Got a Branding Problem? Collaborate.

The California dairy industry was facing a crisis.

Beverage giants like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo were spending hundreds of millions annually to sell consumers on soda, juice boxes, and bottled water.

They were succeeding. By the early 1990s, the market for milk had soured, leaving family dairy farms fighting for their livelihoods. 

So California's milk processors tried something bold: they stopped competing with each other and pooled their resources. Through a newly formed marketing collective, they hired an agency, invested in serious consumer research, and put their resources behind a shared campaign.

The result was one of the most recognized and imitated taglines in advertising history: "Got Milk?" 

The campaign boosted milk sales in California in its early years, was eventually licensed by processors and dairy groups across the country, and decades later still registers awareness levels that even the most well-funded brands would trade anything for.

No individual dairy could have afforded that campaign. The only way to compete was together.

The math of going it alone

Most social good organizations approach branding and communications the same way: alone.

Each commissions its own creative. Each pays for its own research or skips it because it's unaffordable. Each develops its own campaign materials, annual report design, and advertising, typically on a budget that's a rounding error compared to the commercial brands competing for the same attention.

Our 2025 benchmarking survey found most community foundation communications teams operate with modest budgets and small teams. Nearly half expect their budgets to shrink or stay flat in the coming years. 

The story is similar across the nonprofit sector. And it’s why many organizations remain the best-kept secrets in the communities they serve.

The result is predictable: thousands of organizations doing similar work, serving similar missions, each producing communications that are underfunded, under-researched, and often underwhelming.

But it doesn't have to work this way. And in at least one corner of the social good world, it already doesn't.

A field-wide experiment that's working

Over the past three years, more than 70 community foundations across the country have participated in Make More Possible, a Got Milk-style branding campaign developed for the community foundation field. (Full disclosure: our team manages the campaign, so we've seen this model from the inside.)

The premise is simple. Instead of each foundation independently developing its own creative from scratch, Make More Possible delivers research-backed, professionally produced materials — messaging frameworks, design assets, advertising creative — that each participating foundation adapts to tell its own community's story.

Foundations have used the campaign for everything from paid print and digital advertising to annual report themes to building signage. Each one keeps its own name, voice, and identity. 

What they share is the underlying creative infrastructure. They get access to tested materials of a quality that would cost each organization many multiples more to develop individually.

The economics mirror the Got Milk model: shared investment, professional-grade creative, individual application. 

And the strategic benefit goes beyond cost savings. When dozens of organizations tell a consistent story, they're not just promoting themselves. They're building recognition for an entire field. That's something no single organization could accomplish, no matter its budget.

Where else this model could work

The collaborative approach isn't limited to community foundations. Consider three ways other organizations could apply it:

By issue area. Groups such as food banks, housing organizations, literacy nonprofits, and arts groups that work on the same cause could jointly fund research, then share a creative framework each adapts locally. The issue gets a bigger, more consistent voice. Each organization gets better materials than it could afford alone.

Across geographies. Similar organizations in different markets are natural partners. Community health centers across a state or land trusts across a region could commission shared campaign creative and split the cost. Because they serve different communities, there's no brand conflict, just shared infrastructure beneath locally distinct stories.

Through membership organizations. Regional associations, national networks, and philanthropy-serving organizations are ideally positioned to convene this work. A membership organization that commissions research-backed creative for its members transforms its value proposition. It moves from convener to capacity-builder. And member organizations gain access to campaign-quality materials as a benefit of belonging.

What it takes to get there

Collaborative branding requires a few things that going it alone doesn't.

It requires an organization or coalition willing to organize the effort, pool the funding, and manage the shared work. 

It requires flexibility by design: the best collaborative campaigns provide a strong framework while leaving real room for each participant's identity, voice, and community context.

Most of all, it requires a mindset shift. An organization accustomed to thinking of its brand as something to protect must come to see that shared creative infrastructure strengthens its individual identity rather than diluting it. 

Stronger together isn't just a slogan

The dairy processors of California understood something in 1993 that could transform the social good world: When you're outspent and outshouted, collaboration isn't a compromise. 

It's power.

Foundations and nonprofits will never match the marketing budgets of the commercial brands competing for their audiences' attention. But together they can afford research, creative, and reach that no single organization could buy alone.

The question worth asking your peers, your association, your board, or your funders: What could we build together that none of us can build alone?