Charities Urged to Do More to Attract Young Workers

Charities will lose young people to other professions unless they start doing a better job of preparing early- and midcareer employees for leadership positions, said participants at “Nonprofit 2020: Issues and Answers From the Next Generation.”

The conference, held at Grand Valley State University last month, brought together young people to discuss the anticipated leadership transition within the nonprofit world.

According to one study by the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting organization in Boston, charities will need to attract 640,000 new senior-level managers over the next decade to replace retiring baby boomers and fill positions created by the growth within organizations.

But many participants at the meeting bemoaned the lack of professional-development opportunities and mentors who they say could help them move into those positions.

“Our emerging leaders are not feeling supported and developed to become the next leaders,” said Susan Morales-Barias, a regional coordinator at the university’s Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership. Ms. Morales-Barias oversees activities in Arizona, Indiana, and Michigan.

Rarely do charity leaders have the time, money, or desire to provide young people with training and networking opportunities. Many see their youthful colleagues as a threat, speakers said.

“I talked to people at this conference who didn’t come here with the blessing of their executive director,” said Quincy Williams, director of American Humanics at Grand Valley State University. “One person I talked to had to call in sick.”

Charity leaders should instead encourage educational opportunities by earmarking a percentage of their organization’s budgets for professional development, he said.

They should also ensure that internships give young people the chance to do more than busy work, participants said. Many young people have more exposure to the nonprofit world through college and graduate-level course work, board service, and volunteer jobs than baby boomers had at their age, but they are hungry to observe how organizations are run. “One of the biggest challenges is to be allowed to sit in on meetings,” said Anthony Bowen, an undergraduate student at William Jewell College, in Liberty, Mo. “Even if you’re just sitting there, you get to observe how professional meetings are run and how leaders of an organization do their work.”

Seeking Mentors

Speakers also expressed frustration over the difficulty of finding mentors who could help coach them through their careers.

One solution might be to create a corps of recently retired baby boomers who could serve as mentors, said Mary Novello, founder of a consulting organization in Grand Rapids called Solutions for Small Nonprofits.

But the onus to create mentor relationships isn’t just on older people.

“Don’t wait for someone to find you,” said Rosetta Thurman, director of development and finance at the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington. “You have to look out for yourself and take charge of your own professional development.”

Older participants pointed out that many of the challenges younger workers face aren’t unique to their generation.

“I didn’t have mentors waiting around to help me, either,” said Laura J. Schultz, chief executive officer of the American Red Cross of Monroe County, in Michigan, and a 20-year veteran of the nonprofit world. “I had to go out and find them.”

Younger workers said they wished that charity leaders were more open to their suggestions, particularly in the area of technology.

Mr. Bowen said that he has encouraged charities where he has served as an intern to introduce online giving, and that executive directors have sometimes been skeptical. He’s also had trouble convincing one charity’s leaders that social-networking sites such as MySpace can help an organization raise its profile.

But even as baby boomers might benefit from being more receptive to younger employees’ feedback, next-generation workers shouldn’t expect to be given significant responsibilities immediately, others said.

“Many people in this generation want a lot of things handed to them,” said Mr. Williams, of American Humanics. “They don’t have the patience to wait.”

Younger workers also need to respect charity leaders and work within organizations’ existing structures, conference speakers said. “I’ve seen it happen too many times that if someone doesn’t like what their direct supervisor is saying, they go through the executive director instead of going through the appropriate channels,” Mr. Williams said.

To promote communication among different generations, charities should include a forum on the subject at a national conference on philanthropy or leadership transitions, participants said.

The lack of a clear career path within the nonprofit world also attracted much criticism. Some young people said they were uncertain whether the best option for advancement would be to go to graduate school or jump to government or business.

“Nonprofits lack standards about what transition is and what leadership is, and we sometimes go get a degree because that’s an easy way to feel qualified,” said Emily Malloy, a former nonprofit employee who now works as a project manager at Williams Group, a communications company in Grand Rapids.

She worried that if charities expect people to have graduate degrees, they will lose applicants from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

But Milika Miller, program and contract manager at the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership/Big Step, in Milwaukee, said graduate degrees in nonprofit management make a big difference, especially in getting ahead at larger organizations. “I could skip over 20 positions at the Girl Scouts of America because I have the leadership skills without having to put in 15 years working up the ladder,” said Ms. Miller, who holds a master’s in public administration.

She also noted that the trend toward “professionalization” is good for the field as a whole, in that people with more training will help increase organizations’ efficiency.

“It’s not going to be OK anymore to hire your mother to do your accounting,” Ms. Miller said. “If you hire your mother, she better have a background in finance.”

Meanwhile, young employees who’ve already risen to top spots at charities said they still struggle to be taken seriously.

Jessie Kuechenmeister, age 23, says she has faced some skepticism from colleagues since being appointed executive director of the South Dakota CASA Association, an organization that helps abused and neglected youngsters.

“I feel like I have to prove that I’ve paid my dues and can be in this position,” she said. “When I introduced myself as executive director of a state program at our national conference, the expressions on people’s faces were just priceless.”

Notes from the conference are available online.