Nonprofit Rebrand — Blanchet House
Blanchet House has served Portland for seventy years — meals, housing, and dignity for people the city too often looks past. The rebrand had to modernize the organization without loosening its grip on that legacy.
The brief asked the question directly: how does a 70-year-old organization rebrand while honoring its legacy? Blanchet House's story starts in 1952 with students serving soup in Old Town, and it never stopped. But seven decades of history can read as dated to the donors, volunteers, and partners an organization needs next.
The rebrand treated the legacy as the asset, not the obstacle. The work distilled what Blanchet House actually provides — not services, but a sequence of dignity — and made that the organizing idea for the messaging and identity.
The tagline is the theory of change in six words. A meal is how trust begins. A home is where stability takes root. A future is the point of all of it. It gives everyone — staff, donors, the people served — the same simple answer to what Blanchet House does.
This one matters personally: it's Portland work, for Portland people, in the neighborhood where the city's need and the city's generosity meet every day at lunch.