Nonprofit marketing – does strategic planning help?

Abstract

This article generally discusses the role marketing strategies play in promoting the nonprofit sector in its efforts to reach out and engage its audiences. Many nonprofit organizations consider the use of tactical marketing strategy as useful and essential. The success of the nonprofit sector is related to the wider environment in which it operates, such as the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological. Therefore, a carefully designed marketing strategy can help the nonprofit sector properly address the needs of the different target groups. The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which marketing ideas and strategies are created and implemented in the non-profit sector and the tools used to achieve its mission. Part of this process is to determine how management in nonprofit organizations views marketing, as well as challenges and opportunities related to the marketing efforts. In-depth interviews were conducted with senior representatives of organizations active in the media and journalism field and the results were processed with the software Atlas.ti. Analysis of secondary data, including findings from past research, documents, and different publications, is also used to elaborate the research problem. The article found out that even though there is an understanding of the importance of strategic communication in marketing operations, still it is not practiced sufficiently due to the lack of human resources and finances. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail in the article.

Keywords

• marketing
• civil society organizations
• strategic communication