Clients Say the Most Amazing Things: In a Non-Profit, You Now Have to Compete with “Free”

December 4th, 2013
Written by: Elizabeth Richards

From time to time, TPO posts first-hand C-Level business perspectives, excerpted from an ongoing series of conversations we have with our clients. This one is from the President of a medical professional association:

I haven’t seen it in our organization, but definitely other organizations where people have fewer resources to deal with because the public is saying, “Why should I pay for that when I can get it free over here? Why should I belong to your organization? Why should I donate to your organization, when I can do this over here and have access to all of this free stuff over here?”  So I think it’s definitely a mindset in our culture that’s changing–and newspapers and magazines and other publishing houses felt it first. I think it’s filtering now to the rest of our society. Publishers have had to become flexible and their leadership has been flexible by seeing how to adapt to the changes. Those that have continued to try to do things the way they always do have struggled and many are failing.