Guest post by Allison Manley of Kanopi Studios
With 68% of nonprofits redesigning their web presences in the past three years, bold branding is becoming increasingly essential. In a crowded digital space, the nonprofits that stand out combine strategy, storytelling, and sleek design to create a cohesive brand experience that resonates.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to leverage technology, smart design choices, and AI-informed messaging—plus best practices from real examples in Kanopi’s roundup of the best nonprofit websites—to create a brand that captures attention and builds trust.
1. Clarify your brand’s identity.
A compelling branding strategy starts with clarity. Before further engaging with your nonprofit, potential supporters must first determine whether your organization looks like one they would trust. A well-articulated identity helps audiences immediately grasp who you are, what you do, and why it matters.
Expert Tips
Define your unique selling proposition (USP). What truly sets your nonprofit apart? Highlight the unique aspects of your mission that help make your organization successful. For example, perhaps you’re not just an animal shelter—you’re an animal rescue that trains service animals to support wounded veterans.
Strive for authenticity. Your tone, imagery, and messaging should reflect who you are, what you do, and why. Your website should feature stories, photos, and videos of the people who power your mission, including beneficiaries, volunteers, staff, and leaders.
Reaffirm your mission and values across all touchpoints, from your site header to donor thank-you emails. To emphasize your visual identity, use a consistent tagline, logo, and colors.
Real Example: Girls Who Code
This website highlights the nonprofit’s unique mission: closing the gender gap in tech through educational programming.
The nonprofit uses a consistent brand identity across all channels, with bold, youth-oriented visuals and empowering language.
The homepage copy and navigation reinforce the mission and invite users to get involved, with clear user pathways for students, program alums, and partners.
2. Showcase your mission through strong visuals.
Thoughtful imagery, layout, and data visualizations convey impact more powerfully than words alone. Studies have shown that blog articles with images receive 94% more views than those without, while videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%.
Expert Tips
Use original, high-quality photography throughout your website featuring real staff, volunteers, and program participants. Avoid stock photos because they can make your site feel generic or inauthentic. If you do need to use stock photos at any time, make sure you find diverse images that reflect the demographics of your beneficiaries and donors.
Integrate real stories into visual design elements. Provide photo captions and descriptive alt text, include quotes alongside testimonials, and share video clips throughout blog posts to expand the audience’s understanding of different topics.
Create data visualizations, such as charts, maps, and infographics, to help audiences understand impact information quickly.
Real Example: CARE
This site incorporates emotionally resonant, real-world photos, bringing attention to humanitarian crises.
The blog features storytelling-focused posts about individuals and families directly served by programs.
Simple infographics display the percentage of funding that goes directly to mission-critical services.
3. Optimize your brand presence for large language models (LLMs).
AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI-generated search summaries increasingly influence how donors and partners discover your brand. To ensure your brand shows up accurately and frequently in these tools, you need to understand how to speak their language. It’s all about understanding how these solutions view your brand and making small tweaks to improve their comprehension.
Expert Tips
Audit your brand story. Is your brand story or bio accurate, up-to-date, and aligned across your site, blog, social media, and press mentions? If not, search engines and LLMs could have a difficult time defining what your organization is all about. Take the time to clarify your brand’s story and ensure it’s uniformly told across platforms.
Ask ChatGPT to describe your nonprofit. What comes up? Are those your words or someone else’s? Evaluate whether your brand is being defined on your terms. To increase brand awareness and foster an accurate depiction of your nonprofit, partner with other organizations in the sector to conduct cross-marketing opportunities. These could include cross-blogging, partnering with other nonprofits to host webinars, and co-hosting branded events with other organizations.
Monitor your SEO keywords and whether your brand appears in AI-generated overviews for those terms. Is your content featured in key information relevant to your highest priority keywords? For example, is your educational blog post targeting the phrase “how to fight climate change in 2025” being referenced for key information, like suggestions for individual or corporate actions? If not, revisit your SEO strategy to ensure your website contains highly valuable and educational content targeting keywords that are most relevant to your mission.
Real Example: Feeding America
This organization dominates AI search and LLM responses for hunger-relief topics.
The Feeding America website is executing a phenomenal SEO strategy. It has a high domain authority of 78 (which denotes that the organization is credible) and on-site content that ranks for over 30,000 keywords.
The nonprofit offers a consistent brand story and messaging hierarchy across all platforms, including Facebook and YouTube.
4. Establish thought leadership and credibility.
Thought leadership turns your brand into a trusted authority. For nonprofits, that means elevating internal experts and making their insights accessible to your audience.
Expert Tips
Create detailed bios for your staff subject matter experts (SMEs) and link their names to published content. Consider assigning different staff members to cover various topics based on their expertise. For example, a staff member who is a former lawyer could cover legal issues for your blog.
Partner with other industry blogs to see if they’ll share content written by your SMEs on their blog, and vice versa. These partnerships can help you get your brand name and thought leadership out to a broader audience.
Share expert insights in webinars, Q&As, and newsletters, and repurpose that content on your site via downloadable resources or blog posts. This content establishes your brand as a trustworthy source for need-to-know information.
Real Example: Best Friends Animal Society
Julie Castle's Blog offers unique insights directly from the nonprofit’s Chief Executive Officer. The blog establishes Julie as a thought leader in the animal welfare space.
Their website features detailed bios for the organization’s founders and leaders. Visitors can learn more about each individual’s experience and expertise.
Credibility badges demonstrate the organization’s reliability and trustworthiness.
5. Actively engage with your online audience.
Two-way engagement creates a more responsive, human-centered brand experience. Focus your messaging on your organization’s beneficiaries, donors, and volunteers to show them the crucial role they play in keeping your mission alive.
Expert Tips
Respond to social media comments and messages promptly and authentically. Don’t use automated replies or commenting tools—take the time to engage with your audience genuinely to build trust.
Personalize CTAs based on user behavior. For example, serve donation CTAs to recurring givers and volunteering CTAs to users who frequently visit your volunteer calendar.
Use email and web forms to gather input. Ask questions about how your audience members view your brand and ways you could enhance it to gain a deeper understanding. Publicly acknowledge supporters’ feedback and outline your plans for implementing it promptly.
Real Example: Dana Farber Cancer Institute
The organization has an active Facebook presence, typically posting about once a day, sharing event information pages and fundraisers.
Audience-tailored CTAs improve navigation, making it simple for visitors to find information specific to their needs. This CTA strategy is especially crucial for healthcare web development because users often feel overwhelmed or stressed and want to access the need-to-know information as quickly as possible.
Multiple ways to give so supporters can choose the method that fits their philanthropic goals and giving capacity.
Wrapping Up
To stand out in 2025, your brand must be authentic, memorable, and easy to engage with across digital platforms. If you need more support, partner with a nonprofit web designer to enhance your brand’s digital presence and evolve it in a scalable, strategic way.
Keep your mission and values at the core of your branding decisions, and you’ll build a clear, consistent identity that engages supporters and reinforces long-term trust.