Marketing in the Context of Small Non-Profit Organisations

The application of the marketing concept has been accepted as appropriate in the non-profit context. Non-profit market orientation scales arguably fail to capture the main dimensions of marketing, as it is practiced and understood by smaller non-profit organisations (NPOs) that dominate the non-profit landscape in small countries like Bulgaria. The paper presents the results from a mixed method research study that included in-depth interviews with managers of prominent Bulgarian NPOs and structured interviews with representatives of active non-profit organisations in Bulgaria. The research aimed to understand how active Bulgarian NPOs implement the marketing concept and to establish the main dimensions of marketing orientation in this context. The results showed that non-profit marketing is mostly implemented through brand building and communication activities. Furthermore, donors tend to significantly limit the use of marketing instruments to avoid the commercialisation of non-profit initiatives, which reduces the ability of grant-dependent organisations to apply a comprehensive and consistent marketing strategy. We established that influencing the environment is an overarching motive for NPOs to be marketing oriented and we introduce the concept of impact orientation as a potential dimension of non-profit marketing orientation. Impact orientation was identified as one of the main dimensions of the nonprofit marketing orientation of active Bulgarian NPOs.