A Wealth of Technology Talent Offers Opportunities for Charities

The AIDS Foundation of Chicago is seeking an assistant for the organization’s information-technology director. As he weeds through the more than 50 résumés for the just-above-entry-level spot, the charity’s president, Mark Ishaug, is startled by the applicant pool: candidates with decades of experience, master’s degrees, and histories of leading IT departments.

“Maybe a quarter of them are much more qualified than we can accommodate,” he says.

All that untapped talent presents a tempting opportunity, he acknowledges: The organization, which employs more than 60 people and works with scores of HIV/AIDS and other charities in the Chicago metropolitan area, could use a lot more technology expertise.

But, Mr. Ishaug says, “it’s scary to think that we’re seeking a real hands-on, crawl-under-the-desk, connect-the-wires kind of guy, and someone with all that experience is going to want to do that for more than three weeks.”

Nonprofit organizations nationwide that are looking to hire technology help in a soft job market find themselves in a similar situation: a plentiful crop of candidates, and a surplus of overqualified ones.

“There are more people in the market so there’s a larger pool to select from,” says Katy Gallagher, chief operating officer of Ashley Ellis, a recruiter of information-technology workers, in Naperville, Ill. “You’re not going to have to fight for the talent you select.”

If money for such positions can be found in a down economy, it’s potentially a great time for organizations to shore up vulnerabilities and build on strengths with regard to their technology expertise. But the challenge, say employers, is to find workers who will serve their needs, embrace their missions—and also stay at their organizations when the job market thaws.

Salary Discussions

In addition to being “horribly overqualified,” as R. Scott Hawkins, chief information officer at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, puts it, some candidates for open technology positions hold salary expectations that don’t jibe with a nonprofit pay scale.

His six-person staff recently hired a programmer and is now seeking a help-desk worker; for the latter job, the charity got more than 200 applicants. But even amid such stiff competition, he says, some people won’t bend their salary expectations.

The salary discussion comes up much earlier in the interview process for nonprofit technology jobs than in the business world, says Amanda Hatch, director of services at the Seattle affiliate of NPower, a nonprofit group that offers technology consulting to charities. Ms. Hatch, who worked in the business world before she went to NPower, says, “My experience is, when you get to the interview process and you find a candidate that you like, that’s when you start the negotiation.” But, at a nonprofit organization, Ms. Hatch says, an employer would tell candidates about the salary range in the first conversation, to weed out those “that just can’t live within those constraints.”

This conversation, she says, takes place in an initial telephone interview: “Lots of times, the candidate will say, ‘Sounds great. Wish I could do it, but I can’t.’”

But other perks can tip the balance in a charity’s favor, says Ms. Gallagher. Many nonprofit organizations have “absolutely outstanding benefits packages,” she says, most typically including good medical insurance with premiums covered in full or in large part by the employer and generous paid time off.

“A lot of not-for-profits have a base for paid time off between 30 and 40” days per year, she says. “That’s a huge benefit for any candidate looking for work-life balance, especially if you only have to work 11 months a year.”

And charities shouldn’t overlook the lure of mission when interviewing candidates, say employers. “We’re doing as much selling as we are buying,” says Ms. Hatch’s colleague at NPower Seattle, Gregg Johnson. Like her, Mr. Johnson, NPower Seattle’s interim executive director, made the move from a for-profit to a nonprofit career. In interviews, he says, “we’re talking about the impact that we make, we’re talking about the benefits, the non-economic benefits. We’re telling our own stories.”

Good Communicators

Mission is also a powerful magnet at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, in New York, where Sean Anderson, the charity’s director of information technology, has been vetting candidates for a newly created technology-manager job, for which he has received more than 60 résumés. With such a high-profile mission, he says, “motivation is not a factor” among the candidates who apply for the job. He advises groups like his that must pick from among many enthusiastic believers in its cause to “just be patient. Because if you’re patient, you will find the right candidate at the right price.”

And, Mr. Anderson says, “there’s no formula for that, other than just doing lots of interviews.”

Interviews—and a clear and streamlined résumé—will also help reveal who has the people skills to be effective in a nonprofit environment, say employers.

“Being able to explain tech stuff in nontech language is critical,” says Mr. Hawkins of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless.

Not only do such good communicators work more smoothly with their technology-challenged colleagues, he says, but they can also be good advocates for the importance of IT to an organization’s mission, which can be crucial in a time of belt-tightening.

“In a lot of charities I have seen, the IT department— they don’t have the people skills, they don’t communicate,” says Mr. Hawkins. And consequently, he adds, those departments “are the place a lot of organizations look to cut, because they don’t understand what goes on there.”

Use Volunteers

With so many abundantly qualified applicants available, Mr. Ishaug of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago is trying to figure out the best ways to take advantage of their skills. He cannot hire them all, despite a new, $210,000 grant his group received from the Michael Reese Health Trust, in Chicago, to help bolster its technology efforts and improve its database systems.

One solution, he thinks, might be to ask some of the rejected but highly skilled job applicants to help the organization as volunteer consultants. The charity is in the middle of putting together a strategic plan for its information technology.

“And we have qualified people in the office to do it,” he says. “But to have the leadership of someone with a lot of experience, I think that would be fantastic.”