ABSTRACT

Marketing techniques are well-accepted practices in today’s nonprofit organizations. Still, existing research on nonprofit marketing focuses on a small number of cases, and little is known about the sector-wide marketing practices. This study examines how a nonprofit’s marketing endeavors, measured by the percentage of expenses spent on marketing, vary across organizations, depending on such organizational contingencies as revenue mix, service type, and organizational activities. The analysis of the 2012 Statistics of Income Sample data shows that the proportion of marketing expense in total expenditure is positively associated with the proportions of commercial income and charitable contributions in total revenue and negatively with the proportion of government grants. The results also reveal that the proportion of marketing expense is more strongly associated with commercial revenue than with donation revenue, which implies that the current marketing practices have a stronger emphasis on increasing sales of goods and services. The findings also show significant differences across service types, as arts and environmental organizations spend more on marketing while health and human service organizations spend less than others.

摘要

营销技巧是当今非营利组织公认的做法。尽管如此，现有关于非营利营销的研究集中在少数案例上，对整个行业的营销实践知之甚少。本研究调查了非营利组织的营销活动（以营销支出的百分比衡量）如何因组织而异，具体取决于收入组合、服务类型和组织活动等组织突发事件。对2012年收入统计样本数据的分析表明，营销费用占总支出的比重与商业收入和慈善捐款占总收入的比重呈正相关，与政府补助的比重呈负相关。结果还表明，营销费用的比例与商业收入的相关性比与捐赠收入的相关性更强，这意味着当前的营销实践更强调增加商品和服务的销售额。调查结果还显示服务类型之间存在显着差异，因为艺术和环境组织在营销上的支出更多，而健康和人类服务组织的支出则少于其他组织。