Product diversification and commercial ventures

Sharon M. Oster

Chapter 13 in Handbook of Research on Nonprofit Economics and Management, 2018, pp 269-284 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: One of the key characteristics of nonprofit organizations is how many different products and services are typically offered by even relatively small nonprofits. While for-profit organizations typically diversify their offerings only after achieving some scale and experience in the core business, nonprofits typically diversify early and often. This chapter explores the factors which drive this diversification, comparing product extensions for mission reasons and those principally to support the budget. We consider some of the challenges of managing a nonprofit with a wide range of product services and goods, including issues of focus and cost accounting. Finally, we look at the special case of the earned-income venture, started explicitly to raise funds to support the core mission of nonprofits. What form do these ventures take and what challenges can arise in their management?

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781785363511/9781785363511.00021.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:16909_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().