HOTLINE
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've had a tough year. First, the fund-raising company I worked for closed its doors. Then I went to work for a very dysfunctional organization that fired me after only two months. (The person who fired me was also subsequently fired). Then I took another job, and was fired after one month. I had never been fired before I got mixed up with these two charities. My résumé does not reflect these last two jobs, so it appears as if I have not worked in a year. Does this hurt my chances of working in the nonprofit field again? Should I start over in a new field?
A: Unfortunately, your situation can't be remedied by switching from the nonprofit field to another one. The essential issue here is that yearlong gap in your résumé, which will make any employer curious and concerned. The important thing is not to hide your employment history, says Larry Slesinger, a recruiter in Washington who works exclusively with nonprofit clients. Whether your string of firings was due to bad luck or bad decisions, he says, "It's got to be acknowledged in some way." You might consider giving that part of your history a quick gloss on your résumé (for instance, by bundling that whole string of jobs under the label "various short-term positions"), then explaining in more detail in your cover letter.
Your ability to acquit yourself effectively will depend partly on the reputation of your former employers, says Mr. Slesinger. "It's not common," he says, "but there are some organizations or people within organizations who are known to be difficult to work with." However, he says, you should proceed cautiously: A job candidate should never simply bad-mouth a previous boss, for a couple of reasons. First, you don't want to come off as a complainer, and second, Mr. Slesinger points out, the interviewer "could turn out to be your old boss's college roommate." It's better to wait for some indication that your interviewer already has a sense of your previous employer's reputation and then tactfully discuss your difficulties working with that person or charity.
The bottom line, says Mr. Slesinger and other recruiters, is honesty -- not just with your prospective bosses, but with yourself. Was there anything you could have done differently to retain those jobs? If not, and the firings truly had nothing to do with your work performance, attitude, or people skills, is it possible that you leapt at those jobs without paying attention to warning signs of future problems? A bracing bit of self-reflection may help you articulate exactly what went on, in a manner that your next job interviewer can understand. You should also consider working with a recruiter, who might be able to help you over this hurdle by explaining your situation to prospective employers in a forthright but tactful manner.
Q: I have a master's degree in communication engineering and work in the field of networking software. Lately, though, I've lost interest in engineering and have grown more intrigued by nonprofit work. After having invested so much time and energy into becoming an engineer, what kind of luck would I have in the nonprofit job market?
A: Nonprofit organizations desperately need qualified technical help, but often can't afford it. Organizations rarely have money in their budgets to hire somebody who does nothing but deal with technology, and the few who do can generally pay only about half of what that employee would be able to earn in the business world, says Jeffrey J. Forster, director of technology services at the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management, in Pittsburgh.
One type of job that has developed over the past decade is the "circuit rider" -- essentially, a fancy name for a technology consultant. People with expertise will either offer a broad range of technology services to a small number of organizations that jointly foot the bill, or provide highly specialized services on a project-by-project basis to a large number of organizations.
One of the most important functions a circuit rider can provide is assessment, according to Mr. Forster. When it comes to information technology, he says, "Organizations often don't know what they don't know, don't know what they don't have, and don't know what their priorities should be." As a result, he says, they may feel uncomfortable trusting salespeople, who have a vested interest in selling them one particular system or product. In contrast, circuit riders can be a kind of neutral information broker to help charities evaluate their needs and make smart choices. If you're interested in jumping into the nonprofit world in this manner, you should consider attending the next national conference of circuit riders, the Roundup, which takes place March 7 though 9 in Oakland, Calif.
Technology managers who would rather find full-time employment with a particular organization should check out TechSoup, which offers a variety of career-building articles and resources, including links to job fairs. A general word of advice if you're trying to make the switch from for-profit to nonprofit work: Taking a volunteer job or unpaid internship with a charity is one of the best ways to gain experience and build a network of contacts among prospective employers.
Q: My "career" has included several short-term positions. For the last dozen years, I've worked in youth development, focusing on job-readiness programs. I have an undergraduate degree in business administration and some for-profit management experience, but I can't seem to move up. I have made lateral moves to continue working, but sometimes I feel like I'm going backward. How can I break this trend?
