Virtual stewardship in the age of new media: have nonprofit organizations' moved beyond Web 1.0 strategies?

• Stewardship has been identified as an important relationship cultivation strategy. The four dimensions of stewardship—reciprocity, responsibility, reporting, and relationship nurturing—consist of one‐way and two‐way messaging strategies that can be carried out in a variety of manners on the Internet using both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 technologies. Through a content analysis of the Nonprofit Times 100 organizations, this study found that nonprofit organizations overwhelmingly prefer to use their website to cultivate relationships with their stakeholders with stewardship strategies. Despite the hype of social media technologies, including Facebook, there remain many significant questions and obstacles to seeing nonprofits truly embrace social media communication.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health nonprofits online: the use of frames and stewardship strategies to increase stakeholder involvement

• This study examines connections between the conceptual frameworks of compassion fatigue (burnout toward social issues) and related stewardship strategies that are used as a form of best practices to address the issue of compassion fatigue. A content analysis of 117 health nonprofit websites (457 web pages) investigates how nonprofit health organization websites are framing their communication to various stakeholders and how the strategies of stewardship are employed online. Findings indicate that although health nonprofits are using positive frames and multiple stewardship strategies, more could be done by nonprofit marketing practitioners to facilitate positive, long-term relationships with stakeholders in an environment of increased communication and compassion fatigue.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of celebrity in endorsing poverty reduction through international aid

• ‘Celebrity endorsement’ is a strategy that is gathering increasing momentum in attempts to develop public awareness of the plight of the poor. 1
• 1 We say below the goal of endorsement is not necessarily donations but political commitment.
Understanding of public perceptions is clearly important for international organizations seeking to make use of celebrity in furthering their causes. This paper reports the results of a preliminary survey conducted among 100 members of the Irish public to evaluate levels of awareness of celebrity involvement in international development work and the public's opinions about such involvement. The survey instrument was semi-structured with some open-ended questions. The focus was on respondents' ability to identify celebrities associated with such work, and to elicit their opinions on those celebrities' perceived aims, knowledge of international development, and influence upon the respondent. It also requested opinions of the value of celebrity involvement more generally. The results suggest that respondents are generally able to distinguish between celebrities and their various causes. Most found their involvement to be valuable in raising the profile of charities, though only a small number claimed to be personally influenced by such activity. The respondents were fairly cynical as to the motives of most celebrities, whose involvement they felt served their own aims—namely publicity—first and foremost.
• Most respondents were more likely to be influenced by their perceptions of the character of the celebrity rather than their causes. They respected celebrities they felt were genuinely committed to the causes they espoused, but paradoxically, they felt such commitment was best demonstrated by the celebrity keeping a low profile and not actively seeking publicity. Long-term commitment to a given cause was also highly regarded. The results are discussed with regard to theories of social persuasion and the dilemma's facing celebrities who get involve in endorsement of charity aid or campaigns. More research is necessary to substantiate and further develop our findings.

Copyright ©2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How international nonprofits build brand equity

This paper describes an empirical model of brand equity for international nonprofit organizations and offers nonprofit managers suggestions for the management of their brands. The main areas of interest include:

• A review of the importance of branding for nonprofits, the lack of a brand equity models specifically for nonprofits, and the key differences between for‐profits and nonprofits.
• A proposed nonprofit brand equity model, based on a grounded theory and system dynamics approach.
• A series of specific managerial recommendations, for building nonprofit brand equity.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CSR and service quality in nonprofit organizations: the case of a performing arts association

• The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and marketing performance has been widely investigated recently, but mostly in relation to for-profit companies. This paper highlights the importance of this topic for nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Focusing on an Italian NPO operating in the performing arts and entertainment industry, two empirical studies (a quantitative survey and a qualitative exploratory enquiry) prove the strategic relevance of CSR in nonprofit contexts. The results demonstrate that CSR can be considered an additional dimension of the customer perception of service quality in NPOs and reveal that customer perception of the social responsibility of the studied NPO is strongly linked to its institutional mission and to the modalities through which it pursues that mission.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring what nonprofit branding can learn from contemporary art

