Managing a Corporate Brand in a Challenging Stakeholder Environment: Charity Branding

Abstract

The modern charity is increasingly forced to contend with a limited pool of resources to carry out its core social mission. Decline in government support (Hibbert and Horne 1995) and direct donations (Williamson 2003), as well as the growing number of charities (Liao, Foreman, and Sargeant 2001), has seen the charity industry become increasingly competitive. This has led to a redefinition of what it means to be a charity in terms of the internal structure of the organization and the resultant complexity of the stakeholder environment. To better appreciate the fundamental tensions inherent in modern religious charity organizations and how these challenges affect their corporate branding strategies, the institutional logics framework is used to interpret the underlying pressures. The impact of these pressures is a complex stakeholder environment where the expectations of two somewhat disparate groups—those who need care and provide care, and those who provide the resources to enable that care to continue—must be contemplated. The implications of this institutional pluralism (Kraatz and Block 2008) and consequent complex stakeholder environment for the management of corporate branding of charities are exemplified using the case of a religious charity that changed its corporate brand name.