A: It may be time for a thorough assessment of your current skills and abilities, and how they match up with the needs of youth-oriented charities. Mary Stelletello, director of grants at the International Youth Foundation, in Baltimore, which supports programs for needy young people worldwide, notes that nonprofit groups have become more businesslike over time, as donors and foundations have begun to expect more accountability from the programs they support. As a result, she says, the people who move up the ladder fastest are those with excellent business, strategic, and organizational skills.
To get to the next level, Ms. Stelletello suggests, you might have to strengthen yourself in those areas, through academic courses or professional seminars. Taking a personality test, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory or the Strong Interest Inventory, may help you discover your personal strengths and weaknesses, and lead to a more appropriate set of career goals, she says. A career counselor or human-resources specialist may be able to give you these or similar tests. Or you can test yourself: Paladin Associates is a nonprofit organization that sells official online versions of the Myers-Briggs and Strong Interest tests for about $60 each.
But no test results or other external measure can tell you what your ultimate career goal should be. Once you've decided on a destination -- be it executive director, or program director, or something else -- you need to map out a plan to get there. It helps to have a sense of the overall market in your particular field and geographic area. You need to know if job-readiness programs are being cut or decreased in your state, and whether you have opportunities to make contact with others who work in your field. If the local nonprofit leadership is a closed club, says Ms. Stelletello, you might need to consider a move to a larger or more open market.
Finally, reach out to others in your quest to pull yourself up the ladder. Talk to others who have the jobs you want, to learn how they got there. Look for a mentor. And practice those management skills, says Ms. Stelletello: "It helps if you can put yourself in a position where you must supervise other people -- whether that's just one person such as an intern or assistant, or a staff, or a number of volunteers."
Q: I'd like to learn how to write grant proposals, with an eye toward doing it on a freelance basis. What's the best and quickest way for me to learn this craft, and can you recommend any resources?
A: The Grantsmanship Center, in Los Angeles, has trained many freelancers in grant-proposal writing. However, cautions Marc Green, editor of The Grantsmanship Center Magazine, the group tends to discourage people from looking upon grant-proposal writing as a freelance endeavor. "Grantsmanship is not about proposal writing but about understanding and planning the programs, which is usually done best from the inside," says Mr. Green. "A freelancer may well serve a small grass-roots organization that does not have the capacity to plan its own programs and have its own grants people on staff. The Catch-22 is that those are precisely the organizations that can least afford to hire a $75- or $100-per-hour consultant."
Nonetheless, grant-proposal writing is becoming an established profession, both for in-house personnel and consultants, according to Phyllis Renninger of the American Association of Grant Professionals, an online network. Ms. Renninger finds that most people have entered the field through on-the-job training, although there are more and more universities and colleges that offer training courses and degrees. Additionally, both Ms. Renninger and Mr. Green note that many state associations of nonprofit groups and local nonprofit management-support organizations now offer grant-proposal writing workshops to their members or clients.
The American Association of Grant Professionals also runs an electronic mailing list that professionals can use to swap advice about any aspect of the job. "In general, there's a lot of help out there these days," she says. The association doesn't advocate any particular type of training, Ms. Renninger says, although it does offer some how-to and best-practices courses at its annual conference, which will next be held in November in Kansas City, Mo. The group has also developed a code of ethics and discourages such questionable freelance practices as constructing fees as a percentage of the grant money won.
More advice is also available online. For example, Polaris, a grant-proposal writing service in Inman, S.C., that has worked for nonprofit clients for 19 years, offers free answers, via e-mail, to specific questions about writing proposals. And Philanthropy Careers' Hotline has in the past taken up such as issues as how much freelance grant-proposal writers can expect to be paid and whether it's practical to do such work from a home office.
In addition, plenty of how-to books show how to write grant proposals, including Writing Grant Proposals That Win, Second Edition, by Phale D. Hale, Jr. (Aspen Publishers, 1999, $105); Winning Grants: Step by Step, Second Edition, by Mim Carlson (Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2002, $29); and Proposal Planning and Writing, Third Edition, by Lynn E. Miner and Jeremy T. Miner (Greenwood Press, 2003, $39.95)
Got a question about job hunting, managing, or recruiting in the nonprofit world? Send it to us a hotline@philanthropy.com