Charities' Fast-Track Jobs

The Harlem Children's Zone, in New York, provides social services to thousands of youngsters annually,

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but five years ago, it decided it wasn't doing enough. "There are a lot of kids who need help out there and there are not a lot of organizations who can help more than 100 of them at a time," says Geoffrey Canada, the organization's president. "We felt we needed to go out and show how you can help 10,000 kids at one time."

Today, the Children's Zone is on track to help those 10,000 kids. A big part of the reason: the 43 staff members, including fund raisers and publicity and marketing officials that it added to its staff of 299 full-time and part-time workers. Since it began its hiring spree four years ago, the group has nearly doubled its annual budget, to $19-million.

Charities and foundations may be tightening their belts and trying to make do with smaller staffs these days, due to a slowly recovering economy. But even in tough times, nonprofit groups need good employees. And despite the times, a handful of jobs are hot, creating opportunities for qualified candidates, say recruiters, charity leaders, and other observers of the nonprofit labor market.

Most of these hard-to-fill job openings are born of charities' needs in a more competitive financial environment. "The top three positions in the market are fund raising, fund raising, fund raising," says Paul C. Light, director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, a Washington public-policy think tank. "If you know how to raise a dollar, you're eminently employable."

Charities are looking beyond traditional fund-raising approaches too, hiring candidates who can help them bring in money in new ways. Among the job applicants in demand are those who can help nonprofit groups set up or run businesses, or market the business or the charity to the public. Nonprofit employers are also looking for help in communications, and they say both marketing and communications are crucial to fund raising.

"It's an increasingly competitive world for nonprofits -- and people really need to get their word and work out there," says Kari Schlachtenhaufen, who next month is departing as president of the Skillman Foundation, in Detroit, is looking for a communications officer. Ms. Schlachtenhaufen says that more and more foundations are also discovering the value of such a position. "If you have a good communications program, you'll get better, and more, proposals [from service providers]. People will understand who you are, how to contact you, what you're interested in."

Growing in a Slow Economy

Other job seekers in or around the nonprofit world are also seeing increased demand for their skills. Many consultants who serve nonprofit clients are expanding their businesses, especially in the area of financial-management and other services that help charities run more efficiently.

Though nonprofit employers say they are hiring fewer information-systems workers these days than they did during the technology boom, many charity leaders still seek senior-level managers to coordinate their technology, and say that qualified candidates are scarce. Also prospering: Philanthropic advisers, who help wealthy donors choose and manage their philanthropy, say their numbers are increasing.

And some types of charities, such as health care and social services, are growing rapidly as economic and other factors boost demand for their work. Many of those groups need new staff members in all positions.

Ronald J.H. Napal, former vice president for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation, in New York, says that even though he wasn't looking for work, he was contacted frequently by recruiters because he has experience in winning big gifts from wealthy donors.

One of those recruiters tempted him to join United Cerebral Palsy as chief development officer in its New York office, where he starts next month. His new job provides "a substantial increase in compensation, both on a salary basis and, also important, on a deferred compensation basis," says Mr. Napal, who declined to provide further details.

"Even in this economy, I got constant calls from search firms with jobs that are still open three months and even six months after the first call," he says. "That says to me there's a shortage."

Entry-Level Opportunities

Skilled fund raisers are always in demand, but currently charities are most interested in those with experience in major gifts, planned giving, or capital campaigns, according to recruiters, nonprofit employers, and other observers.

Large nonprofit groups have hired specialists in these areas for decades. Now, an increasing number of small groups realize that they need to be able to reach wealthy donors, to secure both immediate gifts and bequests from their estates.

"Across the board, those of us in development are recognizing that we can't always count on the foundation grants and corporate philanthropy that we have in the past," says Shari M. Fox, president of the National Committee on Planned Giving, in Indianapolis. "People see so many large gifts coming from corporations and foundations. They don't know that individuals are giving the most money."

Fund raising is currently the best way for entry-level and early-career candidates to move into jobs with charities, recruiters say -- partly, they say, because cash-strapped charities don't have to pay them much.

Gary Kelsey, a fund-raising and organizational-development consultant in Stillwater, Minn., who works with nonprofit clients, says he has seen an increase in recent years in the number of small organizations hiring fund raisers for the first time. That's because even small charities are getting money from a variety of sources now, and managing that income has turned into a full-time job, he says. In most cases, the new hire "isn't what you'd think of as a real development director, because these organizations can't afford to pay development directors," he says. "They're looking for people to start their first annual campaigns, to write grants, and send individual letters" to prospective donors.

That's what happened at the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent, in St. Paul. Lee Vang, the center's executive director, says she could no longer manage fund raising for the 10-year-old theater and arts group, one of a growing number of nonprofit groups that focus on recent immigrants. She has hired the group's first fund-raising officer to manage solicitations to the center's individual donors. Many Hmong, who emigrated from China and Southeast Asia, aren't accustomed to giving to charity, Ms. Vang says. "We had to teach them about giving to nonprofits, and we needed to convince them why they need to donate," she says. "We spent a year last year introducing them to an individual-donor campaign. So we needed a person to sustain that program."

To be certain, fund raising isn't the only entry into nonprofit work. Social-services charities, such as day-care centers and organizations that aid the handicapped, are also constantly seeking new help, says Jaime Carrillo, who runs career fairs for Idealist, a Web site that posts charity jobs. "Human services always offers opportunities for entry-level individuals," he says.

