Jill posts some great suggestions above. I thought I might add my story to the mix.

I spent three years in graduate school and doing internships and fellowships that paid between $500 and $1500/month before landing a job at IDEO that paid me competitively. Had I not spent this time working for Scojo Foundation and Acumen Fund for low compensation, the opportunity to work at IDEO would not have been available. While making enough money to live comfortably is certainly a respectable goal, my recommendation would be to make it a mid-term rather than a short-term goal. If you do what you love, you will figure out how to make money from it later.

Another option to add to Jill's list is to proactively reach out to companies and create a position for yourself there. Lots of companies see the importance of social and environmental impact but don't really know how to approach it. They're not posting positions because they're not clear about what they want and need. Show them you are indispensable to their business. And, make a business case for the social and environmental impact work that you're encouraging them to move into.

Thanks for your comments and questions, Jill, and for the engaging discussion here. To answer Jill's questions, IDEO decided to start an initiative around design for social impact for a number of reasons. First, the CEO and employees at all levels believe that design thinking can effectively address some of the world's largest problems (provision of low-cost health care, access to clean water, design of low-cost housing, etc.). IDEO also believes that doing work for social enterprises is tough and that we can keep our design skills sharp if we add layers of complexity to the work we do (offerings must be low-cost, made with locally available materials, etc.). Third, IDEO sees this as a way to attract top talent. Many people are no longer willing to just take a secure job that pays well. They want to do something meaningful and feel like they're making a difference. To get the best, you need to offer them what they're looking for. And, finally, IDEO sees a business opportunity to serve this market.

The social impact initiative at IDEO is just taking off and we've been able to do work with many interesting clients (social enterprises, non-profits, foundations, and multinationals). Over the past few years, we have done work with Kickstart, Design that Matters, Acumen Fund, Gates Foundation, the Red Cross, Kellogg Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and d.Light, to name a few.

This is an excellent suggestion to those just starting out, or those with the financial flexibility to ease into a second career... or those who can't "afford" to spend another day in a position about which they feel less than passionate.

Another way to approach this, if the internship/fellowship route is financially unrealistic, is to volunteer strategically. Rather than volunteer to clean up a neighborhood park or hand out food to the homeless - both noble pursuits to be certain - volunteer for a "consulting" assignment where you organize the corporations in the community to stand as better corporate citizens and clean up the park on their own, or design a more innovative system by which area restaurants team with local service providers to become more efficient and less wasteful. Show your stuff either as a board member or as a pro-bono consultant, but be very clear that in exchange you expect to be assisted with networking and, which the time comes, references on how you were about to work within a nonprofit environment.

Jill asked me to relate my experience, so here goes. I currently am responsible for philanthropy at NetSuite (www.netsuite.com/giving). I've done a lot of things prior to this job... international development, run nonprofits, enterprise software product management, managed a $10M foundation grant portfolio and some other things. Most of my career is bouncing between do good & no money; do good & very little money; and real jobs. Only recently have I been able to combine real jobs and do good.

When people ask me how I got the NetSuite job, it was pretty simple... my startup didn't take off, I needed a regular job, a quick search of the job boards for the word philanthropy identified the job. I applied and my fairly bizarre background stood out as an excellent candidate.

The great thing that is happening today is that there is an explosion of non-entrepreneurial (i.e. you work for someone else) "do gooder" jobs, many with good pay and benefits. Many of those jobs are of a quality that just didn't exist 15 years ago when I started my career. I jumped off into a space that I know would NEVER pay well and have been pleasantly surprised at the results.

However, I believe that someone who's career was exclusively comprised of well-paying do-gooder jobs is not a very good candidate for most jobs that are trying to deliver outcomes for underserved communities. It is really hard to have first hand understanding of what makes sense "on the ground" when you have never worked "on the ground". That said, I doubt that a person with that lack of on-the-ground experience would have difficulty getting a job.

I think the biggest lesson I've learned is that social enterprises and other well paying do gooder jobs don't have established career paths. Diversity of experience and entrepreneurial skills/experience give you flexible platform to make the case your would be effective in a wide range of roles. Until this sector has been around for a few decades and establishes some clear career paths, that flexibility is probably the most critical element.

Finally, though I don't think this is a top priority for most hiring, spend some time on the ground. Bit the bullet, take a salary cut and get in the midst of some people you are trying to help. It will help you be far more effective in the future.

