October 16, 2008 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Q. I’m looking to re-enter the nonprofit work force after a long period off that I spent tending to family obligations. I worked for Fannie Mae, but I am not looking for a job that is solely housing-related. I care passionately about helping low-income, minority neighborhoods and about how they continue to grow and develop once the do-gooders have left. Where should I start looking for my new job?
A. Marcia Peterson, director of New Orleans Ministry at Desire Street Ministries, a Decatur, Ga., charity that works to rebuild neighborhoods such as New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, suggests you take a step back. Before you start looking for a job, she says, you need to make sure you understand the challenges of helping people in the sort of neighborhoods you describe.
“It’s not like getting an economic-development job in an affluent suburb or Manhattan,” she says. Working in areas hampered by intense poverty, few resources, and long histories of racism, she says, can be frustrating and difficult, involve long hours and emotional strain, and result in few short-term rewards.
“A lot of people come in well-intentioned, thinking they can solve the problems in 12 months,” she says. “If you come in with that feeling, you’re going to burn out.”
At Desire Street Ministries, Ms. Peterson has seen quite a few employees and volunteers suffer that very fate. One young woman quit her job as a summer camp counselor in the Ninth Ward after only one day. “She didn’t realize it still looked like this three years after [Hurricane] Katrina,” Ms. Peterson says.
To avoid getting yourself into that sort of situation, she says, familiarize yourself with the neighborhood in which you want to work and with the people who live there. Go to neighborhood-association meetings and religious services. Volunteer with organizations that serve the neighborhood. Have dinner with families and learn what their lives are really like. “Go with them to the corner store where they buy a gallon of milk for $6 because they can’t afford transportation to a bigger grocery store where milk is $4,” Ms. Peterson says.
Then, when you’re interviewing with potential employers, she says, you’ll be able to convey passion for the cause and to prove that you understand the sacrifices you’ll be making.
Anne Wunderli, director of facilities and social enterprise at Pine Street Inn, a social-service charity in Boston, says you might start your job search by looking for grass-roots organizations that were created to work in a specific neighborhood. If you’re worried about do-gooders leaving the scene, she says, “these guys aren’t going anywhere. They are neighborhood-born. There’s no place for them to go.”
Ms. Wunderli also recommends you visit the Social Enterprise Alliance Web site for more information, as well as the online Directory of Social Enterprises, a joint project of the alliance and Community Wealth Ventures, a Washington consulting firm that works with charities.
And consider reconnecting with the people and organizations you worked with during your time at Fannie Mae, suggest Barbara Beck, director of financial services and underwriting in the Chicago office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, an economic-development group with headquarters in New York. Ms. Beck got her current position after working for a charity that borrowed money from the organization.
