Essays on Industry and competitor analysis

Stage in the growth cycle

According to Otting (2007), it is possible to determine 6 stages of the growth life cycle for a nonprofit organization. They are: startup stage, growth-oriented stage, transitional stage, mature stage, decline stage and founder-run organization. Otting (2007) also suggests a certain range of terms which allow to evaluate the state of the organization using its documentation (e.g. a website). For ACF International, the stage is definitely “growth” because of their diversity of plans and projects. This fact is proved by many links and terms at their website mentioning strategic partnerships, national models, sustainability and scalability.

The growth is partly conditioned by the expanding market needs and recent emergency situations where the help of ACF International is crucial, and partly it is determined by the expanding budget of the organization and its growing network of partners. ACF International should be careful not to deviate from their mission and to provide good career opportunities for its most active members.

Market share analysis

The nongovernmental sector is a powerful movement which is growing throughout the world and including more and more charities, businesses and foundations. The nonprofit sector in the world economy is estimated as 8^th largest one, with more than $1 trillion annual turnover and with more than 19 million of regular employees in addition to a large number of interns and volunteers (Hall-Jones, 2007).

In the nonprofit sector, the largest share belongs to the humanitarian organizations, which occupy up to 35% of the whole sector according to their annual turnover (Karajkov, 2007). The most known international NGOs are CARE, World Vision, Save the Children and Oxfam. Other well-known and powerful NGOs with slightly smaller budgets are Catholic Relief Services, Doctors with Borders, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps and ACF International (Karajkov, 2007). Private humanitarian organizations such as Y.M.C.A., American Red Cross and Goodwill Industries International are also strong players, but their sphere is activity is different from purely humanitarian NGOs. Overall, it is also difficult to determine a direct competition even between humanitarian NGOs because each of the organizations has its own goals and mission, and their efforts can often be combined in order to reach their common goals.

NGO competition is mostly taking place with regard to public funding, private donations and the support of investors. From this point of view, it is possible to determine three major competitors for ACF International, which are Save the Children, Mercy Corps and Handicap International. These organizations have common targets which include elimination and prevention of hunger across the world. The mission of Action Against Hunger (ACF International) is to provide solutions for malnutrition and hunger problems in emergency situations and in crisis times in order to eliminate hunger (ACF International, 2011). Save the Children also strives to help children and responds to disasters and addresses social problems affecting the lives of children (Save the Children, 2011). The mission of Mercy Corps is to “Alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities” (Mercy Corps, 2011), and their programs help the people dealing with hardships to survive and lead a worthy life. The organization provides relied and development assistance, helps struggling nations with education, agriculture, provides business loans, and helps to develop health care services. Finally, Handicap International also provides aid to vulnerable groups of people, thus helping them to improve living conditions and meet their essential needs. The organization offers help to disabled people, and also focuses on relief in disaster and emergency situations. Handicap International has 8 national associations which form the Handicap International Federation (Handicap International, 2011). Overall, the market share of humanitarian nonprofit sector of these four organization is about 14% (Cirelli, 2011), and thus it is possible to estimate the whole part of these four organizations in the nonprofit sector as 5%.

In order to evaluate the market shares of each competitor, their financial reports for the 2010 year can be used. Different factors can be used for evaluating the market shares of the organizations; in this paper, such factors as total funding, private and public funding, number of countries covered by NGO services, the number of people helped during 2010, and the number of employees. Table 1 shows the data obtained from the financial reports of these four companies (ACF International, Save the Children, Handicap, Mercy Corps).

Table 3. Financial data and performance of major competitors

(Sources: ACF International website, Save the Children website,

Handicap International website, and Mercy Corps website)

(dollar/euro exchange rate chosen as €1 = $1.425)

In order to measure the relative market share of these organizations, it is reasonable to use annual funding. Table 4 shows the calculations of market share for these companies in comparison with each other and in comparison with the whole humanitarian sector. These relationships are also illustrated by Fig. 1 and 2.

Table 4. Relative and real market share for the chosen NGOs

Figure 1. Relative market share for the chosen NGOs

Figure 2. Real market share for the chosen NGOs