A Study on Strategy Development of Nonprofit Organization －An Example of Buddhist Tzu Chi Stem Cells Center

Peter F. Drucker started advocating nonprofit organizations during his later years in life. These organizations, says Drucker, are better than government in solving the social problems of competitive capitalism. Also, the registered international nonprofit organizations in United Nation have been increased from around six thousand in 1990s to more than fourty thousand in 2005, this shows the rising and flourishing of nonprofit organizations. But, academic research on the strategy developmen of nonprofit organizations are insufficient as compared to those of profit organizations.

This thesis is a case study, taking Buddhist Tzu Chi Stem Cells Center(BTCSCC) as an example to study the strategy development of nonprofit organization. This research reviews the relevant theoretical literatures and integrates mission, SWOT analysis of situation and environment, strategic positioning, strategic resources development, and Michael Porter’s concept of the strategy-activity system to investigate the strategic moves of BTCSCC and the strategic insights of these actions.

By shouldering the extremely difficult burdens, BTCSCC was founded by Dharma Master Cheng Yen of Tzu Chi Foundation in October 1993. BTCSCC recruited more than sixty thousand volunteer donors within one year and quickly became the largest Asian unrelated marrow donor registry. In 2007, BTCSCC is ranked worldwide No. 3 in view of population density, only next to Germany and USA. It’s extremely difficult to start and to operate, especially BTCSCC is 100% self-funding. How can BTCSCC grow quickly and call for world attention based on the power of the people ? What’s the challenges and threats ? What’s the strategies that determined the success ? What’s the advantages and niches to pursue organisational sustainability ? By going through collections of historical contexts and looking back the situation and environment, this research divides the whole development process into four stages including entry strategy, start-up stage, development stage, and independent stage to investigate the strategy development of BTCSCC.

There were many hardships facing BTCSCC, such as "hard to accept bone marrow donation as common practice by people ", "huge amount of money required", "the pressure from relatives to matched donors" , "fearfulness or going back on a commitment by matched donors ", "fail to find the mateched donors", "suspicion of low survival rate ", "accusation of free donation, but paying for a bone marrow match", "misinterpretation of monopolizing the market and seeking for profit",…etc. Although the barriers remain, BTCSCC conquers all the difficulties with the strategic activities gradually. Mission comes first to concentrate the strength of great love, Master Cheng Yen expanded bone marrow donation into the sixth fields of compassion in action of Tzu Chi Foundation’s volunteers, a human sentiment-based fundraising network to provide stable financial support, the channel strategy of where there is a personal connection place there is a bone marrow donation chance to increase volunteer donors substantially, conduct in-depth and quality oriented communications with the clients to increase the agreement rate of donation by matched donors, distinct Marrow Donation Concern Group to take care the donors meticulously for the entire journey and win a high recognition from donors, to perform operations of bone marrow cells collection always in the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital to safeguard donors with rich experiences, establish establishes its immunogenetics laboratory to bring in DNA-based typing technique for accurate HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) Tissue-Typing to increase survival rate and to strengthen the confidence of Tzu Chi volunteers, donors and the global cooperation network, the first meeting between non-relative donors and recipients titled "Happy Reunion of Bone Marrow Donors and Recipients" was held to let recipients express gratefulness and let donors be living witness on " Donating marrow to save others will not injure oneself ", Tzu Chi volunteers practice what they preach over a long period of time and accumulate so many real touching stories which inspire and put people’s unconditional Great Love to donate bone marrow to save others. By a number of higher-order strategic themes which are identified and implemented through clusters of tightly linked activities, BTCSCC developed a distinct strategic positioning, " Concentrating the strength of great love with donor’s concerns as the focal point, building the core competency of accurate HLA Tissue-Typing and rich experiences in performing operations of bone marrow cells collection, in order to save life, inspire and put people’s unconditional Great Love in action with eternally grateful heart and without asking for anything in return,and move into the circle of love and good karmas.

There are some findings in this research for the successful nonprofit organization's strategy development as follows.
．Mission comes first
．Stretch strategy going beyond existing resource constraints
．Distinct strategic positioning of new field to guild organization resource flows
．Organization development by a human sentiment-based network with the concept of "a thousand eyes and hands"
．Creates unceasingly works for the welfare of others and concentrates the strength of Great Love
．Just go ahead and do good deeds, "Just do it !"
．Develops growth strategies based on unique core resources
．Differentiation strategies reflecting the gradual needs
．Distinct and valuable strategy activity system with a number of higher-order strategic themes which are identified and implemented through clusters of tightly linked activities
．Strategic leverage

Hope the precious experiences and wisdom of BTCSCC can help nonprofit organozations to create and expand their space of existence, to fulfill mission and contribute to the public interests.