Brand Update Promotes Largest Educational Organization In India

Pratham is the largest literacy organization in India. With 15 chapters around the United States to help raise money for their educational programs in India, Pratham USA wanted to strengthen its image and give chapters the communication tools they needed to be more effective. Red Rooster Group developed a comprehensive brand strategy, new website, and marketing and fundraising materials to help Pratham increase donations.

Visual Identity

BEFORE: A Fractured Brand Image

Pratham lacked guidelines for their logo, which resulted in different typefaces, colors and layouts being used, as well as inconsistent treatments for the names of chapters and affiliates.

While Pratham has a clear mission, a logo, and brochures, the organization conveys a very fractured image. This can confuse donors and represent a lost opportunity to build equity in the brand. Another factor is that Pratham in other countries convey their brand slightly differently as well, with different typefaces for the logo and different designs for the website.

AFTER: A Unified Brand Family

During the brand review, we assessed that the logo was used in a wide variety of ways in the marketing materials, creating a fractured image for the organization. And chapters were setting their names in different typefaces and colors, undermining the professionalism of the organization.

To address this problem, we developed a comprehensive brand architecture for the organization that defined the relationship of the logo and tagline, created consistency for the chapter names and their treatment in the logo, and determined how international affiliates should be styled. We then developed versions of all the logos (15 chapters plus international partners) with and without the tagline in formats for print and web use.

Brand Manual

To help all the chapters create effective communications, we developed a brand manual that specifies colors and typefaces to use, shows the templates for the newsletter and other marketing materials, and provides guidelines for using them.

Message Development

To help Pratham and all the chapter heads tell their story in a compelling way to appeal to donors, we developed the following messaging tools:

A Case for Giving that describes the problem that Pratham addresses, how Pratham helps, Pratham’s impact, and ways donors can get involved and make a difference.
Brand Story that summarizes the case for giving.
Boilerplate that can be used to remind donors of Pratham’s mission and impact and urge them to donate.

Brand Story

At a time when half of the children in India cannot read, Pratham provides a low cost method to address the problem effectively on a large scale. Pratham is the only organization that empowers individuals through education as well as driving systemic change through a bottom-up approach. By training 60,000 volunteer teachers in 21 states, we are able to provide support for educating the entire population.

Pratham’s successes break the cycle of poverty for families in villages and cities and contributes to the economic and political vitality of India. Pratham has successfully reached more than 34 million children across India. Millions of children who could not even recognize the alphabet when they began now read fluently and with passion. Pratham’s methods have been recognized by leading foundations, including Skoll, Gates, and Hewlett, as a model worth emulating. Pratham’s methods are now being employed to help other countries facing similar educational challenges. Pratham USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a four-star rating (the highest possible) from Charity Navigator, accepts tax deductible contributions from U.S. donors. We depend upon generous donors like you to create educational reform throughout India and the world.

Boilerplate

Pratham is one of he world’s leading non-governmental organizations working to provide quality education to underprivileged youth. With a budget of less than $15 million, we use very low cost and scalable methods and work in collaboration with the government, local communities, parents, teachers and volunteers across the country to educate hundreds of thousands of children every year. Pratham USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a four-star rating (the highest possible) from Charity Navigator, accepts tax deductible contributions from U.S. donors. We depend upon generous donors like you to create educational reform throughout India.

Case for Support

We developed their Case for Support around what the donors need to know:

The Problem: What is the problem that the organization is addressing? We humanized the problem of widespread illiteracy in India by telling a story about one girl’s plight. We also provided a visually demonstrated the problem by creating a graphic showing the cycle of poverty that plagues many in India.
The Solution: What is Pratham doing about the problem? We describe Pratham’s programs to build literacy and create systemic change for education in the country
The Impact: How effective is the organization in addressing the problem? To demonstrate Pratham’s success, we presented a chart showing the results of Pratham’s signature program, Read India II, in 21 states across India.
The Appeal: How can donors support Pratham? We describe the different ways that people can support and get involved with the organization.

We designed the document to be easy to read and support Pratham’s brand, with photos that help to help people understand what Pratham does — overall a clear and compelling case for supporting Pratham.

Brochure

We created a brochure that could be handed out widely at galas and other events for fundraising purposes. The brochure makes a bold statement about the the vast scope of illiteracy in India, and describes how Pratham is addressing it.

Annual Report

We redesigned the organization’s annual report as part of an overall brand refresh for the organization. The theme of Raising the Bar on Hope was aimed at reinvigorating interest in the organization’s donor base that was experiencing some fatigue with Pratham’s message.

Because the 2010 Annual Report was aimed primarily at Pratham’s larger donors, we gave it a more professional and dignified look. We kept the layouts simple and open, focusing on large, full-bleed photos on each spread. To emphasize the impact of the programs, we paired large photos showing educational issues in India with quotes about education. We also used maps and other infographics to highlight key information. The report was so successful that the format was re-used the following year.

Presentation

A key way of telling Pratham’s story to potential donors is through presentations at house gatherings. In order to improve the effectiveness of these presentations, we completely redesigned the presentation to have a better flow, a stronger visual impact, and more emotional appeal. Now, instead of screens filled with bullet points of text, viewers are moved by full screen images showing the programs, with short captions conveying the program’s scope and impact. The presentation provides a quick overview of Pratham’s scalable programs, and encourages people to get involved in the cause. The presentation was designed to be used in person, as well as for emailing.

Website

After a thorough review of their current website, we completely redesigned Pratham’s website to have a much stronger appeal to donors. Our goal was to create an interactive site that engages people in learning more about the problem of literacy in India and how Pratham addresses it. To drive people through the key information leading to a decision to donate, we created sections titled: Problem, Programs, Impact, and Get Involved.

The site encourages people to find their local chapters, attend events, and most of all, donate to the organization. We used a chalkboard theme to reinforce the concept of education, and 3 different rollover maps showing the programs in India, the chapters in the U.S., and partners around the world. Emotional impact is achieved through an abundance of photos, stories of the children, and visitor reports.

Website Features

A homepage feature that provides a quick overview of the Problem and Pratham’s impact.
3 Interactive maps featuring program information, U.S. chapters and international partners.
A Sponsorship tool to manage sponsor logos and promote them to the homepage.
Individual chapter pages with a main chapter gateway page with descriptions for all chapters.
Ability to filter news and events by chapter.

A Content Management System (CMS) in Drupal that allows staff to update the site on their own.
An Event Management System (EMS) that allows staff to create events with different types of ticketing.
A different photo on every single page of the site.
Sidebar blocks featuring statistics, videos, testimonials, and other elements.
Descriptions of all the programs.