• As more and more nonprofits seek to refashion themselves as brands, they tend to take inspiration from for‐profit organizations. Another domain that has had similar purposes to those of nonprofit branding for many years is contemporary art. This is an exploratory paper that looks at a recent trend in art, “message art,” and how it might inform nonprofit branding. Message art deals with many social issues that drive major nonprofits today including everything from pro‐environment causes to anti‐segregationist issues. This paper has two purposes: (1) to call attention to message art among nonprofit brand managers and (2) to explain how they can use this art. Message art is useful to the extent that it calls attention to new ideological trends and often provides selected pieces of art that can serve as exemplars of brand essence for relevant causes. Results are provided from a small, qualitative study of women's feelings about selected examples of feminist art. Two pieces of art drew the most positive responses. One piece, “Egyptian Rocket Goddess,” is felt to be a harbinger of Third Wave Feminism. Another piece, “Blessed Art Thou Among Women,” is felt to be an effective source of inspiration and direction for feminist organizations, which focus on mother–daughter relationships.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stakeholder communication in service implementation networks: expanding relationship management theory to the nonprofit sector through organizational network analysis

• Nonprofits increasingly participate in government-funded service implementation networks (SINs). However, extant research does not explore how organizations might strategically tailor communication to different stakeholder groups or use different communication tools for management. Stakeholders are not a monolithic group, and communicating with stakeholders within SINs is hypothesized to involve different forms of communication than communicating with stakeholders outside of the network. In this paper, relationship management theory is used to examine strategic communication with stakeholder groups within and outside of SINs. Both traditional and emergent (e.g., social media) forms of communication are examined. Survey and interview data on communication within and outside communication networks are analyzed using organizational network analysis techniques. The findings indicate strategic communication in the network differs from strategic communication with stakeholders outside the network. Within the network, organizations place varying emphasis on the use of traditional and emergent forms of communication for management, implying nonprofit managers funded under government grants continue to rely on face-to-face and phone communication and have yet to adopt emerging communication strategies to assist in the management of their programs with their partner organizations.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The strategic role of knowledge management in nonprofit organisations

• Australian nonprofit organisations (NFPs) operate in an increasingly competitive marketplace for funding staff and volunteers and donations. In this context, many NFPs are being driven to adopt more commercial practices in order to improve their strategic performance, particularly competitive positioning for donor appeal, staff retention and service strategy and delivery. Knowledge management (KM) is one commercial practice being explored and implemented by the NFP sector to support strategic performance and operations. Although the concept of knowledge management is basically understood, the implications and strategies to pursue this practice in a NFP context are under explored. This paper presents a KM implementation planning framework for discussion and further research in the NFP sector. Specifically, this paper proposes that NFP's unique missions, many and varied organisational structures and operational maturity requires a customised approach to knowledge management. Implications for competitive strategy and performance are discussed.

© 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finding an academic home for fundraising: a multidisciplinary study of scholars' perspectives

• The high‐demand, high‐paying field of fundraising does not have an academic home in higher education, which hampers fundraising research and education. Recent advances in fundraising education and research can be attributed to four different disciplines: public relations, marketing, nonprofit management, and higher education administration. This disjointed approach has impeded the empirical study of fundraising, the development of theory in the field, and the education of future fundraisers. The purpose of this study is to begin the process to scientifically identify an appropriate academic home for fundraising that benefits fundraising practice, advances scholarship, and strengthens America's nonprofit sector. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 scholars from multiple disciplines who had published articles on fundraising in the three major nonprofit management and philanthropy journals. Findings show that there is no consensus among scholars about whether fundraising belongs in public relations, marketing, or nonprofit management. Although this study found no consensus among fundraising scholars about the appropriate academic home for fundraising, it does identify areas of agreement and disagreement on pertinent topics and provides a benchmark to guide further discussions about locating fundraising within an academic discipline.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Volunteerism,compassion and religiosity as drivers of donations practices

