Love it or Hate it...

Good Magazine tackles the topic of branding and marketing for non-profits :

Love it or hate it, you are selling a product: your cause. And while helping change the world is certainly more valuable (and, hopefully, more gratifying) than buying a toaster, you're fighting for the consumers' attention nonetheless, and you're battling for their trust.

This trust is especially important with nonprofits because, unlike with consumer goods, the "buyer" here isn't really getting anything other than a warm fuzzy feeling (and a tax break) in return. For this reason, everything from the literature to the letterhead of your organization needs to play a role in conveying that your cause is professional and worthwhile, and maybe even cool.

This pretty much underlines the fact, that we need to stick to our brand, and consider even more ways of becoming more professional to our possible donors. One way, I've mentioned before, is creating short video clips that explain what we do. Good magazine gives a great example of such a video. 

Update: You should also read GOOD's follow up article on this topic, giving good examples of how NGOs present themselves.