Mission-Based Marketing by Peter C. Brinckerhoff

Author:Peter C. Brinckerhoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

All of us, including customers, are wrong now and then. But that does not mean that the relationship changes because of the error. You are still selling something, and they are still buying. Act that way.

Here are a couple of other notes on the new paradigm of funders as customers. First, if one or more of your funders are from state or local government, and if you are active in your state trade association, you may well be interacting with the same people in two roles: vendor and lobbyist/activist/advocate. Thus, one day you work with the state department, wearing the hat of executive director/CEO, and ask, “How can I make your job easier?” and the next day you come in the same door as a member of the state association and object to a new regulation, rate, oversight clause, or piece of legislation. This perennial schizophrenia can be trouble. One way to reduce the problem is to clearly and repeatedly identify yourself as a representative of the XYZ Association, perhaps going to the level of even wearing a name tag with the association’s logo on it when you are doing its business. However, even that does not guarantee that the state or local agency staff will differentiate between your differing hats. I am not suggesting that you need to give up lobbying. Just be aware of, and try to minimize, the potential cost.

Second, in many cases, I have seen organizations start to treat their funders like customers and, over the succeeding months, the funders have begun to respond by treating the organization more like a vendor, and less like a slave. In three cases, the funders started to let the nonprofit be accountable for outcomes, not for process, reducing their paperwork load. In two other cases, the funder changed its funding method to allow the organizations to keep what they earned—the ultimate indicator of the vendor-customer relationship. Here is a case yet again of leading by example, and having people follow your lead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.