHolden Design and I have been working with Carnegie UK for the last five months. Helen and I work together to […]
Written on June 2, 2021 at 4:45 PM, by Natasha
We are big fans of writing communications strategies using a Theory of Change model. It also works for marketing and fundraising strategies as well as whole organisational strategy development! Theory of Change was first incubated in the international development world where charities to demonstrate clearly and tangibly how their programmes saved lives but these days […]
Written on February 8, 2021 at 12:22 AM, by Natasha
“Successful brands grow. They don’t stand still… “They take account of the world around them and the changing expectations of their audiences. They evolve, without losing what is in the heart and soul of the organisation.” (Grounds 2005) Charities are set up to bring about social change – and that takes time. It is therefore […]
Written on January 3, 2021 at 1:03 AM, by Natasha
Bumping this post – as I’ve had quite a lot of questions recently about how to prioritise services and products – and this is a good, simple tool to get the discussions started. It is flexible enough to be used across a whole organisation or within different teams. Get in touch if you have any […]
Written on October 20, 2020 at 11:12 AM, by Natasha
Evaluating communications Four years ago, at the first workshop I ran at the DSC charity writing and communications training days a participant called Rose asked me: When evaluating communications, how do you know you are measuring the things that matter rather than just measuring the things you expect to see? It was a good question. […]
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