PUBLIC RELATIONS FOR NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Public relations serve the same purpose for any organisation, irrespective of the goals or objectives of the organisation. Most of the public relations techniques we have discussed in the previous units of this course apply essentially to companies, corporations and government. We shall in this unit take a look at a special area of public relations; public relations in a non-profit or non-commercial organisation.

A non profit organisation can be described as an organisation whose purpose is to serve the public and not organized for profit making. In other words, the primary motive of their existence is service and not for profit to their owners.
Non-profit organisations are active in areas that are usually not attractive to the public or private sector.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain what is a non-profit organisation. 
2. Enumerate the objectives of public relations in non-profit organisations. Discuss the use of public relations in non-profit organisation. 

3.0 MAIN CONTENT

3.1 Types of Non-profit Organisations

Non-profit organisations work in all areas of public life ranging from universities, hospitals, churches, charitable organisations like the red Cross and Red Crescent, foundations, security agencies and welfare bodies and non-governmental agencies.

The developments and expansion of social activities has led to the growth in size and activities of non-profit organisations in the last three decades. Kotler and Andreason have identified non-profit organisation under two broad types: private non-profit organizations and public non-profit organisations. Private non-profit organisations involve in social and charitable services. These types of organizations include churches, mosques, social clubs and voluntary organisations libraries, museums and arts groups philanthropic groups like the Ford Foundation, the Mac Arthur Foundation, Jimmy Carter’s Global 2000, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Yakubu Gowon Foundation. Others are political and pressure groups women’s groups, students union. It also includes labour unions, trade association and professional societies who exist to achieve the interest of their members.

Public Non-profit Organisations Public non-profit organisations are owned by governments at various levels federal, state and local government. They provide social service for the good of society, without the profit motive. Even though users of some of these services pay some token for aspects of the services, such charges, are for the maintenance of the organisation and not to make profit public non-profit organisations include educational institutions, police, fire brigade, public libraries, health institution. Others includes customs service, immigration and specialized agencies like National Agency for Food, Drug Administration Control (NAFDAC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria, (SON), Economic and Finances Crimes Commission (EFCC) National Broadcasting Commission, (NBC) among others. Even organisations like customs and immigration collect some dues on behalf of the government they do not as an organisation profit from such payments.

3.3.3 Roles of Public Relations in Non-profit organizations.

Cutlip, Centre and Broom have noted that the role of public relations in non-profit organisations is to establish and maintain relationships necessary to secure organizational autonomy and necessary resources needed to achieve their humanitarian missions. To this end they explain that public relations in most nonprofit organisations aims:
To gain acceptance of an organisation
To develop channels of communication with those an organisation serves To create and maintain a favourable climate for fund-raising.
To support the development and maintenance of public policy that is favourable to the mission of an organisation; and
To inform and motivate key organizational constituents (such as employees, volunteers, and trustees) to dedicate themselves and work productively in support of an organisation’s mission, goals and objectives.

It is clear that while these missions are common to most nonprofit organisations, the tactical approach and scale of public relations activities differ greatly. 

3.3 Target Publics of non-profit organisations

The type of target publics that nonprofit organisations relate with would give you an idea of what makes them unique when compared to commercial or profit-oriented enterprises. However, some target publics like employees may be common to both types of organisations. Let us take a look at the key publics of a non-profit organisation like a university as identified by Ajala (1993). They include: *Students, *Lecturers and administrative staff, *Parents, *Alumni, *Potential students, *Potential employers of graduates, *Governments (federal, state and local), legislators, *Research Councils, *Education Funding Bodies (like, ETF), PTDF), *Examination boards (JAMB, WAEC, NECO), *Potential donors, philanthropists, industry, commerce and the professions, media personnel, National Universities Commission (NUC).

Self Assessment Exercise

Explain the difference between the goals and objectives of private and public non-profit organisations.

3.3.4 Fund Raising for Non-profit Organisation

Fund raising programmes are the major sources of funding non-commercial organizations. A public relations practitioner may be charged with raising funds for the following causes.
Community development: The community may be in need of certain infrastructure, and the idea is to appeal to people who are well-off within or outsider the community to contribute to such a cause.

Health facility: To equip hospital and probably build more buildings.
Victims of natural disasters: Floods or war victims may have lost all they have in war or flood and need to be rehabilitated.
Sports: Like raising money for the Olympic games, e.t.c.
Religious purpose: To raise funds to build church mosque or worship center. 

To aid a cause: The cause may include entertainment or mass mobilization.

A contemporary view of why people give donations asserts that [people give to get. The concept of transaction is based on the belief that people give because of some kind of expectations.

The PR implications of this is that for effective-fund-raising, the PR practitioner must ask himself what does the donor get in return for giving. To this end, nine types of reason/motives have been identified.

