In one of our previous Insights exploring the value of the notion of brand equity for the charity sector we have argued that the nature of charitable giving – which is such that donors do not have direct experience of the benefits generated by their own choice of giving – means that trust in the brand becomes a crucial aspect of the relationship between supporters and the charity in question. In this Insight we will look more in depth at the notion of trust in charity brands and what its key drivers are.
Although intangible by nature, trust in the brand has been proved to translate into many tangible benefits for organisations. For charity brands, as for commercial ones, high levels of trust are likely to mean supporters will recommend your brand to whoever is in their circle of influence – although estimating the value of actual referrals is hard, data from our Charity Awareness Monitor shows that more than two thirds of the public would consider recommending their favourite charity brands to friends and family[fn]nfpSynergy, March 2011. Charity Awareness Monitor survey of 1,000 adults 16+ in Great Britain.[/fn].
Trust also consolidates loyalty to the brand. For commercial organisations, it is easy to see what the implications are. The sense of reliability that underlies trust in the brand brings about repeat business. However, loyalty to the brand is not necessarily such a straightforward concept for the charity sector to nurture and capitalise on, given that a spontaneous and ad hoc approach, rather than a pondered and systematic one, still appears to be largely driving the decision to give for many donors in the UK. Indeed results from nfpSynergy’s segmentation of the UK donor market suggest that around one third of the public (the so-called ‘Community and Lifestyle Givers’) tend to spread their giving thinly across a wide variety of causes and are more likely than other groups to respond ‘reactively’ to an ask.
For commercial organisations, trust in the brand also means that that consumers are likely to be more open to trying out new products that a trusted brand may be launching, therefore making it easier for organisations to ‘diversify’ the nature of the relationship with their own consumers . For charities, trust in the brand may mean that they are more likely to be successful at engaging their existing and potential supporters in a variety of ways – from giving, to campaigning and volunteering .Therefore a trusted charity brand is one that is more likely to be able to push individuals along their own donor journey once engaged.
As our research suggests, when compared to other institutions such as private companies or the government, trust is a trait that charities as a whole are more likely to be associated with and almost inherently have. However, we also know that trust is a trait that the public expects a charity brand to have and to be measured on. When in our research we ask the public to select their top ten attributes that best describe their ideal charity brand among a prompted list of forty odd, the attribute ‘trustworthy’ invariably tops the raking. There is also considerable variation in scores of trust across individual charity brands, a sign that the public’s perceptions of trust vary widely within the sector and is not always automatically ‘inherited’ to the same extent by all brands.
But what does this mean in practice and how can we unpack the meaning and drivers of trust for charity brands? Perhaps the easiest way to get our head around this question is to go back to basics and think about what trust is and how it unfolds in our day to day lives.
1. Familiarity is a breeding ground for trust and building awareness of your brand is key
As simple as this may seem, having met someone – even if briefly- is perhaps the first step towards building trust towards that person. Think about the last time you went to a party where you didn’t know anyone and what a relief it was to spot a familiar face in the midst of the crowd? Building trust in a brand is based on the same principle- that we trust who or what we know.
Social Psychology refers to the concept of exposure effect (Gustav Fechner, 1876) to explain how the more we are exposed to something/someone, the more we are likely to not only trust them but also to like them. Moreover, familiarity has not only been proved to influence attitudes, but also to influence choices by creating neurological patterns that the brain will use to base its preferences on. An experiment conducted on children who were presented with two identical batches of fries, one of which branded as McDonald’s and the other one unbranded, showed that the first was consistently picked as the favourite over the latter when the ingredients, look and taste of the two batches of fries were exactly the same. In this context, familiarity with the brand proved key to make children ‘believe’ that McDonald’s fries are better than unbranded ones.
