Abstract
The author deconstructs the prevailing conceptualization of nonprofit marketing and concludes it rests on three principles: voluntary exchange, an open system organization, and self-interest motivation. A review of the genesis of these principles revealed that alternative principles were ignored in the social science literature. Based on a qualitative analysis and critical hermeneutic approach a revised conceptualization of nonprofit marketing was suggested which incorporated the principles of reciprocity, the features of a contingency-choice system model of formal organizations, and collectivistic interest motivation. A revised definition of nonprofit marketing is offered based on these principles.
Highlights
Interest among nonprofit administrators in the application of marketing tools to nonprofit sector services emerged from the tax revolt of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the US
Differences between the goals of formal organizations become less apparent since all types of organizations are concerned with the issue of survival through efficiently attracting and distributing scarce and valued resources, and ensuring there is a difference between accrued revenues and expenditures
Bureaucratic management requires very rigid internal and external arrangements. It implies detailed discretion based on bureaucratic procedures and codes of ethics such as, for example, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Code of Ethics [49]
Summary
Interest among nonprofit administrators in the application of marketing tools to nonprofit sector services emerged from the tax revolt of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the US. With theshrinkage and withdrawal of grants from federal and state governments, municipalities and nonprofit organizations were confronted with the issue of how to satisfy the growing expectations of taxpayers in a milieu of reduced financial resourses During this period of financial scarcity, the public administrationabd nonprofit literature witnessed an attempt to rethink the nature of public and nonprofit sectors management through theactive importation and borrowing of private sector techniques. Critical commentators do partially recognize the need of public administrators to adopt new management techniques to deal with the prevailing environment of «less-government-more- userfees» They refer to the application of marketing principles within the nonprofit and public administration fields as “confusion compounded”, “an inappropriate model”, “intellectualization”, “absurd”, “the megalomaniac marketing supremacy syndrome”, and “a dramatic imitation” of social relationships [14,15,16,17]. The ultimate goal of proponents and opponents was essentially the same—
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