If being able to do this type of work in the course of your career appeals to you, you may want to consider a career in the nonprofit/philanthropy world. It won't be easy going, though. In recent years, and especially since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. has seen a recent extraordinary jump in its number of registered charitable organizations. All of these organizations are in need of strong leaders as many in the sector are concerned that our country is not prepared to financially support this recent influx of newly registered charities. It is clear that only the strongest and savviest organizations are certain to survive.

This need for more and better trained nonprofit administrators is fueling the development of many well respected degree programs at universities and colleges nationwide. At the same time, more people, particularly college age and recent graduates are showing an interest in pursuing a career in nonprofit administration.

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The rewards can be quite satisfying for professionals who succeed. Such positions come with, at times, a tremendous amount of prestige and respect, interactions with a broad array of people from all class levels and at executive levels, a satisfying salary. Many organizations represent the lifeblood of their communities and are in the daily eye of the local, sometimes national, public and media.

Nonprofit Uppers and Downers

Uppers

Many of the positive aspects of working in a nonprofit/philanthropy career apply to many different organizations.

• The work a nonprofit staff member goes beyond simply executing a role in the general pursuit of making someone more money, or as much money as possible. The job that a staff member does can positively impact the lives of sometimes thousands of people, or change or improve some negative aspect of our society for future generations, or create new, affordable homes for disadvantaged families, or teach a mentally disabled person a trade and help him achieve financial independence. Nothing can measure up to the feeling at the end of the day when you realize that every call you made, letter you wrote, bill you reconciled, staff meeting you sat through, paper you filed, or decision you made could benefit someone who needs your organization's help.
• Nonprofits are generally more family-friendly than the corporate world. Many are more casual, offer better vacation and work hours, and have a more liberal approach to lifestyle choices. However this is not universal -- so check before making the assumption.
• Because there are never enough people to do the work, working in a non-profit can give you the opportunity to perform a variety of tasks outside your job description.

Downers in nonprofit careers tend to depend on the organization. Common negatives include:

• Staff members often do the equivalent of more than one person's job for often lower salaries (overstaffed and underpaid)
• There are few, if any, company perks of the sort offered by employers in the corporate world (gym memberships, entertainment tickets, etc.). Perhaps more importantly, in recent years, standard benefit packages (health care plans, etc.) have also been shrinking.
• Success is often difficult to determine. For example, say a local advocacy organization implements a community education campaign promoting parents to read more to their children. Is it possible to truly achieve an accurate determination of the campaign's success and to what degree parent behavior changed? Quite possibly, there is simply not enough funding that would be needed to design a community survey, or, at best, conduct adequate focus groups.
• Success is often tied to bringing in money/fundraising. While you may reap greater satisfaction from working at an organization whose overriding goal is not to make money, don't think that you're escaping the importance of money altogether.
• Working at certain nonprofits can mean continually seeing unhappy, indigent people -- or worse. For example, employees at women's domestic abuse shelters see a steady daily stream of battered women and their children. The shelter's staff often faces depression and burnout.
• High academic standards -- many nonprofits require a Master's degree, and some require PhDs for senior positions. Many also require hands on experience with target beneficiaries before being taken seriously.

Many Choices

While work in the nonprofit world includes can be characterized in certain general ways such as the ones above, the sector is hugely diverse, both in terms of types of organizations, and types of positions available. Nonprofits can be huge organizations, employing thousands of paid workers coordinated through a well-defined organizational structure (for example, regional chapters). They can just as easily be tiny -- many nonprofits are comprised of only a paid executive director coordinating volunteers.

Moreover, the missions of nonprofits vary widely. The type of organization most commonly associated with the term "nonprofit" is the community-based organization, frequently referred to as a "CBO." CBOs represent a tremendously important group of service providers, implementing their programs on the "front lines" of direct service. These organizations are seen as diligent, tireless workers, often responding to very basic, unmet needs that exist within a community. Typical examples of CBOs would be homeless shelters, "meals-on-wheels" programs and job placement nonprofits. CBOs aren't the only type of nonprofit, of course. Other types include nonprofit arts/culture organizations (e.g., the Whitney Museum of Art, the Goodman Theater in Chicago), advocacy/social policy research organizations (e.g., Children's Defense Fund, Mothers Against Drunk Driving), scientific research organizations (RAND and the CATO Institute), international (e.g., Save the Children, UNICEF), and foundations that fund the nonprofit world (e.g., Pew Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation).

Finally, there are many different roles within the nonprofit world. The way to best understand these is to understand the executives who head up these functions. The most prominent include the executive director (basically, the CEO of a nonprofit), the director of development (who oversees fundraising), the director of programming/project director (who has hands-on responsibility for designing the nonprofits programs and services), the director of public relations & marketing/communications (who oversees relationships with the press and reports to donors). Working with these executives are staff workers and volunteers, as well as employees of different organizations working with the nonprofit, usually as a source of funding. (For example, employees of philanthropic foundations or government agencies work with nonprofits their organizations help fund.)

Nonprofit Doesn't Mean Money Doesn't Matter

Today's nonprofit organization is a very different institution than it was only a decade ago. In a nutshell, the nonprofit corporate culture has become savvier. Many years of lessons learned have improved the sector's approach to program implementation or problem solving (including the problems without an absolute solution) by developing better, more cost-effective strategies for providing services. Just as importantly, nonprofit organizations have also greatly improved their approach to cultivating and accessing stronger financial support. Many unpredictable variables impact our national economy and subsequently philanthropic donations to nonprofits. The nonprofit/philanthropy field is learning how to protect itself from the roller coaster ride that our country's economy can be.

One common approach to this challenge is to diversify funding sources. An extreme example of this is a church in Jamaica, NY that is running and staffing its own charter bus company, essentially running its own for-profit venture and "donating" the income to the church's operational funds. More commonly, however, nonprofits are branching out into other areas of service in hopes of attracting new donors. This is programmatically justified as a way of making a more comprehensive impact on a single area of service or issue.

Other nonprofits are developing entirely new competencies in hopes of introducing the organization to an entirely new pool of supporters. One example of this is an early education advocacy group, Child Care Action Campaign, which has served as a facilitator and communicator of research and best practices for 20 years. Recently, however, it developed and implemented an early literacy childcare provider training program, sending trainers out into neighborhoods to teach providers how to encourage literacy with the young children in their care. This decision was responsible for nearly $300,000 in new support from donors who only fund "direct service" programs (nonprofits that work directly with those it seeks to serve, rather than just training workers who work with them or conducting research), essentially opening a door to a new revenue stream. In this instance, the organization jumped into community or direct service while continuing its work in advocacy and research.