Business Experience a Plus

Charities are increasingly trying to incorporate some profit-making into their operations, in an effort to boost revenue.

"If you look at the traditional nonprofit funding streams, they are drying up," says Robert Harper, who was hired 18 months ago as director of earned income for Hands On Atlanta, a group that places volunteers with nonprofit organizations.

Mr. Harper, who previously worked for Accenture, a business-consulting company, has helped Hands On earn income by placing teaching assistants in the Atlanta public schools. Schools want more help than government-supported groups like AmeriCorps can supply, he says, and are willing to pay for it.

For charities looking to hire a social-enterprise manager, Mr. Harper says, the applicant's desire to work with a nonprofit group is as important as business savvy. "You might get the skills," he says, "but you've got to make sure to get the passion."

He says he hasn't met many people in the nonprofit field who do what he does, but adds that interest is growing: He is planning a conference on social enterprise for Hands On Atlanta's 30 affiliates in City Cares, a national network of groups that place volunteers with charities.

Charities that have developed businesses have discovered they need to market those businesses in order for them to be successful -- so job seekers with marketing experience are highly prized. For example, American Farmland Trust, in Washington, which works to preserve farmland from development, began offering land-use planning services to state and county governments four years ago.

But the work didn't bring in much income until the Trust created a three-person marketing department, says Jimmy Daukas, the organization's senior vice president of operations. Now, the business side of the Trust "has really taken off," he says, growing to an expected $700,000 this year, compared with $180,000 in 2000. "It was really hard for a nonprofit organization to do this kind of marketing, to get fee-for-service contracts, by adding onto the work of the existing staff."

Communications experience is also in great demand, say recruiters and nonprofit employers.

Many charities see communications as an important part of generating revenue, because people and foundations are less inclined to support a charity if they've never heard of it before or don't understand what it does. Chris Baca, head of Youth Development, a youth-service group in Albuquerque, says he is trying to hire a manager to oversee both fund raising and communications, because he believes the two are intertwined.

"Funders and government entities are looking for funding the best and most ethical providers," he says, especially given the wave of corporate scandals and the tight economy. "It's necessary to combine the best of communications and fund development, because we need to say what we're doing. You don't have one message for the community at large and one for grant makers and other philanthropic entities. The message has to be consistent."

Demand for Consultants

Business is also booming for consultants who aid charities, especially for those who offer financial management and services that will help them improve operations.

A growing number of foundations are willing to make grants to charities to help them become more efficient, rather than just to support their programs, says G. Angela Henry, a consultant at the Phillips Oppenheim Group, in New York, a recruiting company for nonprofit organizations. "Infrastructure investment is up," she says. "Foundations are more and more willing to give grants for organizational development, and organizations are strengthening themselves internally."

And consultants who specialize in helping donors manage their giving say they are seeing a spike in business. "New wealth has created a class of donors and a new group of workers to help advise them on how to manage those donations," says Melissa Berman, president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a nonprofit group started two years ago in New York by the Rockefeller family. The group is hiring more advisers, she says.

Joseph Breiteneicher, president of the Philanthropic Initiative in Boston, a nonprofit organization that helps donors, says many of his colleagues have a background in fund raising or working for foundations. Their number is multiplying rapidly, he adds: "Where there was a handful of folks working on the kind of thing we were doing in 1990, there are now hundreds."

Fast-Growing Fields

Several types of charities are in a boom cycle, say recruiters and nonprofit employers -- with the most notable expansion occurring in social services, health care, economic development, social activism, and charities that serve new immigrants.

One group on the rise is the American Civil Liberties Union, in New York, where donors who pay the annual membership fee have increased in number by a third over the past two and half years. The aftermath of September 11, which put civil liberties in the forefront of public discussion, helped motivate the group's rapid growth, says Emily Tynes, the group's communications director. The organization has not settled on exactly how many people will be added to the staff, but it is planning to hire not only fund raisers but also lawyers, communications personnel, administrators, and field officers.

Also growing are social-service groups, says Mr. Light of the Brookings Institution. "This remains a jobless recovery and it falls on local nonprofits to pick up the slack," he says.

Among such social-service groups is the Harlem Children's Zone. Now that the Zone has been able to increase its budget through fund raising and consulting services, it plans to hire 110 full-time and 115 part-time teachers, tutors, and counselors by 2006.

The organization, which runs afterschool programs for children, conducts child-rearing workshops, and helps start community programs such as tenant associations, will soon open a pair of schools, as well as a medical and dental clinic. It also is hiring 10 more administrators.

In the end, times are still tough, and many charity employees find their skills in little demand.

Even some fund-raising jobs are stagnant, such as prospect research -- the work of finding potential major-gift donors. "I find my boss saying she has trouble 'justifying my position' if I'm not actively fund raising," says one researcher at a California university, who asked that her name not be used.

But good news for job seekers may be around the corner, says David Edell, who runs an executive-search company for nonprofit groups in New York that conducts periodic surveys on hiring trends. Business and fund raising both generally improved last year, he says, which should lead charities to make long-stalled employment choices.

This year, "people will make decisions to move forward on hiring," Mr. Edell says. "Executives will make decisions to retire, boards will make decisions to make changes, and executives will make decisions or get permission to fund changing positions and try and move forward."

Heather Joslyn and Cassie J. Moore contributed to this article.