Development and Fundraising Jobs
As they struggle to survive the economic crisis, nonprofits are hungry for donations. Many are hiring fundraisers--and there are not enough applicants to fill the open slots. Though the downturn hit the sector hard last year, organizations are staffing up, says Paulette Maehara, chief of the field's main trade group, the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP).
Some 350,000 U.S. nonprofits have budgets of more than $100,000, but Maehara says her organization has just 30,000 members. Though not all professional fundraisers join the group, the relatively small membership hints at how few people are competing for a glut of jobs. "The competition for good people is fierce," observes Maehara.
According to the US Department of Labor, "Religious, Advocacy, grantmaking, and civic organizations had 1,200,000 million wage and salary jobs in August 2006. About 74 percent of them were in civic and social organizations or professional and similar organizations."
Though these jobs don't compensate at Wall Street levels, they pay better than other do-good work. Maehara says the average salary for a fundraising professional with five years of experience is $64,000. Major gift officers and chief fundraising strategists can make well into the six figures, she says.
Many job seekers considering a nonprofit career are turned off by the idea that fundraisers spend their days cold-calling and begging for money. It's not like that, says Gabrielle Mellett, development officer at Earth Justice, an environmental group formerly called the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Mellett's three-decade career includes a stint at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she was in charge of major gifts.
"I have always been an activist, but I didn't want to be a lawyer," says Mellett. Donors are as important to the life of a nonprofit as is the staff and the board, she adds. The fundraiser is the person who brings the donors into the organization. "You form partnerships with people who then have an incredible opportunity to make a real difference," she says. "It's very satisfying."
Though there are several graduate and post-graduate programs in fundraising, including a master's program at Columbia University in New York and a fundraising school at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University in Indianapolis.
Paulette Maehara at AFP says a bachelor's degree, people skills and listening and writing ability are ample qualifications for entry-level jobs.
For more information about career opportunities in advocacy, grantmaking, and civic organizations, contact:
Source: Forbes, Susan Adams, 9/18/09
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