”Studio Zumfelde worked out what it was that we didn't know we needed. The process was surprisingly easy and enjoyable and what came back was a clear, strong brand voice that's made our marketing, fundraising and public-facing work easier and more effective."
— Rebecca Wheeler, Business Manager, Vranch House Children’s Charity
Executive summary
A bold identity to fundraise with confidence.
Vranch House Children’s Charity supports more than 1,500 children across Devon every year. But over time, people had stopped seeing it as a charity. Instead, it was perceived as an NHS service and school, meaning many potential donors assumed its work was already fully funded.
We created a new identity built around specialist warmth: combining the credibility of expert healthcare with the compassion families experience every day. The result is a confident, distinctive brand that helps Vranch House communicate its charitable purpose as clearly as its clinical expertise.
To make the brand work in practice, we built the entire system in Canva, with templates and assets the team could use immediately. From launch day, they were creating professional, consistent communications in-house, equipping them to fundraise with greater confidence and impact.
The client: Devon’s only specialist service of its kind
Vranch House started with one family. Kay and Charles Vranch needed somewhere for their son Alan who had cerebral palsy. Nowhere existed, so they built it. From that beginning it grew into Devon’s most comprehensive specialist service for children with physical conditions.
Today it’s three things under one roof. A special school. A clinical therapy centre covering physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, hydrotherapy, hippotherapy, music therapy and more. And an outpatient service reaching children and families right across the county. Over 1,500 children, aged 0 to 19, every year.
No other organisation in Devon offers the full breadth of services that Vranch House does. The approach is different too. It doesn’t put children on a fixed pathway. It asks what the child actually needs, finds a way to make that happen, and wraps around the whole family rather than treating the child in isolation. When a family needs something Vranch House doesn’t provide, the team points them to someone who does.
Around half the running costs come from charitable donations. The rest comes from NHS and Devon County Council contracts. That funding model sat at the heart of the brand challenge.
The challenge: people had forgotten Vranch House was a charity
Across Devon the perception of Vranch House had hardened into NHS service and school. That sounds harmless. It isn’t. If people don’t know you rely on donations, they never think to give. Potential donors were self-excluding before they were ever asked.
“If we’re not out there and they don’t know anything about us, we’re just not in that race.” — Kate, CEO, Vranch House Children’s Charity
The visual identity was making it worse. The pastel backgrounds, rainbow motifs and cloud-shaped text boxes read younger and less serious than the organisation really is. Vranch House delivers clinical care, employs qualified clinicians and has governance that would stand up to any scrutiny. The brand was underselling everything it had earned the right to say.
And there was a deadline with a name on it. A new Head of Fundraising was joining and needed materials she could carry into a room full of corporate partners and feel proud of from day one.
Key considerations
A few things shaped every decision we made.
- Apprehension about hiring an agency at all. For a charity, every pound spent on branding can look like a pound taken away from the children. We had to be worth it, and be seen to be worth it.
- The team needed to run the brand themselves. No design skills required, no ongoing agency bills to keep the materials coming.
- A hard deadline tied to the new Head of Fundraising’s first day.
- Two audiences pulling in different directions. Corporate donors who need authority. Families who need warmth. The brand had to do both without fracturing.
Recognise any of this in your own organisation? We’re happy to talk it through.
Our approach: specialist warmth, designed for the fundraiser first
We led with a single positioning idea: specialist warmth. The feeling that your child is in expert hands and having a good time. Confident without being corporate. Warm without being infantile. Joyful without being chaotic.
Then we set a priority that ran through everything. Design for the Head of Fundraising first, families second. Not because families matter less, but because a brand confident enough to win a boardroom will naturally reassure a parent too. So every decision got held up against one test. Does this help someone stand in a room full of potential corporate partners and promote Vranch House with confidence?
We wanted something everyone could get behind. The children, their families, the staff, and a Head of Fundraising walking into a pitch. Bold and full of joy.
Discovery and brief
We started by listening, not pitching. That turned out to be the thing that set us apart. We got the brief, mapped the perception gap, and named the tension between fundraising authority and family warmth out loud so we could design against it.
Brand identity development
We presented two logo directions so the team had a real choice, not a take-it-or-leave-it. We built a colour palette that carries both registers, warmth for families and authority for fundraising, with proper screen and print values. Typography was chosen with Canva and web use in mind, so the team could apply it without licence headaches. And we built the system to frame and elevate Vranch House’s own photography of children in therapy and learning, rather than compete with it. That photography is their strongest asset. The brand’s job is to make it sing.