Another excellent point, and one that I'd like to expand upon. This is where a lot of job seekers fail. They rely solely on how others have defined them in terms of their day job but forget to look at the broader picture. You likely have gathered skills at work that are readily inventoried, but what about the rest of the hours in your day? What have you done for your child’s school? How have you volunteered in your place of worship? What have you learned along the way through your involvement in neighborhood committees? Have your hobbies or leisure activities lent you expertise relevant to your new career? Nonprofit job titles tend to be different and may be an amalgam of several jobs you have come to know in the corporate sector. Assessing your skills—from both the paid and unpaid hours in your day—will allow you to see the whole you and enable you to target the right job title for you in the nonprofit sector.

Any job

for any mission -- allows an employee to build assets. How many times at a for-profit job do people say, "well, they're not paying me anything like what I'm worth [on the market], but I'm learning a lot / exposed to good people / building a reputation."

In the non-profit world, there's a complication to this simple formula, and that's in the way "not paying me what I'm worth on the market" is interpreted. In the past, there have been two markets: (1) the corporate market and (2) the NGO market. If you want to have secular political power via the NGO market (non-profits), you "pay to play." That's a fine way to ensure that only those with financial means (or who are desperate, or who are demagogues) get to shape society, by the way.

However, the concept of "social entrepreneurialism" throws that into a tailspin. One of the enduring contributions of "Generation X" has been that what used to be called being a "slacker," i.e. wanting a work/life balance, not taking on-the-job degradation, being unwilling to sacrifice ones' children's baseball games for the corporation... in short, taking responsibility seriously (which also means not taking it on frivolously) ...is now understood to be a given by the incoming college graduates. Hey, you have to stand up for yourself!

With the concept of responsibility to one's society and self now firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist, these two labor markets finally converge: the NGO market can no longer assume that it has a "lock" on a particular labor supply.

So, where does this leave us? At the most important point: sourcing! In order to hire, we need to be sure to cast a wide enough net. Too many times do I see social networks and collegiate ties proxy for in-depth vetting. What this does is narrow the pool of eligible candidates.

In particular, sourcing is an issue regarding succession planning and finding new leaders. The way leadership looks is changing. It looks different now than it has in the past because we're in a time of unprecedented social and environmental volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. (VUCA, to those who have heard the term.)

================= So, to summarize: -----------------

It's perfectly reasonable to demand market value, but keep in mind that it's a package of financial, social, knowledge, and health assets. Non-profits should avoid assuming that they can source employees in the same way as in the past, and that means they need to consider that their remuneration composition should change in order to meet the needs of their best candidates.

Let's go back to Jill's original article, Tom Tierney's study, and think about them and this wise post. It's absolutely true that the current bench of nonprofit talent isn't deep enough (or necessarily skilled enough) for the challenges facing the independent sector of tomorrow. It's the chief challenge of search firm's like mine. In fact, we don't go looking for clients, they find us and in spades. What we need is good talent to fill all those searches.

Now, using statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Tom Tierney's great study, let's look at what this more globall:

Growth in the nonprofit sector has radically outpaced growth in the private and government sectors over the past 20 years. In fact, between 1987 and 2005, the number of nonprofits in the United States grew at nearly triple the rate of the business sector.

As anyone in the for-profit sector knows, growth means opportunity. But where does this growth come from, and what does it mean for career changers?

First, the baby boomer generation is responsible for creating and leading many of the nation’s nonprofits, and as this group retires over the next decade, the rate of nonprofit executive transition is expected to climb 10 to 15 percent, meaning that three to four out of every five executive director jobs will be vacated between now and 2010. This will produce a leadership vacuum unparalleled in the history of the nonprofit sector, leaving nonprofits scrambling for experienced managers. More than just causing change at the top, leadership vacuums create ripple effects, sending waves of turnover throughout every level of the organizational chart.

Second, to respond to this leadership deficit, according to Tierney, nonprofits will need to address three difficult but critical imperatives, most of which are also prevalent in the for-profit sector:

1. Invest in leadership capacity 2. Refine management rewards to attract and retain top talent 3. Expand recruiting horizons and foster individual career mobility.

This is very good news for career changers, particularly the last item. As the staffing needs of nonprofits multiply, hiring corporate employees coming into the sector at all levels will become a common practice.

Most nonprofits have neither the historical record of accomplishment nor the current resources to develop top-level senior management from within their own ranks. Further, they often lack the funds necessary to hire top-flight recruiting consultants who scour the Earth for perfect candidates. Yet filling this overwhelming leadership vacuum will force the nonprofit sector to take a long, hard look at the types of staff it employs and retains. Nonprofits will need to be much more flexible about the types of candidates they interview and the skills they bring on board. Candidates with experience in rapid-growth environments, expertise in management that is nurturing while still results-driven, and histories of actively grooming internal staff will thrive in the nonprofit sector. This includes, in large part, job seekers from the for-profit sector.

