Sriram V| May 31, 2021 | 12-minute read
Source: Harvard Business Review
Ten years ago, a friend introduced me to someone looking to fill a role at their nonprofit. It was a global human rights organization, launching its first office in India. At the time, I was running my own consulting firm and had previous experience in the corporate world, but this was uncharted territory.
I had a choice: Stay in my current role or quit to join an entirely new venture. Two questions helped me gain clarity around which path to take:
1) Am I excited about solving the problems that this nonprofit is trying to address?
2) Do I believe that I can add value to their mission using my skills?
Perhaps, it was my entrepreneurial spirit that pushed me to take up the offer. Over the years, I’d pushed myself to never turn down a challenge and was excited by the prospect of helping to bridge socio-economic gaps in rural India.
My job was to support their fund management initiatives. Finance was my forte and I was confident in my ability to deliver results. But once I started working, it struck me that it wasn’t going to be easy. My initial ideas were labeled as “too aggressive.” My colleagues knew a lot more about the work than I did, and my confidence dissolved as quickly as it had come.
It took me a few months to understand how fundraising and partnerships work in the nonprofit sector, but I stuck with it, and eventually, things fell into place. I now work with philanthropies globally and have dedicated the last decade of my life to implementing social programs that help people tackle poverty. I also enable investments in nonprofit startups. For me, it’s been a fulfilling journey.
If you’re on the fence about trying it for yourself, here are some realities to consider before making your decision.
Nonprofits and corporations are not as different as you think.
First, let me address a common myth: People often think that the corporate and the nonprofit worlds exist in opposition to each other. More specifically, the myth is that nonprofits are driven by passionate individuals coming together to fight for a collective cause while corporations are driven by money-hungry individuals competing to meet consumer needs.
The truth is far more nuanced than that.
Yes, the philosophies guiding each sector are different, but as an employee, you focus on similar things in both worlds: building transferable skills, solving problems in unique ways, making an impact, and finding the right avenues to grow your career. Similarly, a cause is to a nonprofit is what a client is to a corporation: the most important stakeholder. In both sectors, every decision is made with the cause or the client in mind.
You need more than passion — you need skills.
A young applicant recently asked me a really good question: “What if I don’t care deeply about one particular cause?”
Having a variety of interests is a good thing in the nonprofit world, just like anywhere else. Any career is a journey of discovery — about yourself and about the world. You may need to work at a few different organizations before finding your rhythm, but in time, you will find a job that resonates with you deeply and inspires you to stick it out for the long run.
Even so, your passion alone will not be enough to succeed. You also need to develop the skills to support the cause you care about. This will take hard work, patience, and a willingness to grow.
Depending on your role, those skills may include conducting surveys in a remote (or urban) part of the country to gain feedback from people in need, mobilizing community members to come together, designing programs or products that support your organization’s mission, learning about models of change, or securing funds to design a solution to the problem you are trying to solve.
No matter what cause you choose, you will likely be involved in at least one of these processes.
There are many ways to make an impact.
Broadly, the roles at a nonprofit organization can be split into two categories:
On-the-ground implementation roles
Nonprofit work often entails a great deal of relationship-building, and in these positions, you will get an opportunity to work directly with communities or individuals (known as “beneficiaries”). For instance, let’s say you work at a nonprofit whose mission is to improve schools in low-income areas. In this example, you would be building relationships with students, teachers, the local government, and the school administration. You may be required to conduct quantitative or qualitative surveys, review existing educational programs in the area, or assist in developing an action plan. Across the board, these types of roles require strong execution skills and a hands-on approach.
In the social sector, some of the most common jobs in this category include:
- Surveyor: Someone who conducts surveys and research in the assigned beneficiary area.
- Field officer: Someone who works one-on-one with beneficiaries.
- Trainer: Teachers, coaches, educators, instructors, or other individuals who work directly with the beneficiaries.
- Moderator: Someone who liaisons between the beneficiaries and other stakeholders such as the nonprofit headquarters, local governments, etc.
Enabler roles
In these positions, you will likely work with one of the following groups: corporations, philanthropic organizations, high-net worth individuals (HNWIs), influencers, public advocacy campaigns, or government officials. Your responsibilities might include fundraising, developing partnerships with stakeholders, spreading awareness through strategic communications, or brainstorming how people on-the-ground can take collective action.
Some of the most common enabler job roles include:
- Domain expert: Subject matter experts who guide specific projects in an organization; in a human-rights organization, there may be a women’s health expert, a sustainability expert, a child rights experts, etc.
- Analyst: Someone who analyzes policy, data, systems, or working models to improve decision-making.
