January 15, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Four out of five nonprofit workers say they are either looking for a job or would be if the economy were stronger, according to a new Chronicle poll.
But finding a new position might not be so easy. In addition to the continued tight employment market, more than one quarter of workers say that they have been discriminated against on the basis of age when seeking a nonprofit job or promotion, while 43 percent said that they know someone who has.
The average age of the 672 people who filled out The Chronicle’s online survey was 43.
Linda Garrison, who serves as director of campaigns and major gifts at the Metropolitan State College of Denver Foundation, spent five months looking for a job after the nonprofit consulting firm where she worked closed its doors. Ms. Garrison, who is 58, believes that age discrimination was at least partly to blame for her long employment search.
“I’d show up for an interview and be told that I was ‘too experienced,’” says Ms. Garrison, who has what she describes a striking streak of white running through her otherwise dark hair. “I feel really blessed that it only took me five months to find something.”
Belittling Nicknames
Daniel Leonardich, a former administrative assistant at a large San Francisco charity, is convinced that he was the victim of age discrimination-because he is young.
He took an entry-level position at the charity, which he declined to name, after he graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2008. “It was literally the only job I could find,” says Mr. Leonardich, who just turned 26. And any hopes of working his way up through the ranks were quickly dashed, he says: “I got called ‘puppy,’ ‘little boy.’ I was asked to get people coffee.”
Mr. Leonardich left the job last spring and has since enrolled in business school. “I consider myself smart and articulate, and I’ve been a longtime volunteer, but I felt undervalued there, even belittled,” he says.
