Charities and the Usage of Marketing

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Some good parts to the answer and nice use of the Marketing Mix. Also good thatyou have used the positioning Cs. However, you don’t really mention marketing orientation or the whole area of understand/meeting/exceeding expectations. So you have shown good tactical understanding but you need to show more strategic understanding. Also, remember to read the question – if it mentions a concept (marketing orientation) then define and use the concept.

Charities do not need to understand the concept of marketing orientation because everyone knows that they are for a good cause.

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First, it is important to say that a nonprofit organization must use and understand the marketing concept, because despite being nonprofit, they must to finance their activities in the same way and inform about the services/products that they make produce/make available to others. The big difference is that the “sponsor” and “the service taker” are not the same person, as a regular business “costumer”. This increases the difficulty of funding and make more urgent to use marketing to do it, as it is needed to be done in both sides (money provider and service taker); to do so a charity:

• Must provide a service to someone that needs it (Product)
• Must promote their actions in order to get funds and by the way more “service takers” (Promotion) at this point a charity must be really aware of the 4 C of positioning (Clarity, Consistency, Credibility and Competitiveness) because not everyone knows that they work for good causes and not everyone believe in this kind of organizations, and the only way to get money is based on the image so they must be transparent , credible, and consistent in the services provided, the competitiveness is good usage of someone other money.
• Must price their actions (Price) i.e charity must know how much are the operating costs, and find the necessary amount to work, or in case that is only part funding, the low price that needed people pay for the service must be calculated or for example having an annual fee, or sell a calendar for a symbolic price;
• Must be visible for both sides but be really close to the needers (Place);
• Must provide a reasonable cost/benefit ratio in order to promote and easily get more funds (Productivity), as well as show to everyone what is being done (physical evidence) for the same reason.
• Must be fluent in the processes and make it easy both for people whom need the services and to the people whom funding (Process).

To finish let’s say that there is a competition among the charities and they need to be aware of it in order to provide a good/better service to people who need them and to make a good usage of money of people who fund them.

To wrap up everything let’s say that despite of being Nonprofit Organizations and work for the sake of good causes, Charities must make a good usage of marketing in order to be sustainable and get more and more people giving money and benefiting from their actions.