It is true that we, as professionals, ought to create our own opportunities if we aspire to live well while doing good. We are the masters of our own careers, after all! And with the emergence of social enterprises and (dare I say it) the continual development of corporate social responsibility, there are more and more opportunities out there to be made.

However, I hesitate to let the nonprofit sector off the hook so quickly. For so long, nonprofit organizations have not had the capacity to focus on meaningful leadership and career development – understandable, since small organizations need to focus on their mission. But studies (like the YNPN survey cited in the original article above) show that young nonprofit professionals are increasingly disillusioned by their career prospects in this sector. With the battle for talent raging on around us, how will nonprofits compete for the best people? And when young professionals see their executive directors as stressed out, overworked but talented individuals with a low quality of life, what kind of message are we sending?

Perhaps the third sector as a whole needs to take a closer look, not just at talent recruitment, but also talent retention. Sure, we know that young professionals tend to have shorter tenures with an organization, but maybe there is an opportunity here to think about talent retention on a sector-level. A single nonprofit would be hard pressed, I suspect, to develop its version of the private sector’s leadership development programs. But, if the nonprofit sector as a whole is growing faster than the others, isn’t it now in a better position to think hard about these issues? Is there room for the industry to address this problem and its solutions collectively?

Jill, to respond to your question about a leadership training program for the social sector, I think Acumen Fund's fellowship does a great job addressing that need. The purpose of the program is to train people who have potential to be the next generation of leaders.

Acumen Fund has seen an incredible amount of demand for the fellows program and with only 8 or so slots a year, there are literally thousands of other people who are looking for these opportunities. I completely agree that there's certainly a need for leadership development programs and I hope we can see more launch in the coming years.

Ah, Jill! I am so glad you brought this up! I think the most important infrastructure development in the nonprofit sector can be had at the base of the organizational pyramid. The sector is full of bright, talented, passionate young people fresh from university who are taking positions where there is a serious misalignment of existing and needed skills. These young professionals struggle to do great work in environments with non-existant training budgets and often without knowing what skills they need or how to access the development they want. Yes, larger organizations have great training, but given the abundance of small npos in our country (and ones unaffiliated with a larger national network), there is a serious gap that needs to be addressed. I really believe that by working to resolve the issue of hard and soft skill development, the sector will improve its ability to keep committed workers and to establish a pipeline of talent for years to come.

I'm leading a small group at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business to design and build a web 2.0 solution to address this very issue by strengthening the dissemination of knowledge, building localized communities of practice/networks and creating a structure in which young nonprofit professionals assess skills and map career paths that will keep them engaged in community work. We would love to have participation from the larger social enterprise community as we engage in the design process. Please feel free to contact me with any questions!

The fattest line on most nonprofits’ budgets is payroll and benefits, yet nonprofit organizations remain infamous for underpaying talent. There is no disputing the fact that nonprofits generally pay far less than their for-profit counterparts for the same level of talent. This is not something nonprofits choose to do; it is something they are forced to do. Often, their funders demand it, expecting that the vast majority of any donation will address service needs in the field, not overhead at the home office. The most difficult funding a nonprofit can secure is funding for general operating costs, including salaries. Funders want to say that their money went to hepatitis vaccinations for 600 infants, books for 100 students, or meals delivered to 50 elderly shut-ins. No one wants to boast to their friends or their board of directors that they gave $50,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Atlanta to pay half the salary of one-third of the IT department. It’s not sexy, although without that half salary for a third of the IT department, not one child in Atlanta would get the mentoring services that those “sexier” donations fund. At the end of the day, dollars are dollars to a nonprofit regardless of how they are earmarked; the earmarking just makes for harder accounting, which, ironically, costs the nonprofits more general operating dollars in the end.

However, while it is true that most nonprofits are looking for $300,000 of talent for only $100,000 a year, nonprofit salaries are becoming more and more competitive. Funders have become more sophisticated, and some have begun to use a venture philanthropy approach, rewarding high-functioning nonprofits with general (i.e., unrestricted) funds for purposes such as attracting great talent. Such funding has allowed nonprofits to pay more competitive wages for staff with a broader set of skills, like you and your fellow corporate career changers.

