Last week, I moderated a roundtable on branding for 10 non-profit attendees at the HBS Club of NY’s Social Enterprise Summit. Given the focus on the conference, I expected the financial crisis to be the topic they would most want to talk about, and it was, though they talked about long term issues rather than what you might expect, the immediate issues of survival. I guess that’s the difference between non-profits and for-profits, non-profit leaders are in it for the long-term.  

Non-profits see the crisis as a system problem and look at long-term metrics vs business’ focus on how to get through the next 90 days. Corporate managers look at measures of effectiveness almost exclusively through the lens of financial value, while non-profits (and as it turns out countries in Europe as well) measure well-being and happiness as well. Think about the ripple effect of how that simple change in key measures from GDP to Well-Being would alter behavior among businesses and government. Brand too could change, perhaps even more radically, from focusing on a brand’s contributions to well-being rather than benefits that add to perceptions of wealth.