In the case of a charity brand, building familiarity often starts with building awareness of the brand itself. Based on our data on awareness and trust in charity brands from the Charity Awareness Monitor, we know that there is a positive correlation between breadth of awareness of a brand (i.e. the overall number of people who have heard of a brand) and levels of trust in a brand among those who have heard of the brand. This means that not only do we trust brands that we are aware of, but we are more likely to trust those brands that are well known they are by those around us and the rest of the public in general. Therefore increasing the public’s overall exposure to the brand and becoming ‘part of the wallpaper’ may help increase familiarity which, in turn, translates into higher levels of trust.
But building brand awareness among the public as a whole may not always be the most cost-effective way of creating familiarity with the brand. Our research among the general public, for example, suggests that contact with the brand – either direct or indirect through a friend or a member of our family- as opposed to general awareness is among the top factors that the public are likely to indicate as drivers of their trust in charities. So if for instance you are a specialist healthcare organisation working on a niche condition, creating familiarity among your service users by strengthening your reach may be the first logical step towards building a strong base of trust.
2. Trust is fragile – make sure you fulfil expectations and build predictability
In her book ‘Fascinate: Your 7 triggers to persuasion and captivation[fn]Hogshead, S., 2010. Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation.[/fn] ’ brand consultant Sally Hogshead states that, compared to other triggers of ‘fascination’ with a brand, trust is ‘more nuanced, more fragile, harder to earn, and much easier to lose’.
Interestingly, as nfpSynergy’s trend data on trust in different institutions highlights, although charities as whole enjoy levels of trust that are only second to traditional institutions such as the Armed Forces and the NHS, their levels of trust are much more volatile than those of their close comparators. Ironically volatility in trust makes charities much more akin to private companies and banks than to other traditional institutions, suggesting that trust is something that needs to be actively maintained and looked after by the sector as a whole.
Perhaps there is a question around the extent to which events that may threaten levels of trust in a charity brand such as for example a scandal around how donations have been used does actually translate in an immediate loss of support. Compared to other choices where we directly experience the consequences of being ‘let down’ – such as for example discovering that the engine of your new BMW is not as reliable as you hoped - the decision to support a charity (or to continue to support a charity) is more likely to suffer from some kind of inertia. Having said that, when it comes to potential (rather than existing supporters) the threat of the impact of a loss in trust on potential donations may be harder to measure and therefore to ignore. Therefore living up to the public’s expectations of the organisations’ behaviour over time is a basic but key hygiene factor for charities to consider.
3. Trust thrives on consistency – ensure you are coherent in what you say and how you say it
When we meet someone for the first time, what they talk about, how they talk, the places they go to, and the people that they surround themselves are all pieces of the jigsaw that help us build a first impression which may or may not turn into trust. Inconsistencies across any of these aspects are likely to leave us cold at best and – in the worst cases – confused and wanting to walk away.
Therefore if consistency in behaviour over time is key to build predictability, dependability and ultimately trust, so is consistency across all those aspects of the brand that are visible, particularly those that are to do with communicating with your key audiences . In this sense, consistency in the key messages and the values that your brand stands for needs to permeate any kind of communication with the outside world, from the mood of an outdoors campaign to the words of a face to face fundraiser stopping potential supporters in the street.
Corporate companies and celebrities that a brand associates itself with may also be influencing this picture and, although from our research we know that it is hard for the general public to admit to any influence of these on their trust in charities, it is probably safe to say that the more the match between a charity and a company or celebrity is perceived to be in line with the brand, the more likely it is to reinforce consistency, predictability and trust, even if just indirectly.
4. Perceptions of what you do can help reinforce trust– ensure the public understands what you get up to (or at least part of it)
One of the research questions that our clients are often keen to get an answer to is the extent to which the public understands the work that they do and how it differs from that of other similar organisations. Invariably, we find that clarity and a detailed understanding of the work that an organisation carries out are an ambitious goal to achieve among the general public, let alone differentiation among competing organisations. Indeed, even our qualitative work with supporters often flags up the issue that the public’s knowledge is not as detailed as organisations themselves would like to believe.
But is understanding of what an organisation does key to trust and, ultimately, to support? The answer to this is not straightforward. On the one hand, it appears that top-line understanding about what charities do often is enough to instil (or at least not to negatively affect) trust. The international development sector is a good example of this – here, although differentiating among the wide range of generalist organisations may be hard, it is not necessarily stopping the public to support these organisations.
