I was reading this article from Online Spin about the competition between Nielsen Online and comScore as to who has the biggest and best online panel for measuring online behavior.

This is the sort of thing that market researchers can get quite passionate about. And indeed, given that marketers are spending billions on online advertising, still without knowing a whole lot about what works, the reward could be huge to the research company with the most convincing mousetrap.

But that’s not my subject (though I guess if you’re an online fundraiser, you might want to peek at the article). The piece is really about the fierce, public, head-to-head competition between these two rivals … and whether such bald competition is unseemly.

So it got me wondering about the state of competition in the nonprofit marketplace. I have this hypothesis that competition — even in the genteel charity space — must be getting a bit fiercer. For two reasons …

First, given the recession, charities are seeing donors cut back on the breadth of support they give, making conscious choices to contribute to fewer groups … and presumably the ones they consider the "best."

And second, prospecting is getting tougher … and this trend began before the recession. Where’s that flooding into the marketplace of all those Boomers, thought to be just embarking on their golden years voyage of philanthropy?

Both trends put a premium on hanging on for dear life to the donors one’s organization already has. And it would seem to me that this requires more than the usual amount of explicit competitive differentiation … to help donors make those choices.

Now, that’s not to say that all sectors of the charity world have operated with excessive gentility in the past!

Two historically competitive sectors have been higher education and medical institutions (particularly those fighting for patients within major metroplitan areas where considerable consumer choice exists). But this is competition for customers, not donors. Once a college or university has captured its future alumni, or the hospital has won (and saved) its patient, then the fundraising competition begins.

I’ve always felt that cause groups, which is more my area of experience, are rather timid about competition. Which is ironic, given that they tend to be ardently — even excessively — combative against the villains who are ruining their worlds.

I’m a believer in transparent competition in the nonprofit space — competition for the best ideas, the best strategies, the best talent and, yes, the best fundraising.

I’ll admit that large problems requiring fixing in the world can admit of mutiple approaches to their solution.

Nevertheless, I don’t want a single donor to waste a single dollar on a "second best" nonprofit. I always felt that my job as a marketer — for my organization or my clients — was to win them every possible dollar on the table by effectively presenting their unique and superior case.

As fundraising moves forward in tough times, the organizations with marketers and fundraisers who embrace that competitive mindset will be the ones that succeed.

Just my opinion.

Tom

P.S. Copywriters — often by default, sadly — are often at the cutting edge of deciphering precisely what makes an organization special. Our occasional Guest Agitator Bob Levy addresses that point for us tomorrow.