Clarity is Generosity: There Is No Collaboration Without Differentiation
Why strategic differentiation is essential to collaborating for maximum impact in the nonprofit world.
The very organizations you’re building movements with, forming coalitions alongside, and co-authoring whitepapers with are the same ones you’re muscling to get ahead of for funding, talent, or trust. Even as endowments have grown and donor-advised funds have proliferated, funders have become more discerning about how they give. At the same time, there is a growing cacophony of voices on social media, all competing for trust and credibility, with their latest books, Linkedin posts, and podcast appearances.
The nonprofit sector is a strange place where competition and collaboration are intimately entangled.
And this has created a complicated culture in which leaders prefer to lean into the comfort of the first while ignoring the harsh realities of the second. In a head-to-head fight between the two, collaboration seems like the clear winner. It is both emotionally safer and strategically necessary to tackling challenges that are inherently bigger than any one organization.
Competition, on the other hand, feels threatening. And why choose a threat mindset, especially when it doesn’t seem like the most effective way to operate?
Defining why we are different or better undermines the cooperative nature of our work and solidarity of our sector. Or so the thinking goes…
This piece is a wake-up call. There was a time when nonprofits could fly by the halo of their missions, but it is no longer enough to just have a noble purpose. You have to be valuable, different, and relevant. When I say competition, I’m not talking about elbowing each other out of the way to unfairly win the race for funding and trust. I’m talking about knowing and stating your strategic difference.
Brand strategy, at its core, is the process of defining that difference: not how you’re better so you can win, but how you’re uniquely equipped to contribute, differently or better than anyone else. Its about defining your unique lane with such clarity that it creates greater permission and more space (not less!) for others to join forces with you to achieve maximum impact.
There is no collaboration without strategic differentiation.
So no, it's not a bare-knuckled throwdown between the two. Differentiation is what enables better collaboration. It is both critical to the survival of your organization and the efficacy of the movement you belong to. When done right, it becomes your edge, the thing that gives your organization staying power, narrative momentum, and strategic discipline. Just as importantly, it earns the trust of those around you.
If you want to position your organization with clarity and power—both for yourself and in service of the larger cause you’re working on, without any of the hostility or scarcity mindset of the commercial world—here’s what you should be asking:
Context: what’s happening in the world?
For an organization to gain traction in the world, it has to be relevant, which is to say that it has to have a compelling answer to a problem or need of the moment. If you don’t meet this baseline requirement, you are ignorable. Think of how ubiquitous charity:water was in the 2010s. Or how the ACLU exploded into the national conversation right after the first Trump election. These organizations astutely diagnosed the cultural moment and mood and used their brand to gain outsize narrative momentum.
Audience: who do you need to influence and why?
Don’t automatically assume that the role of a brand is to serve your beneficiaries. This is a common posture that many nonprofits take and I can understand why not centering beneficiaries in a brand strategy exercise can feel like ignoring or diminishing them. Your beneficiaries—whether you call them your target population, recipients, users, community, or something else—are important stakeholders who inform what you do and how you do it, and you should always create a brand that treats them with dignity and agency. But you are not building a brand to serve them. You’re building the brand strategy to influence the conditions that make the work for them possible—the funding, the trust, the policy landscape, the cultural conversation. Understanding your audiences is about understanding who holds power and how to influence them to achieve your goals. Make sure you are clear-eyed about it.
Competitive landscape: what’s already being said or done?
When you look at others operating in the same space as you, what patterns do you see and how can you disrupt these patterns for maximum impact? Can you change the framing of the problem? Brian Stevenson caused a moral and intellectual stir when he turned a staid conversation about mass incarceration into one about how slavery never really ended with the Civil War. Can you introduce a new set of values? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation raised a whole new set of considerations and questions when it switched from talking about “the social determinants of health” to “health as a right.” Shifting the moral frame is a smart way to “zag” when everyone else has been “zigging”. Your zag can unlock new opportunities across the field and leave a wake that creates permission for others to follow.
Your difference: so what’s your unique value?
This is where we define your difference. Which of your existing strengths can you leverage to meet this specific cultural moment (question 1), the needs of your audiences (question 2), and the gap left by your peers and competitors? Where are you stronger, either in capabilities, resources, or relationships, and how does that strength help solve the problem in a way others can’t? Where have you earned the right to lead? What part of the vision can only you deliver? Clarify your indispensable role within a broader ecosystem and why others should look to you for this critical piece.
Brand strategy forces you to sharpen your understanding of the world: what’s broken, what’s possible, and how your organization can contribute in uniquely valuable ways. In a sector defined by both competition and collaboration, clarity is your edge and your contribution to the collective.
Clarity is generosity.
The clearer you are about your role and value, the easier it is for others to understand where they are most useful and join forces with you toward shared goals.
Curious about clarifying your own difference and developing your brand strategy? Reach out to me here.