Breaking the Rose-Colored Glasses: Don't Give Up on Your Nonprofit Career Too Soon

I live and work in Washington, DC, where there are thousands of nonprofit and other social change jobs. I have a broad circle of friends that come to the city to find meaningful work. What I've noticed lately is that a lot of my younger peers are moving away to pursue graduate school or careers in the government or corproate sector after short stints working in the nonprofit field.  Many young professionals came to the field with their rose-colored glasses on, excited to find a job that makes a difference. However, they were not prepared to deal with the challenges that come along with doing nonprofit work on a daily basis. It's rewarding, yes, but it's certainly not the glamorous life depicted by celebrity philanthropists on TV.

A recent Washington Post article, "Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can't Stay" depicts the story of a frustrated young teacher who is leaving the profession after just four years. In the article, the burned out teacher explains why she's leaving a job she thought she was going to love:

When people ask, I tend to cite the usual suspect -- burnout. I just couldn't take it anymore, I explain. I describe what it was like to teach students such as Shawna, a 10th-grader who could barely read and had resolved that the best way to deal with me was to curse me out under her breath. I describe spending weeks revising a curriculum proposal with my fellow teachers, only to find out that the administration had made a unilateral decision without looking at it. I describe how it became impossible to imagine keeping it up and still having energy for, say, a family.

Some of the same factors will come into play in your nonprofit career. And if this is really the field you want to work in, you have to prepare yourself for a few setbacks and frustrations. Your organization may do great work, but it's never going to be a perfect place to work. Neither would a job in the corporate or government sector. Before you give up your nonprofit career too soon, ask yourself a few questions first:

Are You Managing Your Expectations?
Working at a nonprofit is not usually going to give you the same perks as working for a Fortune 500 company. You're not going to have a ton of resources or the latest technology to do your job. If you come into the field or into a new organization expecting fancy chairs and gourmet coffee in the kitchen, think again.

Are You Working Smarter, Not Harder?
Many times, when you come into a new position, you get trained on how the previous person did it. True story. I started in a fundraising position where the previous person kept all the donor information in their personal Outlook contact files. There was no formal database, and it drove me bananas. I knew I was going to be constantly frustrated in my job if I didn't implement a new, streamlined stystem of maintaining accurate contact information for the organization. So I researched different options, and we did implement a new database management system. Don't just complain about the stupid way you have to do things. Take the initiative to change a process if it will help you work smarter, not harder.

Are You Really Passionate About the Cause?
Sometimes young professionals get frustrated in their jobs and want to quit because they are working for the wrong cause. If you have a real desire to work with kids, but take a nonprofit job where you work with senior citizens, there will be a real disconnect. You should continually reevaluate your own personal mission statement and passion for nonprofit work. If you find that you don't really care about environment issues, find a cause that you do care about and you'll probably be much happier.

If you want a long-term career in the nonprofit sector doing the work of social change, your rose-colored glasses are eventually going to get broken. But just because the work gets challenging, is not a reason to give up on your nonprofit career. If you just know you can't cut it, at least consider staying in your job for a year. That way, you'll still get some great experience out of it that will help you in the future.

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