Advancing Relationship Management Theory

Scandals in the charitable nonprofit sector have resulted in decreasing levels of public confidence in nonprofit organizations. Given the importance of donors to the sector, it is vital to understand how these organizations cultivate relationships with donors to survive sector-wide controversies. The organization-public relationship framework allows the current study to assess the health of the nonprofit-donor relationship while challenging the traditional research design of organization-public relationship studies. Through 1,830 surveys administered to donors and fundraising team members at three United States nonprofit hospitals, this study breaks new ground in public relations scholarship by refining previous relationship dimensions, adding new cultivation strategies, measuring both sides of the organization-public relationship using coorientation methodology, and measuring the organization-public relationship across multiple organizations. The results indicate that the nonprofit-donor relationship is healthy in terms of the relationship evaluation; however, the impact of cultivation strategies suggested by public relations literature varies significantly.