Nonprofit Resources

2026-08-25

Publish a brand kit (before someone scrapes your favicon)

If a journalist, partner, or sibling OSS org needs your logo at 11pm, they will take whatever loads first: a 16×16 favicon, a Facebook avatar, or an Incapsula HTML error saved as .png. That is not a brand strategy. It is what happens when you teach “make a brand kit” and never publish one.

This guide is the operator checklist. Use it to ship a brand kit, media kit, or press kit page — logos, colors, type, usage — on your domain. Then point every “for press / partners” ask at that URL.

Start here: our kit

Nonprofit Resources brand kit (/brand) is the working example for this site:

  • Logo SVG/PNG downloads (tiled mark and mark-only)

  • Color palette with copyable hex

  • Typography (Plus Jakarta Sans)

  • Name, voice, and usage rules

  • SEO aliases for media kit, press kit, brand guidelines, style guide, and logo

Canonical URL: https://nonprofit-resources.org/brand.

What to put on the page

Keep one job per section. Visitors should leave with files and rules, not a slide deck about “our journey.”

  • Logos — SVG first, PNG fallbacks at useful sizes (256 for avatars). Light and dark grounds if the mark inverts.

  • Colors — named roles (primary, accent, ground) with hex. Optional CSS variable names if you ship a product UI.

  • Typography — family, stack, and a link to the licensed source (Google Fonts, Adobe, or your webfont zip).

  • Name & voice — full legal/product name, short form, domain, one paragraph on tone.

  • Usage — clear space, no stretch, no fake endorsement, contact for exceptions.

  • Downloads — real <a download> links, not a “email us for assets” form.

That package is the media kit. Press kit and brand guidelines are the same page with better headings — do not invent three empty microsites.

SEO the boring words on purpose

People search the synonyms, not your internal folder name. Put them in the title, lead, and meta description:

  • brand kit · media kit · press kit

  • brand guidelines · style guide · branding

  • logo download · SVG · PNG · favicon

  • color palette · typography

Use one canonical URL (we use /brand) and optional aliases that share the page. Do not thin-out five duplicate articles.

Examples worth copying

These orgs publish assets instead of hoping the favicon CDN is kind:

  • Wikimedia Brand — portal for logo, type, color, templates, and trademark pointers. Movement-scale, still a single front door.

  • Mozilla Trademark Guidelines — rules first; pair with public Protocol assets when you need files. Trademarks and downloads are not the same document, but both exist.

  • GitHub Logos and Usage — permitted marks, do/don’t, and downloads for integrations.

  • U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) — government design system with tokens and components; useful when your “brand” is also a product UI.

  • Nonprofit Resources brand kit — small-org version of the same idea: one page, downloads, no bot wall.

Steal the shape, not the lockup. Your mark stays yours.

The TechSoup footnote

TechSoup’s own brand-management guide tells nonprofits to create style guides and shared asset libraries. As of this writing they still have no public branding page or media kit — and techsoup.org/favicon.ico answers with a bot challenge instead of an icon. We note that on their catalog entries (Product Donations, Software Directory) and keep our assets on /brand so partners are not hunting social avatars.

Irony is not the product. The product is a URL that returns SVG.

Ship checklist

  • ❏ Page live on your primary domain (not only Google Drive)

  • ❏ SVG + PNG for the primary mark; favicon matches the mark

  • ❏ Hex list copyable; typeface licensed and linked

  • ❏ Usage paragraph that forbids implied endorsement

  • ❏ Title and description include brand kit / media kit / logo language

  • ❏ Footer or About links to the kit in one click

  • ❏ Someone outside your team can download a logo without asking Slack

When that list is green, the next partner who needs your logo at midnight will thank you — and your catalog neighbors will too.