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Discovering the spark within one of London’s most exciting young charities.
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How do they make a difference?
Working with nearly 200 schools around the UK, First Give delivers an innovative and valuable programme to secondary school aged students. The programme introduces the idea of social action to the students; supporting them to find a social issue in their community that they are passionate about, and empowering them to do something about it.
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In its first five years the charity worked with and impacted over 115,000 young people (empowering them to raise £175,000 for a range of causes), and, thanks to their committed team of funders, handed over grants totalling an incredible £814,500 to a wide range of local charities. This was a huge expansion and they realised their brand didn’t really communicate the change of scale or reflect their energetic approach.
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What we did
Our strategy phase enabled us to really delve into what makes First Give special – why they exist, and what their personality is. We helped them define a set of five brand pillars that describe their character and explain how those attributes affect the way they operate and interact with their stakeholders. We stripped the logo and visual identity away and went right back to the bare bones of the charity’s purpose to rebuild the brand.
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Once we knew exactly what made them unique we underwent a collaborative ideation process, eventually landing on the perfect solution – a logo that showed an abstract F mark featuring a subtle spark shape in the negative space and tying in perfectly with their purpose statement.
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How did this make a difference?
The logo gave us masses of potential to develop a clear visual language and the identity was rolled out across a huge range of literature, merchandising and publicity pieces. We collaborated with an illustrator to produce bespoke imagery that complements the colour palette and photography style, and developed a robust set of brand guidelines in order to help them keep the brand consistent going forward – a major requirement of the initial brief.
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The visual identity is now far more thorough and reflective of the organisation’s vision and, with a clear explanation of their principles agreed, they have a framework to help them in decision-making. The new brand has helped build enthusiasm in the team and the intention is that it will help facilitate new funder relationships and school partnerships going forward.
“The new look and feel of the charity is exactly what we wanted and needed all of the schools we work with tell us how good they think the materials look! But what’s been particularly great is that internally the brand strategy has allowed us to focus more on why and how we do what we do.”
Louisa Searle, Director, First Give, London
