Marketing Support - Charity Name Change!

Can you help us to decide on a new charity name, with strapline?

We need expert support with ideas and guidance to choose a new name that's clear, impactful & visible.

What difference will you make?

We are very ready and excited for this change. However, that excitement can sometimes mean we lose sight of full range of aims and outcomes we want to achieve. We hope an expert can clarify our objectives and guide the process to facilitate our individual experiences and knowledge and turn our enthusiasm into a focused, efficient and professional rebranding process that reflects the true essence of our charity.

Expertise will help us achieve a clear, well-understood name change, that maintains the trust of our current beneficiaries while improving our visibility, inclusivity, and reaching new people who may need our support.

The new name will strengthen our credibility, open up access to new funding streams, and enhance our recognition as a professional and responsive charity—one that listens to lived experience and adapts as understanding and language evolves.

Our current name no longer represents who we are today. It uses outdated language, specifically the term “ASD,” which can be seen as offensive by some autistic people and may alienate people.

It also unintentionally gives the impression that our services are limited only to autistic people, rather than the wider neurodivergent community we now support. This lack of clarity restricts our growth and may prevent individuals and families who could benefit from our services from reaching out to us.

A successful name change will change this position. It will help ensure that everyone—beneficiaries, families, professionals, and funders alike—understands who we are, what we do, and who we support. It will show that we are an evolving, inclusive, and forward-thinking organisation that continues to listen, learn, and adapt to the needs of the neurodivergent community.

Ultimately, this name change will allow us to extend our reach, strengthen our impact, and continue delivering trusted, high-quality support to even more people who need it.

We will continue to grow the numbers of our beneficiaries to include more people who need us.

We will improve our funding opportunities to be able to continue what we already do well, and to add further services that our beneficiaries want.

We will be able to use the new name and branding in a positive way for marketing and PR, to shine a light on us, increase our visibility and share our excitement for this change.

What are we looking for?

Marketing and branding expertise, with the ability to tell us why ideas will or won't work.

Some knowledge of other local or national charities in a similar field to understand our positioning and competition.

Skills to help us create a memorable and clear charity name.

Understanding of engagement from beneficiaries to advise us on how best to proceed.

Understanding of how the language we choose and the tone can affect our funding eligibility and accessibility to beneficiaries.

Creative thinking.

Able to listen to a diverse team, brainstorm with us and facilitate our time to be used more efficiently.

Ability to be clear, honest and direct - including challenging our ideas!

Respectful of confidentiality and the impact this change can have for us.

What will you be doing?

Our charity has grown & expanded what we offer, but our name hasn't evolved with us. It uses outdated language, doesn't communicate our purpose or the communities we serve and is restricting our growth as it's unclear who our services are for.

We will also change from a Charitable Trust to CIO; updating our governing document with updated language for our beneficiaries.

We have plenty of ideas and insight into what our name should convey, but lack any marketing expertise!

This is a HUGE change and a big step for us so we want to do this right. We are committed to putting in the work to get this done. Our 5 trustees are keen for help and support and we have a management team of 4 part-time staff willing to take on tasks as required. The trustees and management team are working collaboratively on this and would welcome clear, direct and objective feedback to keep us on track and focussed on making the right choice for the charity.

We may first need expert/professional to help us to ensure we are all clear and agreed on the requirements for our new name. Can you help turn all our insights from our different areas of knowledge within the charity into clear aims that a name needs to achieve? Different team members bring different expertise to the table about what might work a name. Such as; what language funders will respond to, what words are preferred by the those with lived-experience now, what words do existing beneficiaries respond to, what wording shows potential beneficiaries that our service does include them?

We then need some guidance to help us to chose the right name. There is confusion in the team about what a charity name should look like and what would/wouldn't work and why and we need professional insight to choose a name. The following type of questions are currently on our minds

• If we used a name that was an acronym is that recommended or not & why?
• Do we have to use all the words we think we do within the new name or can we go simpler (perhaps using a new improved strapline and the updated governing document to support the name)?
• What are people likely to think/feel/understand about us from suggested name choices?
• What can we do to check our name suggestion(s) with beneficiaries/public/funders before we finalise our decision?
• How does the new name work with SEO and visibility online?
• What is a professional opinion of some good name ideas based on the parameters we have?