Young People Want Nonprofit Work

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor:

The July 21 opinion article “Building Tomorrow’s Nonprofit Work Force,” by Paul Schmitz and Kala Stroup, presents a compelling statement of the challenges facing the sector during this time of management turnover. I could not agree more with their statement that establishing a talented, committed corps of future leaders must be a paramount priority for all social-sector stakeholders.

Shortly after graduating from Brown University in 2003, I went to work for a large pharmaceutical company where I led multiple projects in deal analysis, competitive intelligence, and strategic planning. Though the work was exciting and intellectually challenging, I did not find the subject matter ultimately fulfilling, and within a year I started looking for other opportunities. I focused my search not on any particular industry or type of work, but rather on jobs that would demand as much rigor and responsibility of me as my previous one had.

After a few months of looking, I came upon an AmeriCorps-sponsored job at an organization called New Sector Alliance. Its mission, to accelerate social change by improving organizations today while developing socially responsible leaders for tomorrow, was compelling, so I signed on for the typical one-year AmeriCorps commitment.

To achieve our mission, New Sector Alliance works with nonprofits in Boston and San Francisco to identify strategic opportunities that will improve service delivery to their communities. Then we selectively recruit and train students from universities such as Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley and professional consultants from Bain, McKinsey, and Accenture to help the nonprofits capitalize on those strategic opportunities.

By asking students and recent graduates to contribute to the overall strategic vision of an organization or enlisting their service in devising the organization’s operational strategy, nonprofit organizations can inspire a true love of the work in them. Young people who are allowed to invest their brains, as well as their hearts and bodies, in nonprofit work feel a stronger attachment to the organization and the community change it seeks to accomplish. And as a result, these young people stay in the social sector to become the next generation of leaders.

The current place of corporate leaders as the chief models for professional success in the eyes of college graduates (especially those from prestigious institutions) has not been a permanent fact of American society, but rather has developed over the last several decades. To understand other ways in which talented leaders have thought about personal success, all one needs to do is look back to the heroes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Holmes, Darwin, James — intellects, academics, practitioners. Promising students graduating from institutions of higher education aimed to be like them, not like the businessmen of their day.

But today success in business is the expectation placed upon graduates with exceptional academic credentials. This belief stems largely from personal experience, but also from a brief and unscientific survey of various alumni lists and university career services Web sites. Further, I believe that it is expectations — and the subsequent lauding of achievements in the field of business — that send most students down this career path, rather than a burning desire for personal financial gain.

In order for all young people considering a career in the nonprofit sector to see their work as an achievement, we must first and foremost work to maintain institutions that are professional and coherent.

For young people to truly appreciate nonprofit work, they must receive close mentorship from professionals and the ear of the highest levels of management at nonprofit organizations. Managers must entrust them with hard tasks and take them seriously. And academic institutions must empower them to create work of the highest quality and most lasting impact.

Carter Romansky
Special-Projects Coordinator
New Sector Alliance
Boston