Gaining Nonprofit Experience

Q. I will graduate from the Columbia University School of Social Work next May and I am currently looking for a job. I would like to go into fund raising and development or human resources but I do not have any experience in these areas. What can I do to start my career? What kind of position should I be looking for?

A. We’ve got some good news and some bad news. First, the good news: Nonprofit fund raisers come from many different backgrounds, and many organizations welcome any help they can get in garnering funds, says Mr. Sczudlo of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. He suggests picking an organization whose mission inspires you — presumably one with a social-services bent — and donating your time.

“By volunteering, you can almost pick your position with an organization, within reason,” he says. Get acquainted with the charity’s fund raisers and offer yourself as an apprentice. “I can’t think of a development office that would turn down a volunteer who wanted to learn the principles of fund raising,” Mr. Sczudlo says. Such an internship may easily lead to a paid job, and even if it doesn’t, he says, it will burnish your résumé.

To prepare for any fund-raising responsibilities, even as a volunteer, he says, you should educate yourself about the standards of the field. Information is available on the Web site of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ (http://www.afpnet.org).

Now, the bad news: Deborah Keary, director of the information center of the Society for Human Resource Management, in Alexandria, Va., wants to know why you didn’t get a business degree if you’re interested in her field.

“HR and social work are not at all the same thing,” she says. “There was a time when HR was considered sort of a caretaking job. These days, it’s looked on as a business position.” Therefore, she says, you’ll need training in the nuts and bolts of human resources: compensation and benefits, recruitment techniques, labor laws and compliance issues, and so on. It’s an uphill climb for someone without a business background, she says. It’s not an impossible goal but, Ms. Keary cautions, “we can’t be too encouraging.”

Though she allows that a social-work graduate may excel in one area that falls under a human-resource professional’s jurisdiction — employee relations — she says you’re going to need additional training before you can expect to be hired in human resources. She suggests looking into university business classes that focus on the areas mentioned above. To be taken seriously by potential employers, she says, certification as a Professional in Human Resources is key.

The exam is offered by the Human Resource Certification Institute (http://www.hrci.org) twice a year in major cities around the country — the next opportunity is May 4, and applications must be postmarked by February 22. (The test will also be given this June at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual convention, to be held in Philadelphia.)

To take the PHR exam, you must have two years of paid human-resources-related work experience. Exceptions are made for students or recent graduates, but you then must take the exam no earlier than a year before graduation and no later than a year after graduation. And even after you pass the exam, it takes another two years of work experience in the field until you are considered PHR.-certified. (The Society for Human Resource Management offers test-preparation workshops and study materials at its Web site, http://www.shrm.org.)

Before committing to further training to prepare for a human-resources career, Ms. Keary highly recommends that you talk to people who currently work in that field and ask them what their daily chores are like. They’ll probably tell you more about numbers crunching and navigating insurance regulations than about opportunities to use finely tuned people skills, she says. “You might be shocked at what it turns out you have to do,” she says.