Marketing Research for Non-Profit Human Service Organizations

What Is Marketing Research? According to Webster's dictionary, marketing research is conducted by businesses and organizations "to establish the extent and location of the market for a product." Social marketing research includes any of a number of different methodologies (such as telephone surveys or focus groups) designed to assess what people think about and how likely they are to buy or use a product or service. What Is Evaluation Research? Peter Rossi, Ph.D. is an internationally respected sociologist who has written extensively about evaluation research during a career spanning nearly 50 years. He defines evaluation as "using social research methodologies to judge and improve the ways in which human service policies and programs are conducted, from the earliest stages of defining and designing programs through their development and implementation." See Peter H. Rossi and Howard E. Freeman, Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, Newbury Park, California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1993, pg. 5.

Market Street Research has conducted marketing research and evaluation research for non-profit organizations for nearly three decades. We work with government departments, state agencies, federally-funded social welfare programs, charitable foundations, educational institutions, and private, non-profit health and human service organizations located throughout the United States.

Our market research involves many diverse populations, an extremely broad array of topics, and includes people who are hard to reach with traditional research methods. Our approach to marketing research is pragmatic, thoughtful, respectful of the populations studied, and responsive to the needs of both agencies and funders.

Market Street Research is not interested in researching for research's sake-instead, we focus on helping agencies to best respond to their clients' needs in order to improve how they design and deliver critically important programs and services.

Market Street Research has helped organizations design new as well as fine-tune existing programs and services, and the topics we have studied range from the relatively mundane to the highly sensitive.

MSR has specific experience in designing and conducting marketing or evaluation research aimed at:

• African-Americans
  
• Asian-Americans
  
• Hispanics and Latinos
  
• American Indians
  
• Children and Teens
• Illiterate and semi-literate adults
  
• Working-age adults
  
• People over age 65
  
• People with physical disabilities
  
• Mentally ill children and adults
• Deaf and hard of hearing individuals
  
• Women and men
  
• Individuals at all income levels
• Referral sources, such as physicians and
  hospital discharge planners
  
• Patients with specific diagnoses
  
• Funding sources and foundations

Examples of Topics MSR has Researched:

• Seniors' coping with activities of daily living
  
• Sexual abuse of children
  
• Housing alternatives for low-income families
  
• Substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, & intravenous drug use)
  
• Alzheimer's disease
  
• Teen smoking
  
• Citing of toxic waste facilities in poor neighborhoods
  
• Men's health
  
• Alcohol use during pregnancy
  
• Fetal alcohol syndrome
  
• HIV/AIDS

Click here to see examples of our reports for Non-Profit Human Services Organizations.

Please contact us to discuss how Market Street Research can help you achieve your organization's goals.

Learn more about:

• MSR's Market Research Solutions
• MSR's Marketing Research Methodologies
• The Markets MSR Serves
• The Results of MSR's Marketing Research

Learn more about why you should use Market Street Research.