PRODUCT AND BRAND MANAGEMENT

C A S E A N A LY S I S

HABITANT FOR HUMANITY

INTERNATIONAL
BRAND VALUATION

I N T E R N AT I O N A L M A N A G E M E N T I N S T I T U T E , N E W D E L H I
E X E C U T I V E P O S T G R A D U AT E D I P L O M A I N M A N A G E M E N T

SUBMITTED TO:
P R O F. B A L A S U B R A M A N I A N

S U B M I T T E D B Y:
VINEET DIXIT
MODAK PRIY
SUDEEP KUMAR KUNDU
A L O K G U P TA
S AT E N D R A T O K A S

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HABITANT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL: BRAND
VALUATION

1. What are the strengths of HFHI?

A habitat (which is Latin for "it inhabits") is an ecological or environmental area that
is inhabited by a particular animal or plant species. It is the natural environment in
which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds (influences and
is utilized by) a species population. Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit,
ecumenical Christian housing ministry. HFHI seeks to eliminate poverty housing and
homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and
action. The following are the strengths of HFHI .

1. Great Volunteer labour Base:

Through volunteer labour and donations of money and materials, Habitat builds and
rehabilitates simple, decent houses with the help of homeowner (partner) families.
The ultimate purpose of Habitat for Humanity is to make poverty housing and
homelessness become socially, politically, and religiously unacceptable in today’s
world. Habitat for Humanity will prove enjoyable and fulfilling. From working on
Habitat construction sites and helping to produce Habitat’s newsletter, to manning
special events, running our committees, and designing our homes, volunteers greatly
impact every facet of our organization.

2. Innovative program to create buzz:

Habitat developed innovative program which had been initiated in developing

countries to increase the people’s ability to afford decent homes. examples of this.
Save and built program was also adapted to single family that saved up their home
income over the time and built it in the incremental stages.

3. Effective marketing communication mix:

Habitat advocates its project and gives the clear message to the general public. Big
celebrity like U.S. President denoted the time building of a home . Habitat also
organize the “world Leader Build” event in which 28 heads of the state and
government from 26 countries 26 countries including president BUSH along with
thousand volunteers worked together to built 1175 houses. This event drew the world
wide attention to the organization. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter became
involved with Habitat for Humanity in 1984 and has since become its most high-
profile proponent. He has been involved in fund-raising and publicity as well as actual
homebuilding, taking part in the annual Jimmy Carter Work Project "blitz build"

4. Free of Debt and easily financially viable to poor and needy persons :

Habitat is a good deal program for poor persons. This was non profit generating
organization. A common saying is that Habitat provides a hand up, not a hand-out. In

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addition to a down payment and monthly mortgage payments, homeowners invest
hundreds of hours of their own labour -- sweat equity -- into building their Habitat
house and the houses of others. Habitat houses are sold to partner families at no
profit, financed with affordable, no-interest loans ranging from 3-30 years in length.
The homeowners' monthly mortgage payments are placed in a “Revolving Fund for
Humanity”, being used to build still more Habitat houses in the future. Throughout the
world, the cost of Habitat houses varies from as little as $800 in some developing
countries to an average of $46,600 in the United States.
Family selection committees choose homeowners based on their level of need, their
willingness to become partners in the program, and their ability to repay the no-
interest loan. Every affiliate follows a non-discriminatory policy of family selection.
Neither race nor religion is a factor in choosing the families who receive Habitat
houses. Whether to a local Habitat affiliate or to HFHI, donations are used as
designated by the donor. Gifts received by HFHI that are designated to a specific
affiliate or building project are forwarded to that affiliate or project. Undesignated
gifts are used where most needed.

5: Word wide presence:

Habitants for Humanity International (HFHI) was founded in the 1976 by Millard
and Linda Fullar, Founded as a Non- Profit, ecumenical Christian housing
ministry that build houses in partnership with low income families. By 2002,
HFHI had build 133,000 houses around the world, providing shelter to 650,000
people in more than 3,000 communities.

