Community Foundation of Central Georgia
Re-Branding
THE CHALLENGE
The Community Foundation of Central Georgia (CFCG) is a diverse organization in the geographic area that it covers as well as the services it provides to individuals and nonprofit organizations. However, its full breadth of services and impact through the central Georgia region wasn’t always known or understood. The CFCG staff and board of directors realized that this was a lost opportunity for the entire region and determined that a re-branding was in order to showcase the energy and connectivity of all the work CFCG does across its 21-county service area.
The new brand needed to be simple, approachable, and representative of the work CFCG undertakes to create strong communities where philanthropy thrives, and citizens work toward common goals. It also needed to represent the organization’s role as a permanent philanthropic resource for the community. After an ongoing engagement with Forum Communications, CFCG asked Forum to oversee its rebranding efforts, including designing and marketing the new look.
HOW WE HELPED
Forum Communications undertook a thorough campaign to understand the viewpoints and needs of CFCG’s stakeholders. Through information gathered during this process, Forum staffers determined perceptions of CFCG within the communities it serves. The results allowed us to design a new logo based on unity through diversity, as well as the Foundation’s central role in growing giving across the region and helping donors amplify their impact to create meaningful change.
Once the Community Foundation approved the new logo, we went to work updating the logo across multiple platforms and sharing the new brand and its meaning to stakeholders including donors, nonprofit organizations, the media and more. The design earned a Gold Hermes Creative Award in the Logo category and – most importantly – drew rave reviews among members of the central Georgia community.
ALL IN THE DETAILS
Considering the wide range of CFCG service offerings and numerous community initiatives CFCG spearheads, we knew that we needed to talk with many people to get a complete picture of the organization. Therefore, we organized seven focus groups – five of them made up of community-minded citizens from various regions of central Georgia, one made up of CFCG staff, and one with the CFCG board of directors. From the information gathered during those sessions, Forum learned that CFCG needed a logo that would reflect the energy and connectivity of all the work it does across central Georgia while also conveying strength and longevity.
It needed to be simple, approachable and something that captures the progressive work of the Foundation. Furthermore, the new logo needed to carry through multiple sub-brands (including two affiliate community foundations) and be cohesive across all of CFCG’s programs and initiatives. The result – a logo that reflects the Community Foundation’s central role in bringing together a diverse group of donors, nonprofits and community leaders to work together toward the common goal of changing the community for the better.
What We Accomplished
Logo design
Print & Product Packaging Design
Regional Media Relations & Publicity
Product Positioning
Awards
Hermes Creative Awards
CFCG
Logo & Brand Design