Expand Your Nonprofit Career Choices through the Net Impact Board Fellows Program

Career choices expand or contract depending on your experiences.  With every career move, you become more qualified and desirable for specific career choices, and at the same time, less qualified and desirable for other types of career choices.  Therefore, it is up to you to decide which career choices are more compatible with your values, your skills, and your aspirations.  Indeed, in any economy, but especially in this jobless recovery, employers are looking to hire new employees that have experience in their industry or functional area.  The nonprofit sector is no exception.  Research from Idealist.org shows that nonprofit recruiters prefer to hire employees with previous nonprofit experience.

However, and in contrast with the private sector that often require prior work or internship experiences in the private sector to qualify, nonprofit experience can take a variety of forms:  paid staff, intern, volunteer, or board member all count as the types of nonprofit experiences recruiters expect to see on your resume.  As the nonprofit sector is expected to be needing managerial talent in the upcoming years, gaining nonprofit experience now might be a valuable avenue for you to demonstrate your interest and expand your career choices across the private and the nonprofit sectors moving forward.  Also, many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professionals spend a significant portion of their time building and managing public-private partnerships with local and national nonprofits. Therefore, if you are interested in a CSR career, a solid nonprofit experience might be a valuable asset to compete for your jobs of interest.

Unfortunately, many MBA students and business professionals seem to be at a loss when it comes to what they can do to expand their career choices from the business sector to the nonprofit sector.  Many believe that making donations or running a student club on campus is enough to catch the eye of nonprofit recruiters.  Unfortunately, in many cases, these actions are not enough for recruiters to believe that these MBA students or business professionals are dedicated to their cause and are ready for the unique opportunities and challenges present in working in the nonprofit sector.

Responding to this need, Net Impact, one of the leading professional associations for those dedicated to building a better world through business principles, launched and is growing the Board Fellows Program (http://www.netimpact.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=700).  This program is geared towards MBA students and working professionals interested in nonprofit governance and nonprofit management through board service.  If you are business professional or an MBA student interested in contributing your management skills to the nonprofit sector, the Board Fellow Program will help you learn what you need to know about how nonprofits operate and how they are explicitly and implicitly influenced by the people who serve on their board.

As a Board Fellow, you will serve on the board of a local nonprofit for a year, observing and participating in strategic planning conversations, or even contributing ideas and best practices to help the board reach consensus on specific directions that the board is currently considering.  In addition, you will be able to complete concrete projects as a Board Fellow.  These projects will provide you with a unique opportunity to apply the financial management skills, marketing skills or strategic management skills you learn in the classroom to make a difference in your local community.

Besides gaining nonprofit experience, and applying your business skills to create a better community, becoming a Board Fellow will also enable you to meet new people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.  Most board members are experienced leaders from the private sector who are volunteering their time to contribute to a cause they believe in.  If you do a great job as a Board Fellow, these board members might introduce you to their contacts in the private and nonprofit sectors.  In this tough economy, coming recommended by a credible and experienced leader is invaluable in converting your applications into interviews.

Overall, Jason Lee from the University of Maryland summarizes his experience best: "[The] Board Fellows [Program] was a really great experience for me. The project I was working on was a finance project and it was a great chance to apply what I was learning, to make the connection between the theoretical and practical. I also got the chance to meet and network with some really interesting people."

Therefore, if you want to come across as a qualified candidate for future nonprofit jobs, if you are interested in learning how your business skills apply to the nonprofit sector, or if you are interested in assessing your fit with nonprofit management careers, consider connecting with your local graduate or professional Net Impact Chapter to learn more about the Board Fellows Program.  Becoming a Board Fellow will enable you to both expand your career choices and be the change you want to see in your local community!

What other opportunities do you know about that can help our readers expand their career choices?

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