engleski

THE ROLE OF MARKETING STRATEGY IN OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

The role of marketing in the sustainability of nonprofit organizations is in the focus of researchers globally, but no consensus, on its importance and effects, has yet been reached. Particular emphasis in this subject should be put on marketing strategy. Given the complexity of the nonprofit sector, from its basic determinants to specifics of each organization, it is not surprising that nonprofits often use marketing activities selectively and intuitively, while at the same time, almost completely ignore the effect of implementing a complete marketing strategy. The reason for this lies in the belief that too much concern about strategy and positioning puts in the background the fact that efficiency is a key factor in the success of the organization. It can be concluded that the implementation of marketing strategy depends on objective factors such as lack of resources, staff and skills, but also subjective factors, especially the orientation of nonprofit organizations in the humanitarian part of work, which often avoids overemphasizing the cost of marketing activities. This is due to the fear that key stakeholders will get the impression that the orientation of the organization is too similar to the profit sector, and therefore lose interest in supporting the effort of the organization in their charitable work. In this way, the nonprofit sector is in a vicious circle of rejecting those tools and principles that can significantly help them grow and develop. The main goal of this paper is to determine the role of marketing strategy in the overall performance of nonprofit organizations. It is argued that the level of awareness of marketing strategy (as well as its elements) importance impacts the achievement of organizational goals. The empirical part of the paper is based on the research conducted on a sample of nonprofit organizations in Croatia and results suggest that non-profit organizations in Croatia don't have their own marketing strategy and only partly and insufficiently use its elements, which impact their overall performance. Additionally, results suggest that nonprofits are aware of the marketing strategy benefits, but, due to objective (lack of financial, material and human resources) and subjective (resistance to the implementation of business-like practices, „betrayal“ of humanitarian principles) reasons, don't use it and thus endanger, in the long run, their survival.

marketing strategy, marketing activities, nonprofit, sustainability

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