Boys and Girls Club of America

Marketing Management of Boy's And Girl's Clubs

Marketing Management Analysis and of Boy's and Girls' Clubs

The Boys and Girls' Clubs of America is facing several significant challenges to its growth in the midst of challenging economic times. The first is the need to continually grow its base of donors. Through relationship marketing and due to the transparency and ethical guidelines the organization adheres to, donors find value in providing the Club with donations. They believe the results reported are representative of actual performance of the non-profit, which is a key strength to continual revenue growth (Bryce, 2007). Trust in the Boys and Girls' Clubs of America is directly tied to their ability to gain funds for expansion of after-school programs and continued investment in centers. The second challenge is the continuing recruitment of new members nationally. The third challenge is to quantify and measure the contributions of the organization over time as quantifiable evidence of results. This research, accumulated over time, forms the foundation of trust for the organization. To effectively address all of these challenges a coordinated strategic market plan is required, executed through consistent marketing management. The intent of this analysis is to provide an assessment of the effectiveness of existing marketing management strategies and recommend improvements. At the center of this assessment is the need to continually stay consistent with the unique value proposition of the Clubs. Nonprofit organizations need to be cognizant of how their unique value propositions (Boschee, 2004) directly impact their brands and as a result their ability to add value to those they serve. One of the most important factors in supporting the unique value proposition of any non-profit institution is the ability to exceed expectations in relationships with donors and those served (Arnett, German, Hunt, 2003).

Assessing the Socioeconomic Conditions Boys' and Girl's Club Operates in

One of the most significant strengths of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America is their extensive research into how after-school programs dramatically reduce crime, drug use and truancy in at-risk children. This strength from a marketing management perspective takes on added relevance as more parents are dual wage earners than ever before (Polk, 2008) and relying on after-school programs for the care of their children. This is the primary customer segment that the Clubs have successfully concentrated on, yet the dynamics of families are changing fast which poses a challenge for the organization. An assessment of the Club's speed of new services development and recommendations for increasing this process' effectiveness is provided later in this report. One of the most significant changes in the Club's served base of families is the rapid increase in single parent households. The needs of children in single-parent families are often exacerbated by the low income of the single parent. According to the 2007 Annual Report, 71% of Boys and Girls Club members live in urban areas, 56% are from minority families, 42% earn less than $22,000 a year and over half (53%) are from single parent families. In addition 4.8 million youth are served by the programs with 66% being younger than 12 years old. 35% are Caucasian, 31% are African-American and 21% are Hispanic or Latino, 7% are multiracial and 3% are Asian and Native American.

With the majority of members being from single-parent families, under 12 years of age, and predominantly living in urban areas (71%) marketing strategies need to have an alluring enough message to get children interested in joining. There's also the parallel marketing strategy to parents that the Clubs are safe havens for their children while many are working two or more jobs to make ends meet. The third marketing strategy is one of advocacy to donors and government agencies who can assist the Clubs with funding, support and promotion.

Assessing the socioeconomic conditions that the Clubs operate on serves as the catalyst of the organizations' mission. To the extent a non-profit's mission is seen as fulfilling an unmet need in the community is the extent to which it is seen as relevant (Arnett, German, Hunt, 2003). The Clubs define their mission as "To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring and responsible citizens." With high school drop-out rates at nearly 30% (Montmarquette, Viennot-Briot, Dagenais, 2007) and gang recruitment commonplace with children as young as 13 (Bohnert, Richards, Kohl, Randall, 2009) the Club derives strength and Club-wide commitment to its objectives from its intensive socioeconomic and market research expertise. The fact that the majority of crime in these age groups occur between 3 and 8pm (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1995) is also a catalyst for the Clubs to seek donors and advocacy so programs can continue to be funded.

What make marketing management difficult are broader economic forces that non-profit organizations have no control over. Figure 1, Scouting & Youth Organizations Revenue Growth shows the 3% reduction in contribution growth in 2009 for example.

