HOTLINE

Why Charities May Shut Out Job Seekers from the Business World, and Other Answers to Readers' Questions

The Chronicle's Philanthropy Careers asked its readers to submit questions about job hunting, recruitment, and management challenges in the nonprofit world. In our monthly advice column, we respond to some of your inquiries with tips about resources and wisdom from experts in the field.

Q: I have been a highly successful, well-compensated consultant to senior managers of the world's largest corporations. I have also advised nonprofit groups on management issues and fund raising. I am trying to make the transition to the nonprofit world because I think the things I learned in corporate America can make an incredible contribution, and because I believe I can personally gain from what the nonprofit world can teach me. And yet, when I apply for a nonprofit job, I am told I don't have the right experience. Why are these people unable to see that the extraordinary skills and knowledge I've gained can be transferred to the nonprofit field?

A: From the overall tone of your letter, our respondents detect one likely problem right off the bat: your attitude, or at least your perceived attitude, about the switch you're trying to make. The pitch of your rhetoric -- "incredible contribution," "extraordinary skills," and so on -- can mark you as a braggart. "This letter suggests a certain lack of sensitivity," says Peter W. England, president of the Chicago Children's Museum, and a former top executive with the Unilever and Elizabeth Arden companies. "It implies a certain arrogance and, more importantly, suggests that the nonprofit world is inferior to the for-profit world."

Jay Berger, a recruiter in Pasadena, Calif., who works for nonprofit clients, echoes that opinion: "Obviously, this person has an ego. Not that there aren't egos in the nonprofit world, but it sounds as if he or she expects to bring all this wonderful experience in to enable some poor struggling nonprofit to benefit from his or her worldliness." This is not at all how most nonprofit employers will see the situation, he says.

In general, both Mr. Berger and Mr. England say, employers will not take kindly to the suggestion that your consulting background makes you specially qualified to jump into a field in which you have no previous experience. You simply cannot come off as if you'd be doing someone a favor if they hired you.

Beyond that, you haven't mentioned possessing any direct management skills. In fact, your one-step-removed experience as a consultant may be causing you more problems with your transition than your for-profit background. Mr. England says he's found plenty of overlap between running a company and running a museum: "You've still got a product to sell, and you might not talk about losses, but certainly you still talk about surpluses and deficits, cash flow and capital."

But consultants generally don't have to deal with those sorts of operational issues on a day-to-day basis, Mr. Berger notes, which puts them at a severe disadvantage when compiling management experience. "It's one thing to go into a corporation and show them how to run a capital campaign and then walk away, and it's another thing to have to do it," he says. "It's very different working in-house when you've got to be there day in and day out, and have all these accountability issues that you don't have when you're consulting."

He notes that his nonprofit clients will almost never consider someone for a top management position if they haven't had a lot of experience managing staff members. The same issues of accountability exist even for consultants trying to move to in-house positions in business, but are exacerbated in the nonprofit world, Mr. Berger says, by the field's emphasis on consensus. Unlike business heads, charity managers simply "can't make decisions and act on them," he says. "They first need to get buy-in from the organizations' various constituents."

Your letter points to further issues that may be keeping you from making the transition you seek. For one thing, you lead with the idea that you've been "well-compensated" in your past positions. Mr. Berger notes that he often encounters middle-aged people who have earned a good living in business, have saved for their retirements and sent their children to college, and are now fully willing and able to take a major pay cut in order to do philanthropic work. When they say such things right off the bat, Mr. Berger says, he knows that they've thought through the impact of the transition. "This person didn't say any such thing," he says, "and I find that a little scary."

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of your self-presentation, both Mr. Berger and Mr. England say, is the lack of clarity about your motivation. Typically, people who manage nonprofit groups are deeply passionate about the particular mission of their organization -- they're not in "nonprofits," they're in child advocacy, or university development, or homelessness prevention. If, after your years of business-world success, you are truly motivated to give something back to the community, Mr. Berger encourages you "to give more thought to what kind of nonprofit organization interests you most, what type of role you expect to have, and whether you have done or are willing to do some volunteer work to get some experience."

