Thanks for your question. I assume from your question that you are at step 2 i.e. trying to identify whether your NGO has a “competitive advantage” in its marketing/fundraising function (you use the “need” which may not be the right word). Your marketing department can provide you with a competitive advantage by giving you a cost advantage or product differentiation.

1. Does your marketing department give you a cost advantage? Can you reach more people/customers/donors at the same or lower cost than other comparable NGOs?
2. Does your marketing department give you product differentiation? Does your branding, sales, and promotion distinguish your offering from that of other NGOs?

I’m no expert on where to get benchmarking data, I know Mercer provides this kind of information (http://www.mercer.com/).

Does that help?

Cheers,
Tom

Im trying to find a typical NGO value chain in order to benchmarch the NGO i work for with a standard one… i.e: i need to confirm through the value chain that the marketing/fundraising department/function is a need! Any idea where i can get this resource from?

Thanks
Marianne

After understanding and reviewing potters forces and value chain flow let us suppose that an organization has decided to carry on a specific strategy. Can u bring out any models umm u know like..how to go on if the strategy adopted is an agressive one,or if strategy is to just extend its product life time in the market,, things like that

After discussing your question with my good mate Para I have the following thoughts:

You could use the Porter’s Five Forces and Value Chain Analysis, but as always, the usefulness depends on what the non-profit does. This is true of for-profit businesses as well. Many non-profits operate businesses – like fair trade coffee suppliers and if they were analysing whether to enter a new market, then you could use Porter’s 5 Forces. Also, a microfinance business could used P5 forces to assess a market. Say, for example, an international NGO was deciding on whether to start a microfinance operation in Bangladesh (a highly saturated microfinance market with low barriers to entry) or China (a nearly empty microfinance market, which has significant demand but very high barriers to entry) – they could use P5 to assess them.

As for the Value Chain Analysis, this might also be useful in trying to decide how to deliver the maximum social impact. What activities does the NGO engage in? Are they able to conduct their activities more efficiently than other NGOs who carry out similar work? Are they carrying out niche work that is not being attended to by other NGOs? Can the NGO create a greater social impact by dropping activities that are better performed by others and focussing on its core competencies? These are but some of the questions that you might want to ask yourself.

Hope this helps,

Tom

Thanks