In addition, some nonprofits pay better than others. Organizations fighting for civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, or animal rights tend to pay toward the lower end of the spectrum. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find nonprofits that fight against poverty wages paying their own employees impossibly low salaries. Smaller organizations that have been run by the same person for long periods of time are less likely to have faced a competitive analysis of their wages. As such, they may not be paying current market value for their people; I recently heard this jokingly referred to as "founder's discount." Conversely, nonprofits with high staff turnover have spent a great deal of time and effort negotiating job offers and better understand the wages they need to pay. Research institutions, colleges and universities, and foundations, for example, tend to pay toward the top of the nonprofit sector and also have more comprehensive benefits packages.

The nonprofit sector is changing every day. As it changes, trends have begun to emerge. These trends point to increased opportunities for those with business skills (and some of them mean potentially higher salaries as well)

Nonproit Mergers: In the past decade, the number of nonprofits in the United States has increased by 64 percent. Yet the rate of donations has not grown at the same pace. Because of repeated natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami, and acts of terrorism like 9/11 and the war that followed, donors feel tapped out or simply exhausted. Receiving an increased number of solicitations from additional nonprofits being set up every day is not helping matters. As a result, a larger number of nonprofits find themselves competing for a relatively smaller pool of available funds. The influx of business thinking has, in part, set off a wave of nonprofit mergers across the sector. Merged nonprofits find that they can consolidate staff, reduce competition, and minimize overhead costs. This trend is good news for corporate career changers, as merger and acquisition work is uncharted territory for many nonprofit staff.

Revenue-Generating Subsidiaries: As the competition for funding dollars increases, nonprofits are realizing that they will be more successful if they rely less on the whims of individual donors or government funding and more on themselves. Doing so means that they must come up with new ways to fund their programs. Youth service nonprofits might run fee-for-service summer programs; transitional houses and long-term shelters might teach their residents job skills; and fair trade advocacy groups might sell chocolate made from cocoa harvested by fairly paid workers rather than trafficked children. An example of a successful revenue-generating subsidiary is the Greyston Bakery, a New York–based nonprofit that has become a leader in community development and a role model for other socially conscious businesses. Greyston sells award-winning cakes, tarts, and other baked goods, yet, as varied as its products might be, the main ingredient in each item is its dynamic social mission. Greyston’s profits support the community development work of the Greyston Foundation, which includes housing, child care, health care, a computer learning center, and more. In addition, the bakery actively recruits and hires employees who have had difficulties finding employment in the past. Finally, Greyston partners with and serves a network of other businesses, such as Ben & Jerry’s and Stonyfield Farms, that share its social concerns.

Public-Private Partnerships: Nonprofits have learned that it is not enough to work on their own, even if they do outstanding work. Some of the most exciting work in the nonprofit sector today is done in collaboration between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. It seems so simple, but bureaucracy, misunderstandings, and stereotypes have long kept these sectors apart. More and more, nonprofits and for-profits are joining together, breaking down barriers of language and culture and creating new and innovative programs.

Venture Philanthropy: The new trends in philanthropy—led by dot-com millionaires and venture philanthropists—mean that foundations look at their role in the nonprofit sector entirely differently than they may have ten years ago. Many foundations still stick to the old way of heavy-handed, slow thinking, but more and more often, foundations are catching on that they can create the change they want to see in the world. Empowering their nonprofit partners to do what they have already done well even better, more broadly, and with better efficiency is a successful business model. The idea of the nonprofit as a partner, not just the recipient of a carefully constructed, tightly managed grant, is new, and this method of venture thinking (i.e., scalable, demonstrable, innovative, and creative) is most successful with agile and responsive nonprofits. Nonprofits that employ business minds, MBAs, and corporate types have an advantage because they speak the language of the for-profit sector, understand the business model, and have worked with others who share the same mentality and benchmarking for success.

Management Matters: With the increasing focus on the bottom line and with more and more competition for funding, nonprofits are getting wise that management techniques matter (and how begun getting smarter about the salaries they need to pay for this talent). Once considered taboo, nonprofits no longer feel shy about incorporating best practices from the private sector. It is not uncommon to hear a nonprofit executive director discussing some of the latest ideas from famed management gurus, from Jim Collins’s ideas about getting the right people on the right seats on the bus, for example, or Peter Senge’s thoughts on building learning organizations. Where once such comments would have been met with horror and shock, they now are met with heads nodding in agreement. However, great management in the nonprofit sector means nothing if it is not done compassionately. For-profit managers who can bring the mind of a businessperson coupled with the heart of a social worker will do very well in, and by, the nonprofits they serve.

