I thought they had developed an irrevocably negative rep from past actions. That's usually why entities change names.

Agreed.

When Real Change redid its image recently, it got rid of its bread and roses icon, which made sense, and replaced it with an abstract box with a white arrow descending forward and a black arrow ascending backward, with both arrows sort of colliding but sort of overlapping. Huh?

Former masthead: "Puget Sound's Newspaper for the Poor and Homeless."

New masthead: "Issues, Insight, Impact."

Still a great organizaton with great people. Redsign feels watery, though.

Here's another side to that coin: I used to donate every year to an enviro group, but now I can't remember what they're called.

So shouldn't a vague name like "The Stranger" be changed to something straightfoward and self-explanatory, like "The Free Weekly for Urban Hipsters and Those Who Like Them?"

Just a thought.

But then you'd have to find a new reason to say "I'm going to go pick up a Stranger" a couple times a week.

Transportation Choices Coalition already had a lousy name -- Alt-Trans -- which they got rid of several years ago. Now if they could just do something about "TCC", which gets really confusing at Tacoma Community College.

How insensitive! Don't you understand that there are consultants out there who need work, and that these sorts of "rebrandings" are their bread and butter? WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYABLE?????

Ms Vel-Duray hits the nail right on the head. Here's my suggestion for a most excellent, hip, trendy NGO name: BeatsWorking.

That is a stupid ass name that means nothing! FutureWise is also a dumbass name but SightLine sounds like some weird hunting organization.

SightLine sounds like a land surveyor company.

Brilliant. Glad to see my donation money being put to good use.

Not to be defensive here (full disclosure, I work at the office formerly known as NEW), but Northwest Environment Watch wound up being a sucky name for us.

A) We do a lot of work in BC, and they don't think of themselves as Northwest. In fact, a lot of folks up there kind of resent the US - so the name was often a barrier.

B) Yeah, we do a lot of stuff on the environment, but also reproductive rights, economic security, human health, yadayada. So every time we talked to reporters about one of those other things, we had to explain that we weren't just an environmental group -- which is tough to do with the word "environment" in your name.

C) Some people thought "Watch" was too passive.

Whatever. Name changes are annoying (though not too costly - the advice was mostly free), people carp about stuff, then we all move on.