May 1, 2008 | Read Time: 7 minutes
As nonprofit groups increasingly compete with business and government employers for young workers, many people in their 20s and 30s are pressing charities to improve salaries, offer greater opportunities for career development, and do more to promote the diversity of their work forces.
As a follow-up to a survey of 1,650 young leaders released by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network last year, which found burnout and low salaries threatening to drive young charity workers away, members of the group held a conference here to discuss how they can bring about changes that will reshape nonprofit organizations in ways that make them more inclusive and give greater opportunities to emerging leaders.
“Our hope in pushing the conversation forward is to figure out what we can do as individuals and as a network to impact talent development,” said Josh Solomon, managing director of alumni engagement at Teach for America, in New York, and co-chair of the national board of directors of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network. “We’ve got to talk about solutions, not just further diagnose the problem.”
Robert Egger, president of D.C. Central Kitchen, a social-services charity in Washington, called on the nonprofit leaders at the meeting to consider that the solution is not just to make the nonprofit world bigger, more self-sufficient, and more sustainable.
“You all have completely got to redesign charity in America, 100 percent, top to bottom,” he said. “There’s no big pot of money out there that’s going to allow you all to get paid a good wage unless you go out and develop it. What I see in your generation is a desire to see your spirituality, your income, and your lifestyle mesh. It doesn’t exist yet, and I think a lot of people come to the nonprofit sector thinking, I’ll find it there, and can be a little discouraged.”
Salary Concerns
While many young nonprofit workers are discouraged to find that their paychecks fall short of their earning potential at for-profit businesses, Paul Schmitz, chief executive of Public Allies, a charity with headquarters in Milwaukee that trains young people for public service, said the compensation gap is often perceived as being larger than it is.
“Most business is small business. And really, when you compare apples to apples, the average nonprofit to businesses the same size, the nonprofits pay well,” he said. “We don’t compare ourselves to the $13-million manufacturing company down the block, so we have this entitlement belief that we should be paid like Goldman Sachs.”
In addition to seeking higher wages, young nonprofit workers are looking for more professional-development opportunities, especially through leadership structures that encourage sharing responsibility among staff members at all levels, said conference participants.
Mr. Schmitz praised the value of having charity workers develop their careers through a variety of jobs and professional experiences.
“One thing nonprofits need to be thinking about is not just career ladders but monkey bars,” he said.
He elaborated, “Sometimes it’s not about moving people up but moving people around and also creating monkey bars to other organizations.”
Safiyah Jackson, a member of the Chicago branch of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and an education fellow in arts and culture management at the Chicago Community Trust, can attest to the benefits of cross-organizational career maneuvers.
Before she earned a master’s in education and prekindergarten child care, she had already received a master’s degree in business administration and had worked for Ford Motor Company as a dealer consultant.
She planned to open her own child-care organization but instead accepted an offer from the Chicago Community Trust to develop educational programs and curriculums for children and families, a job she finds a perfect fit with her passion and skills.
“I’ll never leave the nonprofit world,” she said.
‘Intrapreneurial’ Spirit
Kim Caldwell, a member of the network’s national board and a consultant to Greenlights for Nonprofit Success, in Austin, Tex., called on conference participants to tap into their “intrapreneurial” spirit by promoting innovation first and foremost within their own organizations and existing roles, before going out on their own.
“I’m on the phone all the time with people who want to start their own nonprofits,” she said. “They have the energy, they have the passion, but they don’t have the connections.”
Ms. Caldwell questions why more of those entrepreneurs don’t take their energy and passion and put it into practice at an existing nonprofit organization, but she suspects she knows the answer.
“When it comes to our own ideas, we’re not willing to take the back seat. We want the cookie,” she said.
But, she added, “success is that our ideas get effectively implanted. That should be enough.”
Allyson Biegeleisen is another member of the network’s national board and a director of client services at Commongood Careers, a recruiter in Boston that works with nonprofit clients.
To keep informed about the ideas and objectives of young nonprofit workers, Ms. Biegeleisen recommends a simple tactic.
“Every supervisor should be intimately familiar with at least three professional goals of those they manage, and those goals should be revisited quarterly and be directly tied to staff compensation,” Ms. Biegeleisen said. “That way, if and when an individual gets to the point where maybe there isn’t an opportunity for them to move up, then they hopefully now have a relationship with their supervisor, and it’s not so awkward for anybody because they’ve been helping you the whole time to get there.”
Yarrow Sandahl, co-chair of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network’s national board and operations manager at the San Francisco office of Bridgespan, which provides strategic-planning advice to charities, thinks that young nonprofit employees need to take more responsibility for the progress of their own careers.
“I manage a team of five people who are pretty diverse in age, and none of them really own their own professional development,” Ms. Sandahl said. “It’s almost like the onus is on me to figure out their professional development, and I think that can be really frustrating on the part of managers.”
‘Admit Your Struggles’
In last year’s survey, young nonprofit workers expressed a yearning for more mentoring on the job. But well-meaning attempts of young employees to demonstrate their capability can sometimes prevent such relationships from occurring, said Mr. Schmitz of Public Allies.
“Often among young people, they think the way to prove themselves as leaders is to prove they can do it themselves,” he said. “The best way to get mentorship is to be vulnerable and admit your struggles. As a manager, the hardest thing to manage is people who aren’t open about their challenges and weaknesses.”
Mr. Schmitz also discussed the challenges the field has faced in creating a more diverse leadership; conference attendees pointed out that this is a challenge faced by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network itself.
Faith Byone, program associate at the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund, in Washington, called attention, for example, to the fact that she is one of only two African-Americans on a board of 17 that oversees the network’s Washington chapter. Such small numbers, she said, do not reflect the predominantly black city the chapter serves.
Richard Brown, vice president of philanthropy at American Express, in New York, urged taking action. “When thinking about affirmative action within this organization itself, in terms of moving people into leadership positions within your local chapters, reach out to people who are in your community who may not be participating, affirmatively,” he said. “That’s what it means: It means to actually go out and do it.”
Mr. Brown believes that incorporating more diversity into the nonprofit world requires changes at the board level.
“Boards need to become more diverse, not just in terms of people of color,” he said. “The Council on Foundations needs to get funders to start talking about this in a much more proactive way to get their grantees to start thinking about how do you get more young people on the board.”
Mr. Solomon, the network’s board co-chair, highlighted this goal among the group’s top priorities.
“The Young Nonprofit Professionals Network is a great peer-to-peer network, but how do we get our alumni onto other boards is the question,” he said. “To see the changes we want to occur, we’ve got to get our message on other boards.”