• The topic of donations is one of high relevance and has been widely covered in contemporary marketing literature. It is a topic of interest to both theoreticians and practitioners alike, particularly due to its implicit links to fundraising activities and research. The reality of what makes an individual donor ultimately part with his money and give it away to a nonprofit organization is a hot contemporary topic. This study looks into the role of religiosity as a predictor of donations practices. Also volunteerism and compassion, two acts of pro‐social behaviour are analysed as predictors of donations practices. Using data collected from a survey of 612 charity donors in Portugal, the results show unequivocally that religiosity does influence donations practices, and so being a predictor of donations practices. Moreover, pro‐social behaviour is a predictor of donations practices when in the case of volunteerism, but not in the form of compassion.
• The findings are particularly useful for nonprofit organizations that want to attract and retain individual charitable donors and may also help to increase donation regularity, to obtain higher amounts, and donations both to religious and to secular organizations. Finally, it can be stated that the understanding of religiosity sheds light on knowledge about donations practices, and that this study also makes an important contribution to academia, as it is the first study conducted in Portugal that assesses the drivers of donations practices.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internal competition in a nonprofit museum context: development of a scale

• External competition and marketing have been extensively researched in the for-profit environment and to a lesser extent in the nonprofit environment. However, the concept of competition within a nonprofit organization is indicative of another type of competition, that of ‘internal competition’. Internal competition, operating in the nonprofit's endemic environment of scarce resources, takes place between departments, between individuals, and even within individuals in terms of time and energy spent on differing objectives. Internal competition manifests itself as internal conflicts over not only objectives but also the means for achieving the objectives. This research examines the construct of ‘internal competition’ in the museum portion of the nonprofit sector where marketing is often seen as a ‘necessary but evil’ tool essential for survival. Museum retailing, which has taken on an increasingly vital role in the financial support of museums, offers an opportunity to analyze the nature of internal competition and for developing a scale for measuring internal competition.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An intellectual capital perspective of competitive advantage in nonprofit organisations

• Very little systematic research has focused on applying the concept of intellectual capital (IC) within the nonprofit context; particularly in the highly competitive nonprofit environment. Based on a review of the existing literature, this paper firstly contributes to filling this gap by building an argument that IC can be utilised as a competitive tool in nonprofit organisations (NPOs). Secondly, an IC conceptual framework is proposed that explicitly links the attainment of competitive advantage with positive outcomes for NPOs. Finally, the paper discusses how the IC conceptual framework can be effectively utilised to foster competitive advantage in the nonprofit sector.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Segmenting nonprofit stakeholders to enable successful relationship marketing: a review

• When establishing relationships with stakeholders, nonprofit organizations must define appropriate target groups to allocate resources purposively. This paper explicates that link by reviewing the literature on nonprofit stakeholder segmentation and by discussing whether stakeholder segmentation is perceived as a prerequisite of successful relationship marketing by nonprofit researchers.
• We develop two conceptual dimensions of nonprofit stakeholder segmentation: the stakeholders segmented and the segmentation criteria used. A systematic database and journal search yielded 53 papers, categorized according to these two dimensions. The studies are described briefly, and the relevance of the relationship marketing concept is examined and discussed. Several research gaps emerge from this review, leading to propositions for further research.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social marketing with challenging target groups: smoking cessation in prisons in England and Wales

• Smoking levels among prisoners are much higher than amongst the UK population as a whole. Our research focuses on the development and implementation of a pilot smoking cessation project:
  • Using a social marketing process combined with the Health Behaviour Model, 159 participants, drawn from four prisons, undertook a smoking cessation programme.
  • Data was collected using a case study approach, with a variety of research methods: primarily depth individual and mini‐group qualitative interviews, but also document analysis and observation.
  • The findings draw on prisoners' perspectives in the context of the marketing mix in elements of the strategy design, implementation and evaluation.
  • The discussion identifies the need to maintain a consumer perspective, feeding into the marketing mix, and to identify and promote aspects of mutually beneficial exchange over and above basic health and monetary costs.
• The positive outcomes and insights gained show that using a social marketing strategy, as part of a smoking cessation programme, has important policy and practice implications. Lessons could be applied to other health issues and in similar settings such as forensic mental health.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Online stakeholder targeting and the acquisition of social media capital

• The diffusion of social media has opened new possibilities for targeted stakeholder communication and, with it, new forms of organizational resources. This article examines the nexus between social media-based stakeholder communication and the acquisition of social media-based resources, referred to here as social media capital. After laying out a conceptual mapping of both targeted stakeholder communication and social media capital, the article turns to an inductive analysis of the relationship between the messages 117 US community foundations are sending to their core stakeholders on Twitter and subsequent levels of social media capital. The article thus contributes to the existing literature by elaborating new forms of targeted stakeholder communication, a new type of organizational resource, and the relationship between the two.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding public awareness of nonprofit organizations: exploring the awareness–confidence relationship

