Where Does Your Nonprofit Fit In the Market?

As much as we might like to deny it, nonprofits exist in a market economy, which means that nonprofits, like everything else, must compete for customers and resources. Therefore it is critical that you understand where your nonprofit fits in the market.

While a business has one customer, a nonprofit has at least two distinct customer groups:

1. Those who benefit from a nonprofit’s work (clients), and
2. Those who fund that work (donors, government contractors, etc).

So it is absolutely critical that nonprofit leaders understand what unique value their work brings to these customers. This can be done through a Marketplace Map, which is one of the first exercises (along with a Theory of Change) that I help nonprofit leaders create during a strategic planning process.

A nonprofit organization is best positioned to create social change in a sustainable way when their core competencies (what the organization does better than anyone else) intersects with a community need (or set of social problems) apart from their competitors or collaborators, like this:

But don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that a nonprofit shouldn’t collaborate.

On the contrary, nonprofit leaders must forge strategic alliances that help move the social change they envision forward. However, when they create those alliances, they must be crystal clear about what their organization brings to the table, versus what a potential ally brings to the table. Thus, a marketplace mapping exercise is absolutely critical to charting a way forward.

In order to create their marketplace map, a nonprofit’s board and staff must answer these three key questions:

1. Core Competencies: What superior assets (expertise, relationships, etc.) do we possess as an organization that are not easily replicable?
2. Community Needs: What community needs/social problems are we attempting to address?
3. Competitors/Collaborators: What other entities are working on some/all of those same problems?

The social change sector has become increasingly competitive in recent years. Now more than ever, nonprofits need to understand this external marketplace of competitors/collaborators against their own core competencies in order to understand the unique value that their nonprofit can contribute.

From this marketplace mapping exercise, some key strategic questions will emerge for the nonprofit, such as:

• Where do our core competencies and activities end, and where do others’ begin?
• Is our nonprofit better positioned than other entities to conduct all of the activities (from our Theory of Change) that we currently do? Should some activities be left to those who do it better?
• Are there core competencies that we must develop in order to better address the community needs we’ve identified?
• Are there collaborators/competitors that we should be more strategic about aligning with?

Creating a Marketplace Map, much like creating a Theory of Change, is an incredibly useful exercise that gets your board and staff thinking in bigger, more strategic ways about your work. And those more strategic conversations can help lead to a more effective and sustainable path forward.

If you want to learn more about how I work with clients to develop their strategic plan, download the Strategic Plan benefit sheet.