Nov 8 • Nonprofit Staff
Fundraising as a Career: What, Are You Crazy?
What Does It Mean to Work in the Nonprofit Sector?
For many people new to the whole concept of the nonprofit sector, there is a great deal of misunderstanding of what it means to be a nonprofit. Some think it means the organization can’t operate in the black, because it then becomes a “for profit.” Many people think that nonprofit staff should be paid less than standard wages because they are working for a “charity.” For clarification purposes, let’s start with what it means to be a nonprofit organization. A charitable nonprofit is usually a 501(c)(3) agency, a designation received from the Internal Revenue Service after meeting certain requirements, most importantly that the organization serves a charitable, education, scientific, or community service purpose. Individuals can deduct donations to approved nonprofit organizations when filing their federal tax returns. Most government agencies and foundations will only make grants to nonprofit organizations.
Contrary to popular opinion, being a nonprofit does not mean that the organization must operate in the red or that it cannot have a fund surplus. Actually, the main characteristic that separates a nonprofit from a profit-making entity is that no individual or group of individuals can benefit financially from the profits of the agency. By receiving nonprofit status, these organizations are exempt from paying most federal and state taxes.
Sometimes the nonprofit community is called the third sector (as opposed to government or the business sector) the independent sector, or the voluntary sector. All these terms are appropriate and accurate. Some nonprofits are thought of as charities, while some are huge operations such as major universities and health care systems, but they still share the commonality of being a nonprofit entity since no individual or group of individuals benefit from the surplus revenues of the organization.
Volunteering and Charitable Giving
One of the things that makes the nonprofit sector different from other sectors is the fact that so many people volunteer not only their money, but their time, to help these organizations succeed. While it is difficult to unearth statistics showing how many fundraising professionals there actually are, if just twenty percent of the public charities in the United States employ just one fundraising professional, that makes almost 200,000 professional fundraisers in the United States alone. And, of course, many of these charities are large ones that may have a development staff of dozens of people (universities for example) and even mid-sized organizations often employ two to ten development staff persons. I would safely estimate, therefore, that there are close to half million individuals in the United States that list their profession as fundraising, development, advancement, philanthropy or some term that involves the obtaining of funds for a charitable organization. Who are these people and how do they find their paths leading to a career in fundraising? The professional fundraiser usually enters the field from one of these possible avenues:
· Another career in the nonprofit sector (social work, ministry, teaching, etc.)
· The for-profit sector (attorneys, bankers, business owners, etc.
· Volunteers: an individual who has volunteered for an organization, such as a board member or committee member and subsequently moves into a paid fundraising position within that organization or another nonprofit
So, are you thinking about a career in the nonprofit sector? Or want to understand more about the options in fundraising? Here are some practical tips to get you started in a fundraising career:
· Learn about the nonprofit organizations in your community—how many are there, which ones do you admire the most, which ones do other people speak highly about, do they have a development staff, how do they raise money?
· Choose three to seven organizations for which you might want to work and research them—which ones are financially stable, transparent, adhere to their missions and have a value system that is consistent with your own value system?
· Meet with the executive directors of these organizations and the development staff if there is one. Find out about their long-term goals and any possible plans for hiring development staff.
More to come in future posts. I will tell you more about how I entered this career forty years ago and am still loving it. And be sure to pick up my second edition of Fundraising as a Career: What, Are You Crazy? Soon to be published, watch for news of this and my other books on www.LearnWithLinda.online.
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Fundraising as a Career: What, Are You Crazy?
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