6: High Brand Value:

HFHI has high brand value. We can understand unaided awareness has doubled
between 1996 and 2002. Focus group studies and surveys conducted among the
people. The result of the findings was in favor of HFHI and customer perceived it is a
very high brand. Result shows that HFHI enjoyed High profile and popular brand
support.
Inter brand analysis was based on a brand –strength and brand risk associated with
that. HFHI brand strength score was 76 out of100.

7. Other strength

Other strength associated with brand like HFHI leads to spiritual motivation;
Flexibility for volunteer, inertia, and tax benefit are other core strength associated
to HFHI. Habitat’s Organization structure has three layers (local and national
affiliates, area and regional affiliates and HFHI head quarters. Regional office
plays coordination support and cross- learning role for international affiliates.

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Question 2 What strategic challenges in HFHI facing?

Answer 2. Habitat for Humanity International is a non-profit organization that builds

houses in partnership with low-income families. Established, in the year 1976 by
Millard and Linda Fullar under the concept of “partnering housing”, the organization
worked under the sole mission of

“Partnering with God and people everywhere, with all walks of life ,to develop
communities with people in need, by building and renovating houses so that there are
descent houses in descent communities in which every person can experience god love
and can live and grow into all that god intended”.

By the year 2002, HFHI had recorded impressive revenue of $162 million, with some
74% of funding coming from individual contributors, up from 63% in 2001. Total
estimated revenue world wide was around $689 million.

The present day challenges faced by HFHI were as follows:

1. Corporate Partnership: Over the past few years HFHI has been approached
by many corporate and asked to form partnership. These corporate associate
with HFHI because Americans love to work for non profit organizations. The
volunteer aspects of HFHI work enabled employees of partner corporations to
become directly involved in HFHI which was viewed as strong positive aspect
of partnership. The volunteer activities offered to corporate can be used as part
of their training program and creative leadership programs. Traditional
partners have included companies like home building industries, banks, no of
foundations etc. HFHI has always aimed to stay with those partners where the
reason for brand linkage is clear. Now since the attention to corporate social
responsibility is increasing among fortune 500 companies, partnering with non
profit organization would be at high and these companies are always looking
for deals where they could associate themselves with activities and Brand
name of Habitant. HFHI is still unsure whether sharing the brand valuation
information with corporate partners would benefit HFHI in monetary terms.
There is also a risk of co branding where the PR of the corporate can be
spoiled if in any case a homeowner is a convicted felon. Thorough the study
conducted by Interbrand, HFHI knew that it had a good brand valuation but it
was unclear which brand drivers are strong and need to be protected. Also
knowing about the widespread recognition of HFHI the key question before
HFHI was how to promote brand value as an assessment tool used by NGO
community.
2. Maintaining Culture: HFHI was formed with a strong concept of being a
Christian organization who believed that they are guided by the love of god
has for his people and the major chunk of the revenue came from churches
.The challenge now was to how do the company grow and go into countries
where the population is non Christian without losing their own identity. The
more diverse and popular the organization becomes the more it is difficult to
grow globally.
3. Achieving mission through growth: The objective of the organization to
eliminate poverty housing in the world was very ambitious but as much
success the company had was just a drop in the ocean. A key challenge was

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 how to grow with limited resources. Growing into countries like US, Europe
the organization was aiming at developing countries but the major challenge
was the raising of funds and fulfilling the ambitions objectives of poverty
housing. Another important issue was how to manage an organization that is
non profitable and has a huge base into various countries worldwide.
Recruiting enough and efficient people and managing them were tough.
4. Expanding the mission: One issue that was currently being evaluated was the
possibility of providing temporary housing for persons displaced by disasters.
The company get calls when there were any natural disasters and people were
very supportive of these activities. However that’s not really the core of
company’s business historically, company might be in risk by doing to much
in this field.
5. Protecting the brand: One of the Habitat’s key challenges was effectively
protecting the brand. Although Habitat don’t having direct control over their
brand to the degree they would like. Within the United States, Habitat’s
reputation varied by location depending on local market conditions and
effectiveness of the local affiliate. To address the brand protection issue,
company had initiated a new corporate identity program to achieve greater
standardization of the Habitat brand throughout the organization.

