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Converting Good Intentions into Results

“It’s much easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to give it away.”

The nonprofit institution is not merely delivering a service. It wants the end user to be not a user but a doer. It uses a service to bring about a change in human beings. It attempts to become a part of the recipient rather than merely a supplier.

Nonprofit institutions used to think they didn’t need marketing. But, as a famous old saying by a great nineteenth-century con man has it, “It’s much easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to give it away.” Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free. You need to market even the most beneficial service. But the marketing you do in the nonprofit sector is quite different from selling. It’s more a matter of looking at your service from the recipient’s point of view. You have to know what to sell, to whom to sell, and when to sell.

ACTION POINT: The mission of the Salvation Army is to make citizens out of the rejected. How does that service look from the recipient’s point of view? How should the Salvation Army market that service?

Managing the Non-Profit Organization

* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker

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