How To Get A Nonprofit Job

When we think about nonprofit jobs, an enviable salary usually isn’t our first association. In fact, most of us don’t even think about nonprofit work as a career path unto itself. Instead, we often relegate not-for-profit work as fit simply for volunteerism, something like a sure-thing extracurricular that pads a resume. At a macro scale we even marginalize nonprofits, referring to the industry as the otherly “third-sector,” neither corporate or governmental, and nowhere in between.

Part of the issue with talking about nonprofit careers begins with a difficulty in pinning down the type of work that a nonprofit employee actually does. It would be weird to say “I work in the private sector” without cluing your listener into the type of industry, but nonprofit work is often just that vague and potentially all-encompassing. Nonetheless, just like any other industry, not-for-profit work involves a variety of different skills and lines of work, and while you could certainly enter the social sector from a specific angle—doctors and lawyers are almost always in demand after all—in general, a nonprofit career prioritizes so-called “soft skills,” a bundle of traits that might include interpersonal communication, management, and leadership considerations in place of quantifiable expertise. As a career path nonprofit work breeds generalists, employees who have to jump around from project to project, adopting different titles along the way and nimbly adapting to new settings.

So how do you go about actually securing a job for a nonprofit? While internships, paid or otherwise, have become an obvious career-starter almost anywhere else, volunteering offers a similar spark in the nonprofit world. Laura Otting, founder of a nonprofit employee search firm in Boston, told Forbes earlier this month that a transition into nonprofit work can surprise many people after previous experience in the separately competitive private sector. “A resumé is an opportunity to tell potential employers what you can do by showing them what you have done,” she said. “But this is more difficult with corporate transitioners who need to write a resumé that details more about where they are going than where they have been.” Her advice is tailored for baby boomers but applies just as easily elsewhere. “Think about your [career in] the nonprofit sector in terms of functional expertise rather than subject area expertise.”

Otting’s most lasting advice though isn’t pragmatic as much as it is emotional: work for a nonprofit whose cause you’re passionate about. With that in mind, it’s worth taking your time in looking for the right gig, and more importantly, you should be seeking out the type of organization you might support regardless of a salary.

Nonprofit activity is similar to other sectors in at least one way: it’s bouncing back after the recession and salaries and competition over their corresponding positions are bubbling up. Still, there’s no way around the fact that in general a nonprofit job will pay less than a corresponding private sector position, but if you’re interested in not-for-profit work in the first place, money can’t be the only consideration.