Converting Good Intentions into Results
“It’s much easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to give it away.”
The non-profit institution is not merely delivering service. It wants the end user to be not user but doer. It uses service to bring about change in human beings. It attempts to become part of the recipient rather than merely supplier.
Non-profit institutions used to think they didn’t need marketing. But, as famous old saying by great 19th-century con man has it, “It’s much easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than to give it away”. Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free. You need to market even the most beneficial service. But the marketing you do in the non-profit sector is quite different from selling. It’s more matter of looking at your service from the recipient’s point of view. You have to know what to sell, to whom to sell, and when to sell.
Extracted from Peter Drucker’s book The Daily Drucker.
