Love and Hate – The Battle Between Brand and Fundraising

In the charity world, a quiet battle often rages between two camps: brand and fundraising. On one side, the brand team, champions of positivity, hope and dignity. On the other, fundraisers, wielding hard truths, raw emotion and a determination to stir action.

It’s a clash of love and hate.

Love, because brand is there to inspire. To lift hearts. To give people a sense that change is possible, that humanity is good, and that dignity matters. It deals in stories of transformation, in smiling faces, in vision and values. Brand work says: come with us, believe in this, we can do something amazing.

Hate, because fundraising often has to dive deep into pain. Into the urgent, the desperate, the unjust. It shows the mother who can’t feed her children, the elephant lying in its own blood, the young person at the edge of suicide. It doesn’t pull punches. It doesn’t have time. It says: look at this, feel this, now help.

Both approaches are right. Both are necessary. And yet they pull at each other.

Fundraisers can feel hemmed in by brand guidelines that insist on only the positive, the upbeat, the empowering. Brand leads can feel uneasy at fundraising materials that feel, at times, too raw, too emotional, too manipulative. The result? Tension. Compromise. A watering down of both impact and identity.

But here's the truth: love and hate aren’t opposites. They’re companions. You can’t have one without the other.

Fundraising needs brand – it needs the trust, the clarity, the sense of purpose that a strong brand gives. It needs to land somewhere. And brand needs fundraising – not just for income, but for urgency. For authenticity. For stories that move people, not just make them smile.

Hope, after all, doesn’t float in mid-air. It rises from despair. Light doesn’t just shine – it breaks through darkness.

As the great Leonard Cohen wrote: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Charities need to embrace that crack. That discomfort. That tension between love and hate. Because in that space – that messy, emotional, powerful space – is where people feel something. Where they care enough to act.

If we only show the light, we lose the contrast that makes people feel. If we only tell the happy stories, we forget why we exist in the first place.

We don’t need to choose between a beautiful brand and powerful fundraising. We need to let them inform each other. To accept that sometimes the most hopeful stories begin in pain. And that showing people the worst can lead them to do their best.

In the end, love and hate aren’t in battle. They’re in balance. And when we get that balance right, the impact is extraordinary.