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Question 3 Do you believe $1.8 billion valuation? Is it too high or too low?

Answer 3.

More than just a name or logo, a brand is a relationship in which value--revenue,

loyalty, verbal support, etc.--is exchanged for tangible and intangible benefits, such as
the satisfaction of helping a family build a decent house.

Currently, some of Habitat's strongest brand attributes include the mission to provide
affordable housing, the tangible nature of Habitat's work and the potential for personal
involvement. According to Interbrand, Habitat's brand impacts its house-building
effectiveness in some important ways: It communicates key attributes of the
organization and differentiates it from competitors; the brand attracts volunteers and
reinforces the experience; and it increases marketing efficiency.

Non-profit brands have a dual objective: to enhance fundraising and to ensure the
implementation of the organization's mission. In addition, non-profit organizations
tend to be more decentralized, with little formal hierarchy. This can mean that
implementing activities that protect the brand or attempting to update or modify the
brand often meets with resistance internally. The brand is the glue holding the
components of the global organization together. It is important for any organization,
for-profit or non-profit, to know the value of their brand so that they can allocate
adequate resources to nurturing, building, and protecting it. For many non-profit
organizations and consumer goods companies, their brand is, along with their people,
the most important asset they have. Tracking the value of that asset and understanding
what activities increase or decrease asset value is key to managing it effectively. As
traditional sources of funding erode for nonprofits, an increasing number are turning
to the private sector for funding. Businesses are also increasingly searching for
opportunities to form partnerships and co-branding programs with high-profile
nonprofits. If nonprofits are unaware of the value of their brand, they run the risk of
not extracting the full financial value from these partnerships and co-branding
opportunities that they deserve. HFHI a non-profit organization that works on annual
revenue of $689 million worldwide, if seen from the perspective of brand value it was
discovered that it had the same brand value as Starbucks the worlds biggest coffee
chain i.e. $1.8 Billion was very high. This high brand value could be aligned with the
mission of the organization to meet the changing needs and challenges. By aligning
the current mission with their target donors, HFHI can create a brand identity that
both more accurately reflects the organization's activities and mission, and resonates
with their target donors and or volunteers.

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Question 4 What are the benefits and risks of valuing a NGO brand like HFHI?

Answer 4 Habitat for Humanity International ( HFHI ) is a nonprofit, ecumenical

Christian housing ministry that sought to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness
from the world. HFHI positioned itself as an organization “ helping people to help
themselves ”. The HFHI built and rehabilitate simple houses with homeowner
( partner ) families. The houses were built with no profit added and no interest
charged, financed by a revolving fund for Humanity. The fund’s money came from
new homeowner’s mortgage payments, donations, no-interest loans provided by
supporters and fund raising activities. In May 2002, Interbrand conducted study of
HFHI’s brand value. Interbrand’s brand analysis was based on a brand-strength score
and brand-risk model that scored a brand relative to a notional ideal brand against
seven core attributes associated with strong brands – Market, Stability, Leadership,
Geography, Trend , Support and Protection. HFHI’s resulting brand strength score
(BSS) was calculated at 76 out of 100. Based on the study of HFHI, there are
following benefits and risks associated with the Brand Valuation of a NGO –

Benefits -

(1) First, an organization’s brand is a valuable asset that can be leveraged in

corporate partnerships to open the door for new business opportunities such as
Cobranding, Licensing and other partnering opportunities. In addition, by
comparing brand values , an organization is able to select appropriate partners
and extract the correct value from each partnership.
(2) Secondly, knowing the value of the brand and communicating it effectively
can result in budgeting the funds and human resources necessary to protect and
grow the brand asset.

Risks –

(1) If the NGOs are unaware of the value of their brand, they run the risk of not
extracting the full financial value from partnerships and co-branding
opportunities that they deserve.
(2) Sharing the Brand Valuation information with the corporate partners may lead
to dilution of the brand.