Brand toolkit and Canva delivery
We produced a brand toolkit covering positioning rationale, usage rules, specs, tone-of-voice principles, dos and don’ts, and application examples. The team’s go-to reference for anything they make next.
Then we set the whole thing up in Canva. We uploaded the brand guidelines, logos, graphic elements, fonts and colours, and built core templates for social and print. The result is simple. The team can now produce all their own materials in-house, on brand, without needing a designer.
The results: a brand the team owns from day one
The hard metrics will come with time. What we can say already is what happened in the room.
- The core materials were ready for the Head of Fundraising’s first day, hitting the deadline.
- The whole brand was delivered through Canva, so the team is fully independent from day one.
- At the launch, the team embraced the tools with real enthusiasm and made the brand their own straight away.
- The client felt listened to rather than sold to, which is the difference that won us the work in the first place.
For a charity, that last point is the result that matters most. A brand the team is proud to use, and confident enough to put in front of corporate partners, supporting over 1,500 children a year in Devon.
Want a brand your team can actually run?
Let’s talk this week.
What made this different: designing for independence, not dependency
Most agency relationships are built on dependency. You need new materials, you come back, you pay again. We did the opposite, on purpose.
First, we listened before we led. The client had spoken to agencies that arrived with answers before they understood the question. We held back, got the brief properly, and let the strategy come from what we heard. That’s why the work landed.
Second, we designed for independence, not dependency. Delivering through Canva was a deliberate choice for a charity context. It means every pound spent on the brand keeps paying off, because the team can keep making things without coming back to us. For an organisation where branding spend is weighed against children’s services, that mattered.
Third, we resolved a real tension instead of dodging it. Fundraising authority and family warmth usually pull a brand in two directions. We built a system that holds both. Authority in the typography and structure. Joy in the colour and the way the photography is framed. It works in a corporate pitch deck and in a child’s therapy session. This same balance runs through our other charity and care-sector work. We built a growing care provider’s brand system, holding consistency across multiple sites without losing the warmth that reassures families.
Want similar results?
Here’s what you get working with us on a charity brand identity:
- A clear positioning that resolves the authority-versus-warmth tension, not a mood board of adjectives.
- A full brand system: logo in every format, colour, typography, photography direction and visual styling principles.
- A practical brand toolkit your team can actually use, not a document that sits in a folder.
- Your brand set up in Canva, with templates, so your team produces its own materials independently from day one.
Let’s talk about your brand.
No hard sell, just a useful conversation.
Studio Zumfelde specialises in strategic brand development for health and care organisations. Our sector expertise and data-driven approach help established businesses achieve their growth objectives through compelling brand positioning and digital transformation.
Frequently asked questions
How do you approach branding for a children’s charity?
We start by working out who the brand needs to work hardest for. For Vranch House, that was the Head of Fundraising, someone who has to walk into a room of corporate sponsors and promote the charity with confidence. Warmth for families comes second, not because it matters less, but because a brand that wins corporate trust reassures families too. We call this specialist warmth. Confident enough to command a boardroom, warm enough to mean something to the families of the 1,500 children Vranch House supports every year in Devon.
Can a small charity team manage their own brand after a rebrand?
Yes, if the system is built for independence from the start. For Vranch House we delivered the whole brand through Canva. Logos, colours, fonts, graphic elements and ready-made templates for social, print and presentations. The team can now produce all their own materials in-house, consistently, without needing a designer. The goal was never to create dependency on an agency. It was to give them a system so clear they could own it fully from day one.
How do you balance fundraising credibility with warmth in a charity brand?
It’s a genuine tension, and getting it wrong either way is costly. Too corporate and you lose the emotional connection that makes people give. Too warm and you lose the credibility that persuades sponsors and trusts to invest. For Vranch House the answer was a palette and visual system that carries both. Authority in the typography and structure, joy in the colour and the photography framing. The brand works in a corporate pitch deck and in a child’s therapy session.
What does a charity brand identity project typically include?
Usually a new or evolved logo in all formats and colourways, a full brand system covering colour, typography, photography direction and visual styling, a brand toolkit covering usage rules, tone of voice and application examples, and set-up in a tool like Canva so the in-house team can produce materials independently. For Vranch House we also covered print-ready business cards and letterhead, signage and vehicle guidance, and a homepage mock-up showing how the brand lives within their existing website.
How long does a brand identity for a charity take?
A focused charity brand identity, from brief to toolkit, typically takes around three months. Timing depends on the scope, how quickly feedback rounds move, and whether there’s a fixed external deadline like a new staff member starting. We always flag timeline risks early rather than letting them become problems.
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