The nonprofit marketing landscape: guest editors' introduction to a special section

Abstract

Welcome to this special section of the Journal of Business Research devoted to nonprofit, arts and social marketing. The five articles appearing in this section have been selected and developed from papers originally presented at the first two annual colloquiums on nonprofit, social and arts marketing organised in the United Kingdom by Henley Management College and London Metropolitan University. This annual event is fast becoming a leading European outlet for cutting edge research in these important fields. The topics embraced by nonprofit, social and arts marketing are as diverse as they are complex. This introduction to the special section aims to illustrate the extent of the diversity, to identify critical problems, and to suggest possible areas for future research. It is impossible to mention in this introduction all the subjects covered by nonprofit, arts and social marketing, or even to cite all the major contributions to any one of its many spheres. Thus, we concentrate on relatively recent literature that, in itself, contains extensive references to prior and collateral research and which usefully reviews the work of others in the subject area concerned. A handful of topics have been especially salient in the literature concerning the marketing activities of nonprofit organisations during the last two decades. Essentially, these focus on the development and consequences of marketing orientation among organisation members, the theory and practice of fundraising, the stimulation of changes in social behaviour, and corporate involvement in nonprofit affairs. The employment of marketing techniques and principles to attract volunteers to work in nonprofit, social and arts organisations has also received much attention.