After the New Economy Bust, Charities Report Finding Technology Workers More Easily

JOB MARKET

By Marilyn Dickey

Two years ago, when CompuMentor advertised to hire a technology consultant, the San Francisco charity was lucky to get 30 résumés. And of those 30, only about a half-dozen applicants were worth calling for an interview, says Mark Liu, the group’s program director for consulting services. But last year, something changed: When CompuMentor advertised for technology workers, more than 300 résumés poured in.

CompuMentor offers technology-consulting services to other nonprofit organizations, so it isn’t surprising that half of the employees it hired two years ago came from nonprofit positions. However, last year, about 80 percent of the technology workers the group hired came from the business world. That was partly because they were filling different jobs than previously, says Mr. Liu, and candidates with experience at for-profit companies proved a better match, but it was also partly because so many more applicants had worked for businesses.

For nonprofit groups, the end of the technology boom has been a mixed blessing: It helped create a downturn in the economy, but it also brought people with information-technology skills to charities clamoring for work. That’s a far cry from a couple of years ago, when technology jobs were abundant and nonprofit groups couldn’t compete with the six-figure salaries, bonuses, and other perks that for-profit companies offered. These days, when charities post a technology job, they may get hundreds of résumés within a couple of days.

That sounds like a boon for charities — and it is. But not every nonprofit group can take advantage of the surge in candidates to bolster its technology support. Just as more workers are hitting the streets, many charities are postponing technology projects and battling tight budgets, hiring freezes, and even layoffs. In the San Francisco Bay area, for example, so many organizations have postponed technology projects that the Management Center, a consulting company for nonprofit groups in San Francisco, has discontinued its technology-consulting service, says David Perry, the center’s communications director.

Even organizations that are hiring technology workers may find themselves simply filling gaps rather than expanding. “When we put an ad out, we get stacks and stacks of résumés, a much higher rate of return than before,” says Bobbie Peters, user services manager at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a medical-research institution in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. But the organization is not able to increase the size of its staff these days, she says, and just replacing employees who are leaving: “The economy has helped us in giving us better choices of people to hire, but the economy is stopping us from hiring anybody extra.”

Although many nonprofit groups now have their pick of technology talent, they are often choosing from among workers with the least experience in their field. Senior-level technology jobs can still be hard to fill. “It’s always true that there’s a good market for good people and tough market for not-so good people,” says Mark Polansky, managing director of information-technology practice at Korn/Ferry International, an executive-search company in New York. “It’s true for IT workers: There is still a severe overdemand for good people.”

Still, the climate has improved for nonprofit organizations as former Internet-company employees scramble to compete for fewer and fewer jobs. A survey released last month of for-profit companies that employ more than 50 employees, conducted by the Information Technology Association of America, in Arlington, Va., found a 5-percent drop in the number of technology jobs in the past year.

The abundance of technology-savvy job candidates has inspired the American Civil Liberties Union, in Washington, to jump into the market after a failed attempt three years ago to hire a Webmaster, says Phil Gutis, director of legislative communications. “The people we were able to find weren’t qualified, and the people who were qualified, we couldn’t afford,” he recalls. “So we cobbled a team of people together who filled in for the Webmaster.” Now he is confident his group will find the right person.

Steep Pay Cuts

The reason for the surge in job candidates has little to do with compensation: Stock options offered by for-profit companies don’t have the appeal they once had, says Mr. Polansky, and bonuses are becoming less common at technology companies. But nonprofit groups are still way behind for-profit businesses in the salaries they offer. According to an April InformationWeek survey, median pay for information-technology workers is hovering around 2000 levels, not taking inflation into account — which indicates a decline in real dollars from two years ago. But that is still higher than the majority of nonprofit organizations are offering: According to the survey, the base salary for nonprofit technology workers is an average of $83,000 for managers, $61,000 for lower-ranking staff members.

Salaries for technology jobs at nonprofit groups are usually 40 percent lower than at for-profit companies, says Mr. Perry, who is director of the Management Center’s OpportunityNOCS, a Web site that offers job listings for nonprofit groups in Northern California. For charities, he says, “We’re seeing jobs [listed] anywhere from the upper $20,000s to the lower $40,000s, and these are jobs that in the for-profit sector probably would expect to make from $60,000 and to the upper 70s,” he says. “And a lot of our job listings are at the management level.”

Many unemployed technology workers have willingly traded lower pay for gainful employment at nonprofit organizations. CompuMentor’s salaries are still far below what for-profit organizations in the Bay Area are paying, says Mr. Liu, and some job candidates find that hard to swallow. But people who have been out of work for six to nine months may be willing to take a lower salary. At CompuMentor, he says, new hires in the past year have taken cuts as steep as 75 percent from their previous jobs’ pay.

People desperate for jobs are not necessarily ideal candidates, Mr. Liu warns, but he doesn’t automatically reject them. “Sometimes people’s eyes get opened,” he says. “They may have started thinking that this is a last resort, but then they might talk with us and other people and discover there are more benefits to working at nonprofits than they realize.”