Figure 1

Scouting & Youth Non-Profit Organizations

Revenue Growth Rate, 2005 -- 2009

Revenue generated from donations, grants and government agency support has also been flat over the last five years, from 2005 to 2009, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2:

Scouting & Youth Non-Profit Organizations

Revenue, 2005 -- 2009

Taking into account the socioeconomic factors brings an accentuated level of urgency to making the marketing strategies in place today more effective, and augmenting them with the recommendations in this analysis. In addition to the level of donations and grants being relatively flat, there are competing non-profit organizations including the YMCA and Boy Scouts of America which generate significantly greater donation levels, despite Boys and Girls Clubs of America having comparable awareness levels. Figure 3, Scouting and Youth Non-Profit Organizations Market Shares, 2009 illustrates the competitive position of Boys and Girls Clubs relative to competing non-profits.

Figure 3: 2009 Scouting & Youth Non-Profit Organizations Market Share

Scouting & Youth Non-Profit Organizations

Market Share

YMCA of the U.S.A.

26.5%

Boy Scouts of America

2.5%

Boys & Girls Clubs of America

1.1%

Girl Scouts of the United States of America

0.7%

Other

69.2%

Totals: 100.0%

No single marketing strategy or initiative can address the breadth of challenges the Club is dealing with today. What is needed is a multifaceted approach to defining marketing management objectives in the midst of a very challenging economic climate, while still preserving the passion of service and results that the Club has built its brand reputation on. The following section is an assessment of current marketing management.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Boys & Girls Club Marketing Programs

It's critically important to define the best possible benchmarks and levels of performance for evaluating the Club's marketing effectiveness to this point. Evaluating the Club's marketing effectiveness begins with an assessment of how effectively each of the three key marketing strategies is being executed today. Starting with the most critical, which is the managing of corporate giving programs, the company has not achieved the level of performance it is capable of. As of the latest annual report, 16% of total giving is from corporations. Instead of having an integrated marketing communications strategy (IMC) in place for this segment, the Club relies extensively on the fact-based approach it has grown into its core strength with its intensive research efforts. While this has been successful in positioning the unique value proposition (Boschee, 2004) into the corporate community which thrives on quantitative and fact-based research, it has not been effective in fully using all available marketing channels into this key segment. Absent for example are more advanced approaches to creating online collaboration with this top donor category. There is for example no Corporate Intranet for the company to use for organizing communications to their most critical donor base. It would be wise to have a global Intranet that would give the organization the opportunity to share messages and update relatively quickly through this type of electronic platform. Goodwill does this for example with their corporate client and has been able to generate significantly higher levels of donations as a result (Gincel, 2006). Clearly having an Intranet to connect with corporate donors would be a significant competitive advantage relative to other nonprofits vying for donations.

There is also no concerted approach to managing the experiences that top donor corporations have or the managing of those strategies on an individualized account basis. From the tax advantages of making contributions to the fulfillment of their own corporate missions to be a positive influence in their communities, corporate accounts need to be tracked on a relationship instead of transaction basis (Polonsky, Sargeant, 2007). What emerges for an analysis of this specific area of corporate donor and advocacy strategy is significant room for improvement in the area of client relationship management. The use of client relationship management as the foundation for creating more trust and ownership on the part of donors is a strategy that the Club needs to consider. The lessons learned from a symphony on attracting and growing donors using client relationship management is a case in point (Ravanas, 2007). The broader areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) serve as the foundation of client relationship management and analysis (Ravanas, 2007).

