Coping with success: new challenges for nonprofit marketing

In the tight, competitive economic climate of the 1990s, nonprofits are as concerned with marketing as are for-profit organizations. But nonprofit marketing is undoubtedly more complicated than conventional business marketing. Nonprofits have multiple, nonfinancial objectives; they can't rely on a risk cushion; they cater to multiple publics, including customers who are often not the ones who pay; they can collaborate as well as compete with competitors; and they garner more public attention, both positive and negative, than the average business. In this paper, Gallagher and Weinberg review the difficulties associated with introducing marketing into nonprofits and highlight the new challenges facing nonprofits that have successfully adopted a marketing orientation.