Blog Post #3: Linking PR Tactics to Long-Term Success

Works Cited

O'Neil, Julie. "Linking Public Relations Tactics to Long-Term Success: An Investigation of How Communications Contribute to Trust, Satisfaction, and Commitment in a Nonprofit Organization." Journal of Promotion Management 14.3 (2008): 263-74. Print.

Summary

This week, I picked an academic journal to give me more insight into the world of PR and nonprofits. I found an article called "Linking Public Relations Tactics to Long-Term Success: an Investigation of how Communications Contribute to Trust, Satisfaction, and Commitment in a Nonprofit Organization." This article was written by Julie O'Neil for the Journal of Promotion Management. 


The purpose of this article is to let Public Relations professionals know about the importance of garnering support in the nonprofit world. This is one of the main concerns for nonprofit organizations-- staying afloat in a tumultuous economic environment. The article offers helpful suggestions to this end:

• Public relations tactics can make a big difference concerning the public's trust, commitment, and satisfaction with a nonprofit organization
• It is the responsibility of PR professionals to make the public aware of their philanthropy and community relations
• Public relations professionals are responsible for telling the story of their organization to the public in a complete and compelling manner
• Public relations workers have the job of making their organization seem worthy-- 26% of donors stop giving to nonprofits because they think another cause is more deserving. 
• Nonprofits are involved in scandals just like everyone else-- this has happened with the United Way and the American Red Cross. Public relations professionals have to clean up the mess in the eyes of the public. 

The article is written by Julie O'Neil for the Journal of Promotion Management, available in print and online. Her purpose in writing this article is to make it clear how important it is for nonprofit organizations to build trust within the community and make their cause known to everyone possible. This will result in more donations and more volunteers, which will make their businesses as big and successful as they can be. It is the responsibility of those in the PR field to know the tactics to instill good feelings in the public about their organizations. This makes everything run more smoothly in the long run.


This article contained a study about a large nonprofit organization in Forth Worth, Texas, and had some great visuals in the form of charts which illustrated a sampling of the community feelings about the organization. These charts illustrated regression analyses for feelings of trust, commitment, and satisfaction concerning the organization, and descriptive statistics for communications. These charts were great because it is good to know that a PR person could make quantitative charts about things like feelings-- who knew?


Public relations professionals for nonprofit organizations clearly value the importance of community. Without those in the community being behind them, they could not receive monetary support or volunteer support. Therefore, they present the fact that the community's feelings about their particular organizations are crucial. This is evidenced by the charts presented in the article, and the entire theme-- Without community, nonprofits don't stand a chance.