There is the second weakness of also concentrating on the corporate donors as a largely homogeneous group. This can be seen in the approaches defined in the Club's annual report. The tailoring of individualized strategies can maximize the experiences of donors so they have a higher level of ownership in the causes they are investing in (Polonsky, Sargeant, 2007). Concentrating more on how to transform the corporate donors' investments into experiences not only for them but the clubs they adopt will further support a more relationship-based series of marketing strategies. The greatest threat to the existing series of donor strategies is that they may eventually become more transactional in scope and donors may decide to either cut back on the level of giving or quit giving altogether due to economic conditions. To overcome this potential risk, the club must concentrate first on client relationship management strategies that are much more finely tuned in the donor community first. Second, the tailoring of specific programs for each of the corporate donors is critical for the growth of donations to occur. At 16% of total revenues contributed, this is by far the most important segment and one that deserves a much more focused strategy overall. The need for creating a Partner Intranet for this segment and making it highly relevant through the continual posting of new content is also critical. The club needs to continually seek new ways to keep this, their most lucrative segment of donors, as actively engaged with the organization as possible, giving them many opportunities to see how their contributions make a difference.

The second major strategy of attracting new members and retaining existing ones is more complex than the organization at times plans for. Given the fact that the majority of the children at the club's locations are from single-parent homes (56%) there is the need for earning the trust of the single parent and giving them the opportunity to see the clubs as a trusted advisor to the raising of their children (Barczak, Kahn, Moss, 2006). For those parents from other nations with cultural and language barriers, this is a significant leap of faith for them. The club to this point does not provide multilingual assistance to the level they need to in order to recruit these children. Second, there is little in the way of multicultural examples in their success stories campaign today. There are few Hispanics shown in the Be Great Campaign today for example. What the club must do in this second area of marketing management is pursue being a trusted resource for parenting insights and cultural assimilation. Many of the families who are reduced to a signal parent are also immigrants and have cultural challenges in adapting to the U.S. The club today does not actively provide a strategy of multilingualism or serve as the sociological "landing zone" for these individuals either. In short, the club could do much more as part of their outreach into ethnically and culturally diverse communities through more effective marketing. Starting with more of an emphasis on Hispanics in the Be Great Program and going further with minorities, the club could be significantly more effective in this area. It is a significant shortcoming of its strategies today and they are leaving many members underserved due to this lack of multiculturalism.

Marketing strategies for members also have been slow to adopt social networking (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Today the club has Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts yet is not doing nearly enough to educate its members about how to use the Internet safely (Mayer, 2003). This is a major gap that other nonprofits have made a main part of their crusade, including the Boy Scouts of America and the YMCA. The fact that the club has yet to make technology education a centerpiece of their programs is a shortcoming of their marketing strategies and also a weakness of their new service development process. The new service development process within nonprofits is the catalyst of future loyalty for its members (Barczak, Kahn, Moss, 2006). There are many project-based extensions that the club participates in. Its services and product development strategy is one of services extensions, comparable to companies who extend the life of their products only with slight differentiation. For the club to significantly grow the new service development processes today must be fundamentally re-designed to reflect the rapid changes in its member base. Take for example the complex problems single mothers face with regard to getting their children the right immunizations, check-ups, dental and medical care? The club is missing a major opportunity to concentrate on these unmet needs and build alliances with major medical providers to bring greater health to its members. This also solves the earlier problem of the donors only being involved to a specific point.

Moving towards a partnership-based strategy would also give the club greater potential corporate donors as well. The partnerships and alliances possible to enrich the club experience for members are so significant that it could earn the club the role of trusted advisor in many members' families. The offering of flu shots, H1N1 if necessary, and preventative healthcare through partnerships with healthcare providers would further enhance and strengthen the clubs' brand with families as well. For additional members to loin the club needs to focus on these more complex and challenging areas. Only by going after these areas that require entirely new services will the club be able to continually grow.

One of the most innovative marketing strategies that the club is missing today is the teaching of Internet skills within the centers. Their members are from families who cannot afford Internet access in many cases. There is also the threat of being isolated from learning opportunities due to a lack of understanding how the Internet functions. By partnering with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, IBM and others, the company could easily gain the sponsorship base to put Internet labs and libraries in each of the centers. The digital divide that exists in the U.S. can be seen drastically across single-parent families and those that are living at or just above the poverty line (Fryer, Granger, 2008). The fact that the club has yet to attack this problem nationwide and use its centers as the basis of teaching is a major marketing opportunity that has yet to be addressed.

