Nonprofit Name Change - Four Tips for Success

In April 2004, the DST Defense and Education Fund changed their name to Legal Momentum. The name change was a great success. LM Vice President of Communications, Maureen McFadden, shares these four tips to ensure the same success for your nonprofit:

1. Indulge. Engage in a long term process for the name change. Be prepared for the process to become emotionally exhausting in some places (names, such as design, trigger the emotional response).

2. Available staff, administrators and stakeholders. Be inclusive so as to contribute to the process of changing the name. Warning - when the going gets tough, the instinctive reaction is to pull back and become very secretive. But this is the point where it's critical to keep the dialogue.

3. Search other name changes. McFadden recalls one of the most useful steps in the process of change of name of LM was to detect other nonprofit organizations that have recently changed their names. He asked:


Why did you do?
What kind of problems did you encounter?
What steps or techniques were particularly successful?
4. Stay focused on why you decided to change the name. You'll find that you (and your colleagues and external clients) are more attached to your name organizations aware of what you knew. According to McFadden, "of the movement is emotional, intellectual acceptance is."

The antidote? McFadden is recommended to "stay focused on why the change was implemented and what will help your business reach." ......