Inside a $5-Million Effort to Aid the Nonprofit World’s Next Generation

Christopher Mateo had a life-transforming experience last summer.

Working as an intern at the Latino Commission on AIDS, in New York, he watched as people heaped praise on the organization’s president, Dennis deLeon, during an award banquet in Mr. deLeon’s honor. The award was nice, Mr. Mateo thought, but even more impressive was Mr. deLeon’s passion and commitment. Suddenly, the young man had a vision of his own future.

“Just seeing him up there accepting his award, it was an amazing experience,” says Mr. Mateo, 20. “It really affirmed that this is what I want to do after college. My goal is to go to Latin America and work with HIV/AIDS there.”

That transformative experience might not have been possible without the help of American Humanics’ Next Generation Nonprofit Leaders program, also known as NextGen. The program gave him a $4,500 scholarship — essentially a stipend to sustain him during an unpaid internship at the Latino Commission. Mr. Mateo, a senior at Southern Adventist University, in Collegedale, Tenn., says he couldn’t have accepted the internship without it.

He is among the first wave of students from across the country to benefit from the NextGen program, an ambitious five-year effort that hopes to nudge a diverse group of 1,000 college students toward leadership positions in nonprofit organizations.

The new program is well in keeping with the mission of American Humanics, a nonprofit group in Kansas City, Mo. The organization prepares college students for nonprofit careers, providing undergraduate curricula, scholarships, leadership opportunities, and internships in line with that goal.

Emphasis on Diversity

So if American Humanics was already grooming future nonprofit leaders, why the need for the NextGen program? Organizers say the program’s roots can be traced to the research of an American Humanics faculty member who was trying to answer a simple question: Why doesn’t every American Humanics student enrolled in the organization’s undergraduate certification program finish it, and then go on to jobs in the nonprofit world?

“The major issue,” says Richard Potter, American Humanics’ spokesman, “was the unpaid internship.”

Many students were deciding they couldn’t afford to spend the roughly six months it would take to complete the 300-hour internship required for American Humanics certification.

“Many nonprofits look at internships as a cheap source of labor,” Mr. Potter says. “They either pay nothing or they pay a minimum amount.”

The solution seemed obvious: Supplement the internship pay.

Fortunately for American Humanics, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., has long been interested in efforts to move skilled young managers into nonprofit organizations. It helped American Humanics grow its network of affiliated campuses from about 12 in the early 1990s to about 75 today. When Kellogg asked for a proposal to solve the internship problem, American Humanics complied, and the Next Generation Nonprofit Leaders program was born.

Kellogg is committing $5-million to the project over five years. The goal is to select 1,000 future leaders for the program. Each receives a $4,500 scholarship or stipend to help him or her complete an internship and earn American Humanics certification. Each NextGen intern will also gain access to and support from a network of mentors in nonprofit organizations.

The program began in the spring of 2007, with slightly more than 200 students. About 200 more will be selected each year through 2011, with the hope that at least 40 percent to 50 percent of them will be members of minority groups. Forty-seven percent of the first year’s class were minorities.

“It’s working. We’re really pleased,” Mr. Potter says. “We want to do everything we can to make sure the next generation of nonprofit leaders reflects the diversity of the communities they serve.”

That has long been a problem in nonprofit groups. Eighty-two percent of chief executives at the nation’s nonprofit organizations are white, according to a 2006 survey by CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, in San Francisco, and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, in Washington.

At grant-making organizations, some 94 percent of chief executives are white, according to 2006 figures from the Foundation Center. About 67 percent of the nation is white, U.S. Census figures show.

“It’s gotten better,” says Alandra Washington, deputy director of the Kellogg foundation. “But there is a huge gap to access and resources in traditional and marginalized communities. Historically, communities of color have been left out of the many aspects of the mainstream in America. This is just another sector in which this plays out.”

Gender Gap

Women are also underrepresented, especially at the highest levels of the nonprofit world. While female executives lead half of all nonprofit groups with budgets of $1-million or less, only a quarter of groups with budgets of more than $50-million are led by women, according to GuideStar, a group in Williamsburg, Va., that collects financial information about charities and foundations.

Molly Hamm is just the kind of future leader the NextGen program is seeking to nurture.

Ms. Hamm, 21, is a junior at Kansas State University who has already embraced charity work and volunteering. She has volunteered with an afterschool program, served as an AmeriCorps volunteer, and is so highly regarded by American Humanics that she was asked to give a presentation during the organization’s recent conference.

She wanted to go to Washington this summer to participate in the Institute on Philanthropy and Voluntary Service, at Georgetown University. The summer-long program allows students to take classes at Georgetown and do an internship in the nonprofit field. Ms. Hamm elected to do hers at The People Speak, an educational campaign by the United Nations Foundation that seeks to engage youths on global issues.

She would have struggled to handle living expenses in the nation’s capital, even though her internship is paid. But the NextGen program’s stipend will help her meet her expenses.

“This is a good way for me to go and participate without having to stress over the finances,” she says. “A lot of times students don’t think they can go into nonprofits if they have a lot of debt or if they don’t think they’ll be able to maintain their standard of living. Giving them this early contact with the nonprofit world hopefully will allow them to develop that affinity for the sector.”

The program has definitely worked for Mr. Mateo. His major is in nonprofit administration and development and he says he has been offered a full-time job by the Latino Commission once he graduates. It is nice to have an offer on the table, says the New York native, but he’s not sure he wants to go back to big-city life.

“I’m still weighing my options,” he says.

Karen Davis can testify to how well the NextGen program works. The group she leads, Aspiring Youth, a small charity in Houston that works with disadvantaged middle-school students, operates on a tight $500,000 budget. Her NextGen intern, LaShic Patterson, dove into a variety of projects, from writing grant proposals to arranging student visits at local businesses. Ms. Patterson, a University of Houston senior, made herself so indispensable that when her internship ended in late April, Ms. Davis quickly hired her as a development and programs coordinator.

Ms. Patterson was Ms. Davis’ second American Humanics intern — and the second one she has hired. Ms. Davis marvels at how “job ready” the interns have been: “I should have been so amazing when I was their age.”

Ms. Washington, of the Kellogg foundation, says there are still far too few women and people of color in key positions, like development officers and executive directors, as well as on boards of directors. But she likes what the NextGen program is doing to put a dent in the problem.

“We’re still early into the program, but we’re pleased with the results,” she says. “So far, so good.”