A Non-profit Community Development Organization: Researching Marketability of Products and Services  to the Corporate Sector

1. The Situation

This nonprofit organization wanted to know the degree to which there was a market for  their  products and service in corporate (for-profit) and public sector organizations. If there was a market, they also needed help around developing marketing materials, sales approaches and sales leads for entering these markets.

2. The Approach

This involved conducting research and making recommendations as follows:

  • Identifying the viability of the organization to develop long-term relationships with corporate  clients, and specifically to identify  the products, services and market segments  towards which the client should direct its sales and marketing activity in this area. This was  undertaken through document review,   email surveys and interviews with former clients of the organization as well as other consultants or consumers in this market.
  • Based on the above, developing a long and short term marketing plan
  • Developing, testing and refining the organization’s  marketing materials to be used to support the marketing plan and sell services to this sector.
  • Developing a data base of screened contacts/potential corporate clients for the organization.
  • Making presentations and proposals on behalf of the organization, and based on client feedback, developing generic presentations and proposals which they could  tailor for future sales and marketing opportunities.
  • Securing one or more contracts for the organization in this market segment.

3. Results

This engagement presented challenges around distilling knowledge of effective business management and administration along with understanding the consulting marketplace and practice management to provide practical and cost-effective recommendations to a small non-profit with very limited resources.

Two reports were developed, indicating that while there seemed to be market opportunities for a number of products and services, the current organizational and administrative structure need to be enhanced to support growth in this area. Draft marketing materials were developed and  the organization  pursued  recommendations around developing comprehensive business planning and staffing processes as well as a more sophisticated administrative infrastructure.

The project resulted in securing a contract to apply the organization’s online facilitation software to a corporate environment.