Summary
Many Hands is a women’s grantmaking organization that multiplies the impact of collective giving — connecting a diverse community of passionate women to local nonprofits doing meaningful work. After 15 years, their brand was ready to match their growth and success.
Challenge
Many Hands needed a visual identity that honored their history while signaling the strength, diversity, and forward momentum of the organization. Their existing brand wasn’t attracting the broader, more diverse membership they were building toward and their website wasn’t keeping pace with their growing profile as a serious grantmaker in the community.
Project Approach and Results
We began with brand strategy — using our empathic design approach to create visual moodboards that captured the emotional essence of the brand before a single mark was drawn. The moodboards drew inspiration from the Washington DC landscape the organization calls home — the colorful brownstones of DC’s historic neighborhoods and the iconic cherry blossoms that signal renewal and community each spring. They became a powerful tool for aligning the Many Hands team around a shared visual direction, translating the feeling of the brand into something tangible and evocative.
From there we developed the logo marque, type treatment, brand guidelines, printed collateral, and social media profiles. With the brand foundation in place, we built a new WordPress website that brought the updated identity and messaging to life.
The result is a brand that speaks to who Many Hands is today — diverse, purposeful, and growing — while remaining deeply connected to the community it serves.
After 15 years, Many Hands was looking for a visual identity that would reflect and support our growth as a grantmaker. Erin and her team delivered a new logo and website that showcase the strength and forward-looking nature of our organization while honoring our past. Working with them was a terrific experience.
