Social Marketing Strategies used for Fund Raising by NGOs Working in the Field of Disability Rehabilitation

Abstract

Fund raising is the process of inviting, mobilizing and collecting contributions in the form of money or other resources, by seeking donations from individuals, businesses, `charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to mobilize money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the process of identification and tapping of prospective investors or other sources of capital for business enterprises. Many of the techniques and skills of fund raising can be or have been adapted from the domain of "marketing". Social marketing aims to achieve socially desirable goals, which benefits the society as a whole rather than for profit or other exclusive organizational goals. Social marketing includes the design, implementation and control of programs aimed to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involves considerations of product planning, pricing, communications and market research. In this sense, it has ingrained marketing principles. Social marketing strategy can be used for raising funds for the organizations, as the fund raising methods and social marketing strategies often move in tandem. This paper is aimed at studying the social marketing strategies used by NGOs working for disability rehabilitation to raise their funds. This study helps in revealing facts about the present scenario on social marketing among NGO sector. The sample size includes 15 NGOs located in and around Hyderabad working for rehabilitation of persons with disabilities It was observed that among the social marketing strategies, seeking individual
donors and soliciting gift from major donors are most commonly used strategies by NGOs to raise their funds whereas the least used strategies include door to door solicitation, charitable games and street plays.