Rising to the challenge

Today there are many challenges facing our Not for Profit (NFP) organisations, the foremost being the current Government policy for funding of many community service programs is now to be tender based.

This ‘open market’ equates to stiff competition for NFP’s by opening the door to large multinational companies to participate in the social service arena; an arena that has traditionally been dominated by community based organisations whose philosophy is client and serviced based.

These corporate organisations have power, status and the resources to influence and are in a position to act immediately.

Their philosophical base is profit centered and to quote a large corporate that is showing great interest in moving into the social service sector – “we re-invest profits that we believe will benefit our members, including business, health services and the community.”

What can NFP’s do to protect their organisation and clients from these profit centered corporates?

Become commercial and embrace a business model while remaining client centric and maintaining their integrity.

This will require NFP’s to:

Develop a different mind set
Embrace a marketing discipline
Become visible and accessible
Developing a strong brand
Let the community know who you are, what you do for your clients and how you did it.

This may seem like a ‘big ask’ for a NFP organisation, however assistance is readily available through Marketing professionals. These professionals are very experienced in assisting organisations to meet the above requirements, move forward and be a ‘force to be reckoned with’ in the current funding/economic climate.