January 15th, 2010 by lindsay
What’s in a Name?
UA client Just Detention International makes a great case study of how an organization can grow, while staying true to its roots. Founded by survivors of prisoner rape in 1980, JDI is the only organization in the U.S. working exclusively to end sexual abuse behind bars.
When they came to us in 2008, they still had the passion and dedication of their ex-prisoner founders, but were not being led by human rights attorneys. They had gone from being a grassroots activist organization to an international human rights watchdog. Our challenge was to update their identity in a way that allowed for new audiences and greater capacity, while maintaining their base of grassroots support.
A name change helped achieve this shift. Their old name, Stop Prisoner Rape, limited the audiences they could appeal to and locked them into the grassroots activist bracket. It captured the spirit, but not the potential, of their work.
Their current name positions them as authoritative experts, and is helping them direct more attention to their cause. Their contributions to a recent Department of Justice report on sexual abuse of inmates has won wide media coverage, including in publications such as the New York Review of Books and the Economist.
Read the full report here.
