Last week, I shared with you how we arrived at a new mission statement for Washington Women’s Foundation. The same process informed our adoption of a new brand for the Foundation.

An organization’s mission statement is the leading verbal representation of its brand identity.

 

 

Washington Women’s Foundation is a strong and inclusive collective of informed women who together influence community transformation.

We do this:

Through individual and collective discovery.
Through high-impact grant making.
By listening to and respecting all voices in our community.

 

A brand also is represented verbally by key messages, traits, attributes and attitudes that weave together into a narrative of the organization. That narrative tells our story to the community at-large.

Brand identity also includes a visual element. A visual element on its own carries no meaning – at least not initially. For example, the Nike “Swoosh” was just a “Swoosh” in the beginning. But over many years, it has evolved into an iconic image that on its own, tells a compelling story. The black and white panda does the same for the “other WWF” – the World Wildlife Fund.

In the membership survey that we conducted earlier this year, you told us that you were ready for change.  You felt that:

• Our old mission had been accomplished.
• We are ready to seek new challenges.
• We need to evolve our messaging and our look to reflect the Foundation of today.

So, as I detailed in my President’s Letter last week, we’ve been working on that.

To honor the legacy and spirit of the women who founded Washington Women’s Foundation and to reflect our current membership and our new mission statement, our Brand Research Work Group agreed that the visual brand identity of Washington Women’s Foundation must be:

Influential * Engaging * Groundbreaking * Brave * Generous

There also were certain key attributes that needed to be captured:

Challenge * Transformation * Impact

We decided also that it was time to leave “WWF” behind and find a new way to visually represent the Foundation’s current attitude and its attributes.

After spending our 20^th Anniversary year at WA Women’s Foundation collecting input, asking questions, probing for deeper understanding of our members and gaining greater clarity about what is important to you and to our community, we are poised to begin planning for the next 20 years of WA Women’s Foundation. We are excited to be led by an updated mission statement and a refreshed narrative, both of which underscore our continued relevance and challenge us to build upon the strength of our community of women to evolve in such a way as to wield even greater influence in our community.

We also are excited to unveil a new logo for the Foundation. But to see that, you will have to attend the Annual Meeting of the Membership on October 26, 2016!

I hope that you will join us for this very “special edition” of our Annual Meeting next week. We’ll be honoring our past; you don’t want to miss the purse display – remember, when we were all about “The Power of the Purse?”

I’ll also report on what is still working so well at WA Women’s Foundation today – there’s a lot and it’s because of you! Change is in the air this fall, but Washington Women’s Foundation is still your Foundation. Thank you for being a member.

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Through our groundbreaking model of women-powered, collective philanthropy, Washington Women’s Foundation has awarded $16 million in transformational grants that have enabled not-for-profit organizations to improve lives, protect the environment, advance health and education and increase access to the arts throughout Washington state.

All women are invited to join our strong and inclusive collective of informed women influencing community transformation. The challenges ahead of us are never as great as the power behind us. www.wawomensfdn.org