On the other hand, there may be advantages to ensuring that the public understands perhaps not all, but at least some of what an organisation does well. Many of the charity brands that score well on trust among the general public are also ones which are recognised and remembered for a distinctive service that they provide. Although the range of services that Macmillan Cancer Support provides is wide, the Macmillan Nurse remains one of the key aspects of what the charity does that the public understands and connects with. A similar argument holds for Guide Dogs, another organisation that tops the ranks of trust among the public.
Ultimately, the relationship between understanding and trust is likely to be resting on the fact that if an organisation makes it easy for its audiences to understand what it does, it will also find it much easier to convince them that they do it effectively . A good example of this is the WaterAid brand which connects the issue of basic water and sanitation which the public understands and is responsive to with an approach (sustainability) which also resonates with and is well understood by the public.
5. Trust is based on perceptions – capitalise on them where you can
Often if we don’t know someone well, one of the easiest and most effective ways to start building our own picture of the kind of person they are is to ask them what they do for a living. Just like with people, there are certain traits of an organisation that could act as a ‘shortcut’ to trust. As a result, certain types of organisations may have an easier time instilling trust among the public than others.
As data from our Charity Awareness Monitor points out, brands working in the health and disability sectors top the rankings of most trusted organisations. The opposite is true for brands working in other sectors such as for instance international development, where perceptions of high levels of corruption in developing countries and scepticism about the effectiveness of government aid may also be colouring public perceptions of charity brands and the effectiveness of their work. Some brands, therefore, are lucky (or unlucky) enough to inherit trust (or lack of trust) from the sectors they work in.
Size (particularly perceived rather than actual) also seems to matter. Data from the Charity Awareness Monitor highlights that over half of the public consider small charities to be trustworthy organisations compared to just over 40%[fn]nfpSynergy, March 2011. Charity Awareness Monitor survey of 1,000 adults 16+ in Great Britain.[/fn] considering large charities to be so.
This is not just true for charities but for businesses as well – over half of the public indicate that they trust small businesses compared to only one in ten members of the public indicating that they trust multi-national companies. Perhaps where large brands have a need (and resources) to create familiarity by investing in their breadth of awareness to create trust, smaller organisations may have an inherent advantage in the process of building trust.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that large organisations can’t also reap the benefits of this by stressing their connection with their ‘local’ realities. In the commercial world, HSBC’s bank strap-line ‘The World’s Local Bank’ is perhaps the best example of how this can be done.
Our advice in a nutshell - five key things to take away
Although trust is a complex and multi-faceted concept, building trust in a brand is often similar to building trust in a person. In this sense, the basic principles that instinctively guide our day to day interactions with people could be a good starting point to help us think about how charity brands should approach the issue. In doing this, here are five key points that we would like our readers to take away:
- Familiarity is a breeding ground for trust and building awareness of your brand is key
We trust who and what we know and increasing exposure of key audiences to your brand is the first step towards building trust. Of course, they choice of channels and audiences to target will very much depend on the nature of the organisation and its key strategic objectives, but building familiarity with the brand remains imperative - Trust is fragile – make sure you fulfil expectations and build predictability
Although levels of trust in the charity sector as a whole are high, trust is no less fragile and easy to break for charities than it is for other institutions. The non-experiential nature of charitable giving shouldn’t mean that this basic hygiene factor is overlooked - Trust thrives on consistency – ensure you are coherent in what you say and how you say it
Build a consistent picture by relying on key messages, tone of voice and associations with the brand that reinforce rather than confuse perceptions - Perceptions of what you do can help reinforce trust– ensure the public understands what you get up to (or at least part of it)
Focus on cultivating understanding of some key areas of your work which make it easier for your audiences to understand how effectively you are carrying out your mission and, as a result, to trust you. - Trust is based on perceptions
Accept that some may be seen as inherently more trustworthy than others but capitalise on perceptions where you can