In conclusion there are many areas for improvement for the Boys and Girls Club. The base of donors including the highly valuable corporate accounts has been managed to transactions instead of relationships. The use of client relationship-based processes and the accentuation on experiences as part of any marketing strategy will be significantly more effective than merely using standardized processes to attempt to get more money for programs. Second, the use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems for managing the donor-by-donor personalization of strategies will also be a significant improvement overall. In conjunction with this approach to managing donor strategies the club also needs to use analytics in conjunction with their CRM system to better monitor and manage these relationships as well. Building out dashboards and the use of analytics will be a significant improvement overall. Finally the partnership strategies are not as effective as they potentially could be as well. Instead of just relying on partners for the fundamental resources needed to run centers and the main offices, partnerships need to be reoriented towards the development of medical programs so that immunizations single parents may not be able to afford will be available through the club. In conjunction with this strategy is the need for creating partnerships that will give the club the potential to be catalysts of online and Internet learning as well. As it has been shown that the major9ity of children whose families are at or below the poverty line do not know how to use the Internet and therefore struggle in their educations, creating learning labs would further differentiate the clubs nationally. This would also attract new members and move the club closer towards being trusted advisors to the families whose children need this assistance.

Recommendations for Improvement

Based on an assessment of the marketing strategies the Boys and Girls Clubs are using today, this section presents recommendations for improvement. First and most significantly, the donor strategies are more transaction-based than relationship oriented. The processes for managing donors need to be reoriented to focus on experiences first (Polonsky, Sargeant, 2007). Once these process-based changes occurs, the use of CRM systems to better manage the relationships and the specific needs of donors can be used to more involve them and also better quantify to them their contributions (Ravanas, 2007). At present the club does not use electronic approaches to automating the interactions with corporate donors to the extent they could. Recommendations for making this more of an effective part of the donor strategy including creating an online advisory council of donors, sponsoring advisory council meetings in central locations to hear what donors' concerns are and also to share the strategic plans of the club with them. These advisory councils are meant to give these top donors visb8ility and accountability into how their funds are being applied to the needs of members and the operating budget. It is also a means to gain greater levels of ownership on the part of donors as to the direction of the club as well. To enable these processes and this level of collaboration it's critical that the club seek out Web 2.0-based technologies and applications (O'Reilly, 2006) to make enable greater communication with this most critical donor base of corporations. Figure 1 in the Appendix provides a Meme map or structural diagram of Web 2.0 design criteria and its structure. In conjunction with this strategy of creating a more collaborative level of working with key donors the club also must seek out approaches to better managing the relationships and seek to deliver exceptional experiences (Polonsky, Sargeant, 2007) in the process. The corporate donor strategy needs to also be more integrated across marketing channels as well, through the use of social networking media. it's a start that the club has a Facebook, MySpace and Twitter account yet there is little use of social media and social networking for creating more collaboration with all segments of users. Table B: Web 2.0 Applications provides a framework the club could use to create more integrative marketing strategies through social networks today.

Ironic for an organization that has exceptional ability to analyze market and segment metrics, the club does not have an active customer listening system in place to hear what most satisfies and dissatisfies its members. The management of marketing strategies has centered on demographic analysis, yet there is little if any attitudinal data with regard to satisfaction with the clubs programs. There are the far-reaching statistics of how the clubs, over time, lead to successful lives, yet there isn't any data on how satisfied the members and their families are or not today. It is highly recommended that the Web 2.0 Applications in Table B. be used for the development of interactive member listening systems to capture what their unmet needs are more efficiently than the annual audit that is often outsourced to third party research organizations. Instead the club needs to have a continuous customer listening series of processes in place to continually monitor those factors that lead to high levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in their member base. There is no active link to real-time attitudinal data or member satisfaction today and this is a strategic weakness to the new service development processes as well.