For more ideas about the transition from for-profit to nonprofit, check out Philanthropy Career's recent look at this topicof the subject.

Q: Can you recommend any recruiters who specialize in nonprofit careers?

A: Because recruiters advertise with The Chronicle, we are not in a position to recommend any in particular. As with so many aspects of career advancement, your best bet may be to ask your network of friends and colleagues for referrals. Or, if you are acquainted with a recruiter in another field, he or she may have a few names for you. Your college career office may have some ideas, and most such offices are willing to help alumni years or decades after graduation.

You may simply need to do some research and shop around. A good place to start might be the book From Making a Profit to Making a Difference, by Richard M. King (Planning/Communications, 2000, $16.95), which provides a substantial list of executive-search firms serving the nonprofit field. (This list is also available online at Idealist.Org. ) Another online resource is Oya's Recruiters Directory, which includes a handful of search companies that work with or specialize in nonprofit clients. Several of these recruiters also focus on one particular type of job category, such as information technology or accounting, or on a specific area within the charity field, such as arts management. It also wouldn't hurt to see what might pop up via a simple Web search for the phrase "nonprofit recruiters," coupled with the city or region in which you are hunting for work.

Q: I'm in the Midwest and am trying to come up with appropriate salary ranges for staff members of a nonprofit organization I'm starting. What is the best way to do that?

A: Depending on your location, your state nonprofit association may have information and guidelines to help you. All state nonprofit associations are listed on the National Council of Nonprofit Associations' Web site. The Kansas Non Profit Association, for example, maintains a detailed salary and benefit survey for that state. Herb Callison, executive director of the Kansas group suggests that if your state's nonprofit association doesn't have such information, the state's department of commerce probably does. Your nonprofit association can also give you a sense of what kind of benefits, if any, your new group will be expected to offer employees. Susan Ellis, vice president of the Indiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations recommends calling your local United Way, if there is one: "They'll be able to give you a sense of salary ranges based on organizational budgets."

For further guidance, you may want to check out Web sites that contain nonprofit salary data. A previous edition of Hotline rounded up a few of these sites. In addition, look for recent salary surveys: The Chronicle does its own annual survey of executive-director pay and also posts articles about similar studies. To find these data, simply scan Philanthropy Careers' Job Market library, or look for the salary stories archived in the Recruiter's Primer. Ms. Ellis warns, however, that salaries can vary widely from one organization to the next and one city to the next because of local economic factors -- and that jobs in urban areas pay much better than those in rural towns.

Q: I've had lots of experience in fund raising for social-service organizations, which have tended to be "lean" organizations in which I've worked alone or with a part-time assistant. I've recently tried to move up into jobs at private elementary and high schools, which usually have more development staff. Twice so far, I've been told I lack experience in managing people -- and what troubles me is that these interviewers seem to be looking for someone who has experience in making layoff decisions when times are tough. How can I communicate that perhaps I know how to run a lean department?

A: Barbara Gilvar, a recruiter in Boston who has worked extensively with independent schools, found your question puzzling and wondered whether you are possibly misinterpreting your interviewers. The key problem may be your lack of management experience, she says, rather than any unspoken requirement to wield an ax during layoffs. Ms. Gilvar suggests you may be looking at the wrong kind of schools, if they are large and established enough to have an entire development staff. "There are zillions of independent schools with just 200 kids, so you can imagine that they'll have a small department" -- probably just one full-time person and an assistant, exactly the kind of lean organization you've already worked for.

Although you lack experience handling a full staff, Ms. Gilvar doesn't think your background in social services should be an obstacle to switching into schools. "My observation is that inside the development office, a lot of people come from outside of secondary education -- development is development."

Got a question about job hunting, managing, or recruiting in the nonprofit world? Send it to us a hotline@philanthropy.com