Reason for giving 

1. The need for self-esteem: To satisfy a psychological need. This means that  individuals may give because they want to boost their self-image or ego.
2. The need for recognition from others. To satisfy a sociological need. This means that individuals may give to win recognition from others or the need to belong based on class or social status.
3. Fear or insecurity/guilt: May be donating out of guilt over deeds of the past-treating on others while climbing up the ladder etc.
4. Habitual giver: These give because it has become a normal thing, especially done by small donors.
5. Nuisance givers: Those who give to get rid of the seemingly noisy or inconvenience from callers.
6. Giving under pressures: These give only when they are required or compelled to like being compelled to give at the office or club by virtue of ones membership there.
7. People to people givers: These individuals give because of a sense of solidarity. Those who believe that must be good to man or humanists. 

8. Faith-giving: Giving based on the requirements of ones faith-giving for moral or religious reasons.
9. The captive givers: These give because of a real sense of sorrow-emotionally and sympathetically involved.

It is this reason for giving that the fundraiser should exploit to get each group to give programmes, which will exploit or satisfy these motives, should be developed to achieve effective participation.

Fund raising is purely a PR activity. The idea behind fund raising is to appeal to the minds of the people to open their wallet to support a cause. The strategy must be  persuasive, deliberate and visionary. If the practitioner falls to appeal enough to the mind of the people to support a cause, he may not win the support of such people again.

In fund raising, the media must be carried along. The media must be adequately briefed. If necessary a facility visit must be organized for press to visit the place or site or center that the money is needed. A press kit should be given to the press, where they can source information when they want editorial material.
In case of fund raising for charity like the Motherless Babies Home or refugees, use of photography is very important to bring vivid images of the condition of the beneficiaries to appeal to people to donate.

Fund raising for nonprofit organisation has to be a continuous activity if they are to remains in business and render the services for which they were set up. As a result, donor development strategies have to be cultivated to keep donations coming in on a consistent basis. Donor development requires identifying and classifying donors based on the motives described above. Donors could be large, medium or small donors. Large donors could include funding agencies like the United States Agency for International Development for International Development (DFID) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) among others.

Public relations techniques and skills should be employed to interact consistently with the donors so that they can give regularly. Small and medium donors can be encouraged to increase their donations by careful cultivation of the relationships with them. Donors are always looking for integrity, transparency and judicious use of funds. Good public relations after successful fund raising can be deployed to assure donors that the resources they made available are being put to good use.

3.5 Use of Public Relations in Non-profit Organisations

We have earlier explained that public relations aims to build good and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. Goodwill is very critical in the relations between a non-profit organisation and its publics, especially among donors who provide the resources needed to keep them going. Using public relations in non-profit organisations requires a lot of creative effort.

The ever recurring crisis in the higher educational sector in Nigeria in the last twenty years is a big challenge to the use of public relations. Nigerian universities have been plagued by one crisis or another which involved students and university management, staff unions versus federal government, the menace of cults and other social vices in the university system have affected the image of the Nigeria tertiary institutions not only within the country, but internationally.

To use public relations effectively in non-profit organisations, experts have recommended the following steps:

A good plan should be created to give the practitioner a clear idea of the work that is required to be done. Research should be used to establish clearly the publics of the organization and how to relate with them. 

 A good plan
must be workable within available resources and time available.
Realizable goals should be set for public relations activities these goals should serve as a sign post to direct activities. These goals should be measurable and achievable. It is no use to set goals that cannot be attained with the resources and time available.


The target publics should be clearly defined. Like all public relations activities, messages exposed to wrong publics is a waste of resources. Non-profit organisations cannot afford fritter away scare resources in targeting publics who are not relevant to its survival. There is keen competition for
funds among nonprofit organisations as most of them direct their request almost to the same donors. Well targeted publics will ensure that you direct your messages where they will yield maximum results.

The messages should be strategically designed and delivered to achieve maximum impact. The content of the message and the language of communicating them should be of vital importance in other words, the message must be tailored to the appropriate audience. The persuasiveness of
your message goes a long way in convincing your publics and winning the sympathy and support that the organisation needs.


Finally, as the late Canadian scholar, Marshal McLuhan postulated, “the medium is the message”. The well crafted messages must be delivered through the correct medium. As communication scholars have noted, any message disseminated through the wrong medium can only result in waste
exposure and dissipation of effort. An appropriate medium and tactics should be chosen to deliver messages to the relevant audience.

There is no gainsaying that good public relations is the life blood of nonprofit organisations.
For instance, voluntary organizations like the Red Cross whose activities involves intervention in conflict situations have not only the arduous task of securing regular donations to keep its activities going, it has the more added burden of wrong perceptions and misgiving, of its activities and operations by combatants in the various armed conflicts it tries to intervene. Good public relations is required to earn the confidence and trust of say combatants in a war situation.

4.0 CONCLUSION

The need for good public relations strategies cannot be over emphasized as nonprofit organisation increase by the day. Their peculiar and unique orientation requires that in addition to the standard public relations methods used in other organisations, nonprofit organisations have to be creative in their approach in using public relations to achieve maximum result in their undertakings.

5.0 SUMMARY

This unit has examined the unique and peculiar nature of nonprofit organisations. It also looked at the various types of nonprofit organisations and methods of raising funds to meet the needs of the organisations. We also looked at the role of public relations in nonprofit organisations as well as the motives of donors to these organisations.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT 

Explain the methods you will employ to promote a foundation that offers health services in rural areas of the country.