Market orientation in the top 200 British charity organizations and its impact on their performance

Examines the degree to which leading UK charities have adopted the marketing concept in the last five years and how this has affected their performance. Based on Kohli and Jaworski’s (1990) work, an adaptation of the MARKOR scale was used to measure charities’ orientation towards their markets for funds and volunteers (donors). A mail questionnaire was sent to the top 200 UK charity organizations and a response rate of 29 per cent was achieved. Although charities’ orientation towards their donor market is still relatively low, it has significantly increased in the last five years. No differences in the levels of donor market orientation among different type of charities were observed. Donor market orientation was negatively related to the organizational size and the number of departments. A lag effect between donor market orientation and performance was detected. Discusses limitations and recommendations for future research.