Legal Momentum’s (LM) name change was a grand success. If you missed THIS case study, take a look now.
LM’s Vice President of Communications, Maureen McFadden, shares these four tips to ensure the same success for your nonprofit:
- Dedicate Yourself.
Dedicate yourself to a long-term process for the name change. Be prepared for the process to become emotionally exhausting at certain points (names, like design, trigger emotional response). - Include Staff, Board Members and Stakeholders.
Be inclusive in a way that contributes to the name change process. Beware — when the going gets rough, the knee-jerk response is to pull back and become very secretive. But this is the point at which it’s especially critical to keep the dialogue going. - Research Other Name Changes.
McFadden recalls one of the most useful steps in LM’s name change process was to survey other nonprofit organizations that had recently changed their names. She asked:- Why did you do it?
- What kind of problems did you run into?
- What steps or techniques were particularly successful?
- Stay Focused On Why You Decided to Change the Name.
You’ll find that you (and your colleagues and external audiences) are more attached to your organizations current name than you knew. According to McFadden, “the moving on is emotional, the acceptance is intellectual.”The antidote? McFadden advises you to “stay focused on why you implemented the change and what it will help your organization achieve.”
