case study

Generosity, Made Visible

CLIENT

Winnipeg Foundation

Project

Brand Platform, Identity & Launch Video

services

INSIGHTS

strategy

go to market

01. THE CLIENT

As Canada's first community foundation, Winnipeg Foundation has spent more than a century connecting the people of Winnipeg with the local charities and projects that need their support most.

Since 1921, its endowment model has pooled gifts from generous Winnipeggers into a permanent fund whose returns give back to the city, year after year. In 2025, that meant $115 million distributed to roughly 1,000 organizations. With over 100 years of giving under its belt, it was looking to turn that same care back on itself and sought out Brandish to lead the research, strategy, identity, and launch behind the brand for the Foundation's next century.

02. THE CHALLENGE

A century of funding has made the Foundation integral to Winnipeg, but its role has been almost invisible within the city.

Because grants flow through other organizations, Winnipeggers met the outcomes without ever meeting the institution. When we surveyed the city in 2024, half of respondents had never heard of the Foundation, and awareness was weakest among younger Winnipeggers, the donors and advocates of the next twenty years. The people closest to the organization trusted it deeply, and described its brand as dated, quiet, and hard to explain.

03. THE INSIGHT

The research kept returning to one thing:

Winnipeggers describe their city through acts of generosity: a neighbour’s kindness, fierce community pride, the instinct to lift each other up.

That reframed the entire problem. The Foundation did not need to convince the city to care more. It needed to help people see their own actions, their neighbours, and the Foundation as parts of the same continuing story.

04. THE SOLUTION

This insight is exactly what we set out to capture in their new brand.

This was more than an identity refresh.

The brand is rooted in a simple but powerful truth: what connects Winnipeg is more than geography or history. It's the generosity of its people. Working closely with the Foundation, we helped uncover and articulate that story, creating a brand that celebrates the spirit of giving that has shaped the city for generations.

And it's built to keep telling that story, forever. The brand is designed to show generosity where it actually lands, in the neighbourhoods, charities, and people the Foundation supports every day. At the heart of it is a new brand platform:

Generosity Forever.

A theme that honours the lasting gift of Winnipeggers who've shaped the city, while inspiring future generations to do the same.

05. THE MAKING

We listened before we led—surveys, interviews, street conversations, and a full brand audit.

And it told one story: a trusted institution was buried under decades of competing sub-brands and inconsistent channels.

The result of our research was a new brand platform and messaging, a complete visual identity and a comprehensive suite of brand assets designed to work everywhere the Foundation shows up, all aligned to the new Generosity Forever platform.

We also supported content strategy and copywriting for the Foundation's new website, built in collaboration with Mangrove, and partnered with Enjoy Creative on the launch film, Love Letter to Winnipeg.

As part of the evolution, the organization now presents itself publicly as Winnipeg Foundation — dropping "The" to close a century of distance and hand the brand back to the city it serves.

It's a warmer, more inclusive identity, but the purpose behind it hasn't changed: its values of Trust, Equity, Collaboration, and Responsiveness continue to guide the work, and its endowment model remains the cornerstone of its promise to support Winnipeg, now and forever.

06. WHY THIS ALL MATTERS

Numbers rarely move people the way stories do, and that's the truth at the heart of this rebrand.

Winnipeg Foundation distributes tens of millions of dollars a year, but its real currency has never been dollars. It's the everyday acts of generosity happening across the city, sustained by a model built so no gift ever runs out. The new brand doesn't just make the Foundation easier to understand, it hands Winnipeggers a mirror, showing them that the generosity they already carry is exactly what keeps their city moving forward.