• Public confidence has often been viewed as a critical indicator of legitimacy within the nonprofit sector. Indeed, confidence is believed to be among one of the sector's most important commodities. Surveys, however, have shown that the public does not always have much confidence in the performance of nonprofit organizations. Although this lack of confidence is certainly concerning, few studies have assessed whether the public actually has any awareness of what nonprofit organizations are, and no studies have examined the personal characteristics associated with more (or less) nonprofit awareness. Thus, by using individual‐level data from a survey of public attitudes toward nonprofits in San Diego County (n = 1002), the purpose of this study was to explore how individual characteristics relate to nonprofit awareness and to examine the extent to which awareness of the sector influences confidence in the performance of nonprofit organizations. The findings from the study indicate that nonprofit awareness varies by several individual‐level characteristics—with many of those likely to be the most dependent on nonprofit services being the least aware of the sector. The findings also indicate that awareness of the sector is the most significant predictor of confidence in the performance of nonprofits.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of credibility in shaping attitudes toward nonprofit websites

• The study examines the factors that impact the perceptions of consumers when visiting a nonprofit website. Measures of online communications effectiveness in the for‐profit environment are applied to the nonprofit world.
• Consumer reactions to two major nonprofit websites provide insight into the relationship between website credibility and attitude toward the site.
• The study points to the importance of several credibility measures (particularly those related to site design) that are significantly related to attitude toward the site.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE SOCIAL ROLE OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE IN BRITAIN: AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE. PART II

In Part I of this paper,²it was suggested that a concern for the social responsibilities of large business enterprises had received far less explicit attention in Britain than it has in the United States. In the latter it has preoccupied corporate managers, business critics, scholars, trade unionists and the general public for more than a generation. My analysis of the reasons for the comparatively lower degree of British concern with the social role of business enterprise stressed the importance of the following seven factors:

• 1 There exists in Britain (relative to the United States) greater reliance on publicly owned enterprises about which the public policy debate concerning the social role of business institutions has been focused.
• 2 British acceptance of corporate size and market dominance is greater than in the United States.
• 3 A long-standing governmental involvement in economy and society has characterized Britain's political economy.
• 4 A pre-emption of societal leadership functions by non-business élites has occurred in Britain.
• 5 The impact of Britain's social structure has produced an informal Clite consensus regarding a limited social role for business.
• 6 There is a British tradition of according privacy to business and other social institutions.
• 7 There is a lesser degree of‘professionalism’ in management practice–both in terms of substance and style–in Britain when compared with the United States.

     

Can you market God? A case study of the ‘God Speaks’ social marketing campaign

• Public service campaigns, spanning more than 60 years and thousands of mass media advertisements, have asked individuals to take actions such as “Say No to Drugs” and “Keep America Beautiful,” as well as to support various nonprofit organizations. A case study of the “God Speaks” religious social marketing campaign is offered as an example of a non-traditional campaign that provides insights for future endeavors. Although the campaign, which began as a local paid media effort, appeared to have little measurable impact on attitudes and behavior, it was able to generate extensive non-paid media coverage that greatly increased its reach.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of nonprofit brand equity on individual giving intention: mediating by the self‐concept of individual donor

• Currently nonprofit organizations have to rely more on individual donors and less on the government for funding. Therefore, understanding the individual donor from the perspective of nonprofit has been of increasing interest to nonprofit marketers. In this research, the effects of nonprofit organizational brand equity and individual self‐concept on individual giving intention were studied by using survey to selected 393 valid respondents in China. The empirical results indicated that, (1) the three dimensions brand personality, brand image, and brand awareness of the nonprofit organization has positive direct impact on individual giving intention; (2) brand personality and brand awareness of the nonprofit organization has positive direct impact on the self‐concept of individual donor; (3) the self‐concept of individual donor has positive direct impact on individual giving intention; and (4) the self‐concept of individual donor mediates significantly the relationships between brand personality, brand awareness, and individual giving intention, while not significantly between brand image and individual giving intention.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.