Branding on a minimal budget for non-profit organisations

Abstract

The so-called third sector in India consists of organisations such as NGOs, NPOs, Charitable Trusts and Foundations, which work towards addressing various societal issues. They usually address a gap that is left unfulfilled by the Government. Such as providing quality education or balanced meal to school children As per a 2011 report1 , there are around 3.2 million registered NGOs in India. While not all of them might be working in the social sector, it’s still a huge number of organizations vying for limited resources to fund their causes. Even though the willingness to donate and the total amount donated by Indians have increased in recent years, the sheer number of organizations trying to obtain a part of it, in this highly fragmented sector, makes the donations received per organization to be small. An organization operating in this sector, for instance an NPO, has stakeholders and revenue streams quite different from that of a traditional business. The organization our study is focused on, Akshara Foundation2 is a purely a NPO with only donations as revenue. For them to continue to perform their functions, a steady stream of donations is paramount. Almost all NPOs depend on donations partially or completely to fund their efforts. In the case of NPOs, marketing activities presently are project-basis and ad-hoc. They do not treat brand building as a core activity and face constraints in investing continuously in this activity with a long-term perspective. Presently, there is a prevalent line of thought that brand building is the undertaking of organizations in the commercial sector. However, this perception is slowly changing for the better and more and more organizations in the social sector are taking up brand building activities along with their outreach and fundraising activities. Thus, this is an interesting time to study the developments in this space. This topic is especially relevant in today’s scenario and in India. Philanthropy has been on an upswing over the past 5 years. However, a significant shortage of funds (approximately 8.5 trillion$) is still estimated to prevail given the large number of developmental schemes required to be undertaken in the country owing to its poor performance on the HDI and Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) Index. The philanthropy market in India has matured over the years and the contributions by individual philanthropists is rising faster than the rate at which funds are flowing in from foreign countries or corporates(CSR). These individual philanthropists are more actively adopting ways to monitor and ensure their contributions are highly impactful. Considering that the fraud plaguing the philanthropy market also significantly reduces the chances of worthy NGOs raising funds from donors, branding becomes all the more important. Branding would also help in the sale of the goods and services offered by these NGOs as a supplementary source of funds apart from grants and donations. Also, multiple smaller, fledgling NGOs would be able to benefit from a single NGO building a noteworthy brand; creating a brand umbrella. Thus, there’s a need to market your NGO and build a brand that will ride your organization through these times and help to better communicate your cause and your work.