When someone says “marketing” people usually think on enterprises and brand positioning. People think on the TV advertising for a new product. No one thinks of a humanitarian cause.

When someone says “Nonprofit organization”, people think on humanitarian causes, hunger poverty, war, kids, cancer. No one thinks of marketing.

The idea of a humanitarian marketing is hard to conceive, even to the point of sounding contradictory. Even some might argue that taking part in competition in non-profit sector might seem unethical due to the humanitarian sector. But as Julien told you, with the fast growing of NGOs all over the word, each organization must be aware of the sectors competitors in order to better meet the needs of its users and beneficiaries. In a word with hunger problems, poverty, sickness, no respect for human rights and thousands of organizations fighting against this problems, how can someone chose which one is he going to help? How can we choose between either giving money or becoming a voluntary for unicef instead of helping kids in Africa?

The world of humanitarian organizations is a hard world; we can see it as a big competitive market of organizations fighting for a “good cause”. In fact, NPOs are trying to obtain funds from a common pool of limited resources, the environment is competitive, even if is not recognized the competition. Therefore, this organizations must increase their amounts of money spend on marketing to attract funds from donors. Kotler and Salzman defined different types or marketing, including the humanitarian marketing, also known as social marketing or marketing for nonprofit organizations. It is “the use by nonprofit and public organizations of marketing techniques to impact societal behavior. Their range is limited to supporting a specific cause”, like a medical research, a micro-project in the third world, etc.

This type of marketing was born in the US, where the fund-raising culture is taught since primary school.