Small Charities Coalition has ditched the Charity Trustee Networks logo from its new brand, unveiled last night by its chair Simon Hebditch at its fifth birthday party.
Small Charities Coalition and Charity Trustee Networks merged in 2011. The agreement involved transferring Charity Trustee Networks' (CTN) assets to the Small Charities Coalition (SCC), though the CTN brand remained.
Last night, Hebditch unveiled a new brand for SCC minus the CTN branding and insisted: “CTN people have no worries about it.”
Speaking at the event, Debra Allock Tyler, a trustee of Small Charities Coalition and its chair during the merger, said she usually was not a fan of mergers. “They are often not done terribly well, can be takeovers, and heated behind the scenes. But the CTN and SCC merger was relatively painless for trustees.”
At the event, held in IBM’s offices, tributes were paid to many of those involved in both organisations, including Cath Lee, former chief executive of the Small Charities Coalition and Patrick Cox, its founder.
Brian Seaton, a trustee of BigSoc Support, spoke at the event and warned the small-charity sector faced enormous difficulties. “Government promoting the commissioning of services from charities is a real timebomb. Some will cope but it will rip out the heart of some charities competing between being a charity and business. It will conflict and confound them.”
Commenting on SCC’s rebrand after the event, Alex Swallow, chief executive of SCC, said: "Our new rebrand is an exciting milestone. Our brand is at the heart of who we are, and key to the services we offer to our members. We are proof that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to conduct an effective brand review process."
Some 132 people from a wide range of organisations were consulted and most still identified the two organisations as two separate charities. Overall the majority of respondents identified more with the SCC brand and the range of support on offer and so it was decided that CTN would be absorbed into a refreshed and visually strengthened Small Charities Coalition brand.
As a result of the merged brand, all information and services hosted by the former CTN website will be moved across to www.smallcharities.org.uk over the coming weeks. SCC will continue to provide tailored and accessible support to trustees, as well as staff and volunteers of small charities.
SCC used Media Trust’s Matching Service to find an adviser for the brand review and advertised for designers via Twitter. Design agency Nice Work, which specialises in working with charities and non-profits, volunteered to design the new brand pro bono.
