A Salient Model of Relationship Marketing: Fundraising Effectiveness in Religious Nonprofits Organizations

Abstract

ABSTRACT While donor funding is important to the survival of many nonprofits, donors -unlike customers- make payments or donations to benefit 3rd parties that cannot be directly observed. This separation of payments (donations) and benefits can reduce donors’ support and thus impact a nonprofit organization’s survival and performance. This study offers a relationship marketing (RM) approach to solving this separation problem. Specifically, this study draws on identity salience research to explain a nonprofit’s fundraising efforts. A nonprofit’s fundraising offers a salient form of RM that develops a donor’s identity in the nonprofit’s mission and thus overcoming the separation of benefit-payment problem. However, identity salience research also argues that individuals/donors are subject to a group identification process. This process prioritizes a donor’s giving in ways that affirm their identity with their social group, but not the salience affirming benefits of a nonprofits’ fundraising. Hypotheses were developed to examine these identity salience arguments in the U.S. Nonprofit Religious Media (NPRM) sector. In using a Fixed Effect (FE) panel estimation, a Nonprofit Religious Media Organization (NPRMO)’s fundraising offers a RM that supports this study’s identity salience explanations. A primary contribution of this study is that it advances RM research by introducing an identity process that not only explains the value-laden benefits of RM, but that this identity process introduces a group identification process that offers a more socialized view of RM research.