Identifying service gaps in non-profit organizations Case: Matches and gaps in KY's service offering

Abstract

Non-profit organizations often work on limited resources, especially financially considered. As traditional, for-profit organizations receive most of their income from the products and services they provide, they simultaneously receive information on which parts of their offering their customers consider important. However, as non-profit organizations receive most of their financial resources from fundraisings and not from the services provided, identifying the important services can be difficult. This thesis studies the gaps in service offering and demand in the context of a specific non-profit organization. While the results cannot be generalized as such, this thesis indicates that the gap model created for logistics service providers can be used to study non-profit organizations as well. A research of multiple organizations would possibly provide more generalizable results on what kind of services all non-profit organizations should offer to their members.

The theoretical background is drawn upon on existing literature on non-profit organizations and services, especially service gap models, in general. Some literature on services in the context of non-profit organizations exists, but has more to do with marketing said services. Based on the literature review the author of the thesis modified an existing service gap model to suit the needs of the case organization. A survey that was sent to the members of the organization and the organization's personnel received in total 98 responses from the members and personnel combined. Data was analyzed based on the mean values of the respondent groups, following the method used in the original study based on which the framework for this study was built.

This thesis identified the case organization's largest improvement areas to be in understanding what services its members want it to provide and suggests the case organization to build a low-threshold communication channel to receive more information from its members and their demands regarding the services that should be provided. The thesis also identified two distinct service types where the demand and offering should be matched better.