- Researcher: Someone who uses field data, case evidence, secondary research, and experiments to generate actionable insights about a cause or beneficiary.
- Public policy expert: Someone who provides guidance on public affairs, public administration, and policy formulation with the local, national, and global perspectives in mind.
- Advocacy lead: Someone who builds visibility for an organization through publicity campaigns.
- Communications specialist: Someone who strategizes and develops communication collaterals for various stakeholders like donors, news media, industry peers, and the general public
- Campaign manager: Someone who formulates and runs marketing campaigns for causes, services, or events to generate support for the organization.
- Program or product manager: Someone who leads the end-to-end management of an organizational initiative or project, collaborating with beneficiaries and supporting the organization, its stakeholders, and its marketing units.
- Fundraiser: Someone who raises funds and build partnerships with other organizations or donors.
Understanding what jobs are available to you is the first step towards finding the right fit. The good news is is that these roles are cross-functional. People in both on-the-ground and in enabler positions must work together to achieve their collective goals and support their organization’s mission, meaning no job is more important than another.
A degree in social sciences is not imperative to thrive.
You don’t need to have studied social sciences, developmental studies, or public policy to work at nonprofit. These are nice-to-haves, but their absence won’t put you at a disadvantage. What you need, instead, are transferable skills, which include both “soft skills” and “hard skills.”
Soft skills
People skills will help you excel in any industry. These so-called “soft skills” include being a strong communicator, creative problem-solver, and empathetic teammate (among others). These are especially important to cultivate in the nonprofit sector, as relationship building will likely be a big part of your job whether you are working on-the-ground or in an enabler position.
Often, you will be required to work with a diverse set of stakeholders to accomplish your goals: funders, government partners, grassroots communities, thought leaders, influencers, and the general public. Working with people on the edges of society — at either end of the spectrum when it comes to wealth, power and privilege — requires empathy and endurance. You will need to be adaptable to break through cultural constraints, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and social resistance.
The nonprofit sector can be hard to navigate, especially at first. You may experience a gamut of emotions and even question humanity itself. (Why is it so hard to get people to give money to an issue that is so clearly deserving to you?) Being able to reflect, process your emotions, and cope with the situation in a healthy ways are skills you need to be willing to build.
Hard skills
“Hard skills” are more specific technical expertise that you gain through education and hands-on experience. These skills will help you narrow down which roles you might thrive in, and include capabilities like data analysis, copywriting, finance, design, or social media.
To leverage your hard skills, you first need to figure out what they are. For instance, are you good at research, number crunching, or writing engaging copy? Ask your classmates, coworkers, or peers for their feedback to help you identify your strengths. Then, look for the roles that closely align with them.
Nonprofits (as the name suggests) don’t exist to make profits.
The bitter truth is: Nonprofit salaries are lower than corporate salaries. These organizations work for the public — not for an individual or group of individuals. To that end, the donations and grants that a nonprofit raises are diverted towards the organization’s programs, and not your paycheck. I’m not saying that nonprofits aren’t willing to invest in good talent. But, relatively speaking, you’re not likely to earn as much as a friend who works at a similar level in a for-profit enterprise.
If you’re moving from a corporate job to the nonprofit sector, be prepared to take a hit in compensation. Before you make the leap, ask yourself, “How critical is money to me at this point in life?” Your answer may be a deciding factor.
That said, more recently, many nonprofits have been making a conscious effort to pay people better, including their interns, and create work cultures that ensure employee well-being and engagement. The nonprofit sector is also realizing that unless great talent is attracted and retained, disruptive shifts cannot occur.
Social change at scale is a marathon, not a sprint.
When I began working at a nonprofit, one of my earliest field visits included a trip to a remote village in Jharkhand that was grappling with extreme poverty. When I first arrived in the village, I didn’t understand the language or the geography. I was directionally misled by the locals, who feared that I was part of a human trafficking group, and followed by an armed cohort for the majority of my travels. It took 19 days for the locals to finally speak with me and begin trusting my intentions.
This experience taught me that no change happens overnight — and this applies to the programs and products you will be involved in, as well as the relationships you will form through your work. At a nonprofit, you are often trying to solve a problem, and the solution can take years to implement — and even longer to make a visible impact.
You’ll need patience and resilience.
Lastly, I’d like you to know that every challenge you will face working at a nonprofit leaves you (and society) stronger. Every small success is a sign that you are a step closer to building an inclusive world, community, and economy — one that works for all and not just a few.
So, if you’re looking for a career where money meets meaning, then this sector might be right for you.
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