Former Internet-company workers are also flocking to nonprofit groups not just because of the dearth of available for-profit jobs, but also because they feel nonprofit organizations generally offer greater stability, flexibility, and job satisfaction. As the technology boom deflated, some for-profit workers learned from the evening news that they were being laid off, says Gabriela Fitz, online strategist at America’s Second Harvest, a hunger-relief charity in Chicago. “That’s why a lot of people want to get out of that environment. They want more stable places, more mission-driven work.”

In February, Jeffrey Betscher, operations director at the nonprofit Family Violence Prevention Fund, in San Francisco, hired a systems manager who he says is perfect for the job. “We got lucky,” Mr. Betscher says. “I’m delighted with the person. The job listing got a lot of response but not many qualified candidates. We got a lot of résumés of people who needed a job but not necessarily people who wanted to work on social-justice issues.”

The manager he hired, Linda Wong, has always worked for nonprofit organizations because she finds them to be friendlier work environments, and gets satisfaction from knowing the organizations are working to improve people’s lives. She knows nonprofit work isn’t for everyone, however. Her sister is a programmer at a large technology company and makes twice as much money, but that field doesn’t tempt her. Her sister, Ms. Wong says, occasionally talks about moving into nonprofit work, but hasn’t made the move. “She wants to do it for sanity’s sake, but she doesn’t want the pay cut,” Ms. Wong says. “You get too comfortable with the lifestyle.”

Volunteerism

Despite economic hardships, many nonprofit groups have been able to take advantage of the glut of available technology expertise without straining their budgets. Skilled technology workers are hungry for work — so hungry that they are sometimes willing to volunteer at charities while they hunt for jobs, or until the charities can afford to hire them.

At Dieu Donné Paper Mill, a nonprofit paper-making studio in New York, former technology-company employees have donated their time, says the studio’s board chairman, James Abruzzo. One volunteer analyzed the organization’s Web site and made some recommendations for improvement. Based on those suggestions, Mr. Abruzzo says, the organization won a foundation grant to upgrade the site.

Other technology workers do part-time or temporary jobs for charities — and some actually prefer doing so, either because they don’t need to work full-time or because they want to pursue educational or other goals. The chief operating officer at Technology Works for Good, a nonprofit organization in Washington that provides technology assistance to other charities, arrived from a failed Internet company bearing extensive management experience, and was hired as an independent contractor rather than for a full-time, permanent position, says Trabian Shorters, the group’s president.

Rather than handling all technology jobs in-house, some organizations are hiring businesses to manage things like e-mail lists and to build Web pages. Then they hire people with technology expertise as staff members to do more long-range planning. “Using vendors frees nonprofits to hire people who are thinking about technology more strategically,” says Ms. Fitz of America’s Second Harvest. These days, she says, “we have a better sense of what the Web can do for nonprofits, so we have a better sense of what we’re looking for. As we become more sophisticated, our hiring practices become more sophisticated.”

Making Tradeoffs

Sooner or later, the market is bound to turn around, says Mr. Abruzzo, and the demand for workers with technology skills will once again be on the rise. He doesn’t expect to see another boom to match the one of the ‘90s but says that some employees will dive back into the for-profit world as soon as they get the chance.

Whether technology workers who made the switch to the nonprofit field will remain in their jobs depends in part on why they changed in the first place. Those who were burned out or disillusioned by the volatility of Internet companies may decide to remain with a charity for the sake of stability, Mr. Abruzzo predicts, and those who joined the nonprofit ranks because they wanted to feel a part of the mission may find enough satisfaction there to stay.

Nonprofit organizations can do a lot to entice employees to remain on the job even when more lucrative positions become available. Making them feel valued and on a par with other employees is important, says Andrew Sullivan, chief executive officer of eLine, a San Francisco for-profit company that provides Internet-based solutions to businesses. Technology workers are often not made to feel a part of the staff, and as a result of feeling isolated, they may not fully commit to the charity that employs them. Nonprofit technology jobs, says Mr. Sullivan, are “usually viewed as a steppingstone, so there are low salaries and high turnover.”

Peter Dickinson, director of information technology at Mercy Corps International, a humanitarian-relief charity in Portland, Ore., says it is important to challenge technology workers to keep them interested. Mr. Dickinson recently hired someone who had worked for an Internet service center. Mercy Corps wasn’t able to pay him as much as he had made in his previous job, says Dickinson, but “we’ve given him a big technology challenge, lots of things to learn, and a lot of flexibility,” he says. “There is a social tradeoff here: psychic income for fiscal income.”

Mr. Polansky, of Korn/Ferry, suggests offering technology workers training, but warns that strategy can also backfire. “That’s one reason people stay where they are: interesting work, learning new technology,” he says. “The downside, though, is that once they learn the new technology, they become in very, very high demand in the marketplace, so there’s a double-edged sword there. You may be grooming somebody for a better shot in the marketplace. But that’s a risk you take.”

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