The Five Most Important Questions: You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

3.2. IDENTIFY THE PRIMARY CUSTOMER

Let me give you a positive example of identifying and concentrating on the primary customer in a complex setting. A mid-sized nonprofit organization's mission is to increase people's economic and social independence. They have twenty-five programs considered to be in four different fields, but for thirty-five years they have focused on only one primary customer: the person with multiple barriers to employment. In the beginning, this meant the physically handicapped. Today, it still means people with disabilities but also single mothers who want to be finished with welfare, older workers who have been laid off, people with chronic and persistent mental illness living in the community, and those struggling against ...