Linking Marketing to Nonprofit Performance

Abstract

The critical role of marketing in driving nonprofit performance has been recognized for decades. However, in practice, there has been a disturbingly weak acknowledgment and/or implementation of marketing practices across nonprofits to date. Marketing is often perceived as an avoidable and costly overhead. The issue is complicated by the fact that nonprofit performance is relatively difficult to measure and may often comprise multiple tangible and intangible outcomes with different (linear and nonlinear) functional forms. Furthermore, nonprofit performance outcomes often depend on behavioral and attitudinal changes of the target segment. The authors address these challenges by presenting a methodology to link marketing efforts to nonprofits’ mission-based performance outcome(s). The authors apply their approach with data from a large nonprofit and find empirical support for the notion that marketing can play a pivotal and significant role in improving nonprofits’ mission-based performance outcomes. The findings help present a strong case for nonprofit leaders and policy makers to fund and treat marketing as a critical investment to drive nonprofit entities’ performance.