Investing in modern marketing techniques, expertise, & tools would significantly drive fundraising results
Most Saudi charity organizations suffer from poor fundraising efforts because they still rely on individual networks and efforts
During the last decade, competition between charitable nonprofits for diminishing financial resources has inspired them to embrace new skills that will improve their fundraising ability while also serving their target groups better.
Although fundraising results are tied to the capacity to communicate to donors and persuade them to give, they are also tied strongly to functions that occur much earlier than the actual request for funds. In particular, they are tied to the level of satisfaction with the organization's services that is expressed by its primary components, i.e. those served by the organization's mission. A philanthropy positions itself best to compete for all kinds of support, including funds, by doing the following:
• carefully defining who its target audience are
• measuring the needs of its target group
• designing programs to suit those needs
• measuring the target audiences satisfaction with those programs
• using those results to fine tune its services regularly
• communicating the above to potential donors (and others) clearly and simply
This process is easily recognizable in the commercial business setting; it is called marketing. Transferral of marketing principles to the non-profit community happened about 1975 when business marketing genius Philip Kotler wrote Marketing for Nonprofits.
Hani Khoja, Marketing Expert & Founder of Elixir Marketing Consultancy argues that the context of marketing is in the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of a charitable non-profit’s programs, which have been carefully designed to bring about voluntary exchanges of values with target markets for the purpose of achieving organizational objectives.
The charity first measures the needs of its primary target group (clients, users, etc.) and then designs (or redesigns, or reaffirms) services to suit those needs. Asking focus groups of target audience regularly to review programs and react to them is the charitable non-profit world's version of market testing. It is a variation of what happens when you walk through a shopping mall and someone asks you to drink a sample of orange juice and react to the taste, colour, consistency, and smell of the product.
Hani further states that the ability of a charitable non-profit organization continually to adjust its services to suit client need is key to ensuring the organization's survival and its financial support.
The organization and the donors each seek something from each other. The constituent needs specific services. The charitable non-profit has two needs: maximum use of its service so as to justify its existence and financial resources.
The charitable non-profit which tests the acceptance of its programs by its target audiences often derives a second benefit from that test...an assessment of its image with a wide variety of target markets. An attempt to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in the mind of the audience may uncover a false impression, or an unmet need. The organization then can take steps to send targeted communications back into the community to correct the organization's image or to design a new service component. Many a group has been grateful to learn of such problems before they reach the media, or before beginning a fundraising campaign that might otherwise fail.
Hani states that we always need to remember that marketing is not public relations or publicity. Those are communications techniques to establish and circulate an image. Marketing is not sales. The sale is the exchange between the organization and the constituent or the organization and the donor.
