Reputation of the Ahbap Platform as a non-governmental organization: The case of Ahbap in Samsun

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are non-profit organizations that provide their services largely on a voluntary basis. Generally, religious organizations, political movements and non-profit organizations other than government institutions and commercial organizations can be organized as NGOs. In this respect, NGOs need sufficient employees, supporters and funds in order to provide the public service they perform and to maintain their existence. Although NGOs are different from private enterprises and public institutions by nature, the competition between private enterprises is also valid for NGOs. Today, NGOs need to come to the fore with some of their qualities in order to differentiate from other NGOs operating in the same field, to increase the number of members and volunteers, to create financial resources, and to gain the support of private enterprises and public institutions. In this context, the reputation of NGOs becomes very important in terms of being preferred by the society, being valuable in the eyes of the society, cooperating with public institutions and private enterprises in social responsibility projects, and providing the support of public institutions and private enterprises in their activities. The reputation of an organization is far superior to its capital value. Institutions with a high reputation will provide more support and donations to the organization by voluntary participants. NGOs, whose numbers have increased in the world since the 1960s, started to become widespread in Turkey as of the 1980s. However, it is seen that the level of development of NGOs in Turkey is still not at a sufficient level. There is no competition for NGOs in Turkey as in the West, but today, NGOs realize the importance of reputation and strive to protect and improve their reputations. However, it is observed that there are not enough studies on the reputation of these organizations. For this purpose, it is aimed to measure the public reputation of the Ahbap Platform/Association, which is an aid platform and NGO that has been serving in Turkey since 2017. In Samsun, the reputation of AHBAP was tried to be measured by using the survey technique, which is one of the quantitative research methods. 400 people participated in the survey and according to the results obtained, it was determined that the participants generally trust the Ahbap Platform. Participants stated that they found AHBAP successful in terms of communication capacity and that they saw it as a platform with a competent capacity. In addition, AHBAP is seen by the participants as having a successful management capacity. Based on these results, it can be said that the reputation of the AHBAP Platform is high in Samsun.