Branding in the Nonprofit Sector

The construct of branding has mostly gained its popularity in the for-profit context, even though it is of equal importance in the non-profit sector. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are dependent on recruiting volunteers, receiving donations, and partnerships with external stakeholders. Thus, an effective branding strategy is vital to the daily operations of NPOs. Social media can act as a useful tool to brand the NPO, however, the potential should also be fully realized. This calls for more practical insights into NPOs branding practices to guide practitioners in their content creation on social media. While previous studies have investigated platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in the context of NPOs’ branding practices, research on the strategic use of Instagram remains scarce. Furthermore, research on branding practices in the humanitarian sector remains narrow. For this purpose, the Instagram posts of three international refugee organizations, namely, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (N = 30), the International Rescue Committee (N = 30) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (N = 30) are examined in the context of one of the most recent humanitarian crises in Europe, the conflict in Ukraine. More specifically, through deploying the method of multimodal critical discourse analysis, this research aims to explore how international refugee organizations strategically position their brand on Instagram in the context of the Ukrainian conflict. The findings indicate that organizations position their brand through four dominant strategies. First, the organizations showcase their brand purpose by emphasizing the severity of the crisis and storytelling about forcibly displaced people and brand origins. Second, the organizations highlight their brand mission through showing their presence, efforts and measures, communicating about the organizations’ solidarity and aim to influence external actors, and driving their financial objectives and visibility. Third, the strategy of branding the organization visually is characterized using organizational colors and the strategic positioning of the logo. The last strategy, reinforcing humanitarian discourses, is showcased by three representations ‘organization vs. forcibly displaced people’, ‘forcibly displaced families’ and ‘generic masses fleeing’. The four strategies together illustrate how refugee organizations brand themselves on social media, contributing to the limited amount of research in the field.