I have spent a lot of my working life telling people how important an organisation's brand is. However in recent years I have become a reformed character. Farewell to branding and all hail to the importance of reputation. I have left branding behind for no other reason than that it is a term that sticks in the gullet of too many charity folk.

Tell somebody that they have a great brand and they think that they are being compared to a commercial brand - like a can of Coke or a type of mobile phone. Tell somebody that they have a great reputation and they cannot dispute that this is a good thing. The importance of a good reputation is something that everybody can see matters.

Reputation is like a kind of organisational physical fitness. A good reputation makes people read your press releases, take your phone calls, read your mailings, use your services or approve your funding bids. In other words, reputation lets you do the same things you have already done but faster, quicker, better and more effectively.

In communications, reputation matters more than in most areas of a charity's life. When people are surfing the net the right reputation will make them visit your site. When people are looking at a policy report the right reputation will make people take your work seriously. In the media the right reputation will make a journalist read your press release or ring you with a query.

So every organisation should know who is responsible for building its reputation and external profile, who else has contributory roles in building (or potentially ruining) its reputation. While some organisations appear to be effortless in maintaining their reputation, most of us have to work an awful lot harder.

Joe Saxton is chair and founder of CharityComms. In his day job Joe is driver of ideas and co-founder of specialist research consultancy nfpSynergy.