This is an important discussion and I hope Social Edge will make it a focus area on its home page. I've been involved in volunteer service for over 30 years. I got involved in a tutor/mentor program in 1973 when I joined the Montgomery Ward corporation as an advertising copywrite. A couple of years later I was recruited to be the leader of that program, and from 1975 to 1990 I had two careers. One was growing responsiblity as an advertising manager for the Montgomery Ward corporation. Between 1980 and 1990 I held various roles ranging from national advertising planing and creative development manager, to the Home Furnishings Divisional Advertising Manager. The other was with a growing tutor/mentor program that served 100 pairs of youth and adults in 1975 and had grown to 300 pairs by 1990.

I left the paying job in 1990 (kicked out) and was given the opportunity to converth the tutor/mentor program to a non profit, which I did. In 1992 I created a different version of this aimed at serving older kids, and at helping tutor/mentor programs grow in all poverty areas of Chicago (where more than 200,000 kids live in high poverty). In 1998 we began using the internet, and now I'm in forums like this sharing ideas intended to help tutor/mentor programs in all parts of the coutnry/world.

In my advertising job I learned that we need to communicate every day to millions of people if we want them to come to our stores. In my tutor/mentor program I learned that I needed to apply the same thinking if I wanted kids and volunteers to come to the tutoring program every week. Until 1990 we did not need to raise money because we were not a nonprofit and relied primarily on volunteers, like myself, to provide all leadership. When we became a non profit, we needed to add a third track to our communications, which was aimed at businesses and foundations who might support our work.

I encourage you to browse the various sections of the http://tutormentorconnection.org web site and my http://tutormentor.blogspot.com. We address the same issues as this conversation, but work to change the quality of programs by changing the way they are resourced. We've created maps of Chicago showing where poverty is, and where tutor/mentor programs are needed. And we've created events and networking that is intended to encourage volunteers and donors to shop by zip code to choose what programs they will support.

By providing links to this discussion and to the research you've posted, we're aiming to reach business leaders who understand the growing workforce shortage, and how this will affect the entire US economy, not just the non profit sector. We are looking for business leaders who are thinking more strategically of how they use their resources (jobs, leadership, dollars, manpower, ideas) to support the growth of future workers, while developing the talents and skills of current workers.

We believe that if you want to have great programs you need to find ways to atract and keep great people. If business leaders want a pipeline to their industries, they need to invest in programs that start reaching kids as early as 1st grade.

That may not be the focus of everyone reading this, but it illustrates how people who focus on the same cause (environment, health, world peace, etc.) can band together to educate the donors so that they become more involved in providing the resources that support the non profits who will benefit them.

On Feb. 12 and 13 a CEO summit will be held in New York City, intending to release $1 billion in workplace talent to support non profit organizations. This link provides some information: http://www.corporatephilanthropy.org/enews/CEOBriefs/2008January.html

If we can use such events to get CEOs strategically involved, this can provide many paths of involvement for people who want to make a difference, but don't want to live in poverty while doing it.

I work for a San Francisco based Nonprofit called volunteermatch.org that makes it easy for great volunteers and great nonprofits to connect. In 2007, we facilitated over 500,000 connections, supported over 55,000 nonprofits, and helped 1.3 million volunteers in their efforts to connect. My background is in Wall Street finance (derivatives trading and investment management) and internet commerce. This is my first nonprofit job and it has been a great choice. Most of our employees could double their income tomorrow at one of the local high flyers (some have actually landed at places like Google and Yahoo), but most of us choose to stay. As has been stated below, if you love what you do and feel good about it, making tons of money seems to matter a whole lot less.

Our business depends on three diverse sources of "operating" revenues: 1. corporate volunteering initiatives, 2. premium services for nonprofit members, and 3. donations from our volunteer users.

Corporations have proved to be fantastic supporters of our mission and are a key part of our long term plan. We work with over 60 corporate clients. Most of these clients are multi-national, household brand, Fortune 1000 types. They are all committed to volunteering and service for their employees, the customers or both. Our corporate clients provided approximately 25%, or 125,000, of our referral connections in 2007. We provide them with a full-featured set of online tools for managing their volunteering initiatives. It's a great model - our clients actually do good while doing well. Measuring stock performance from date of program launch has proved nearly impossible, or at least we do not have the resources to dedicate to the task. However, we have found that employee satisfaction rates and retention rates for many of our corporate clients are high. This, of course, depends on many factors but we like to believe that a culture of civic engagement is a contributor.

Key to corporate program success is the support of executive management. Our experience is that programs with direct CEO support in the form of a personal appeal and call to action realize the greatest success and employee participation. To support other contributors prior comments - CEO encouragement and support for civic engagement is critical. The trend in CEO engagement is positive. Each year we see more executives volunteering with the employees and personally attending and endorsing volunteer recognition. I hope this trend continues.