Nonprofit Management for America
Teach for America (TFA) is the 6th largest employer of students upon their graduation from college, followed by Deloitte (to put it in perspective). Not only do they do quantity - they do quality. 10% or more of the students at most Ivy's apply to TFA.As Avi Zenilman wrote in 2006, TFA "turned national service into a status symbol."
What can we learn from Wendy Kopp that can help us make working in nonprofit management a status symbol and attract the top talent from the top schools? Why are all these kids flocking to TFA (besides the fact that Wall Street is now in trouble)?
1) Build a Brand
TFA has developed a blue chip brand. It did this by being very selective in its hiring process and by building a presence on the campuses of top schools.
Could we create a umbrella brand for a set of top nonprofits that pool funds to have representation on campuses and collectively recruit and screen students? Commongood Careers is doing this to some degree now, but it would need a broader coalition behind it to achieve this end.
2) Create a Path
TFA doesn't ask candidates to dedicate their careers to teaching. In fact, they decline candidates if they say they want to be career teachers. It is two years and out.
This is a tough one for the nonprofit sector as we need people to stay in the sector, and the career paths in the nonprofit sector are often not attractive. The latter is a product of having small nonprofits that are not at scale and therefore can't offer entry level hires a clear career path. This forces talent to leave when they are ready for promotion. We need role models who are not social entrepreneurs, but nonprofit professionals who have risen in the sector to a place of prominence. Their success is not publicized.
Aaron, great post. I think it is very smart and relevant to examine Teach for America and determine how we can tap into its success for the nonprofit movement overall. I mostly agree with your comments, except with respect to the career path section. I really agree with the TFA model, where it is two years and you move on. I think this country badly needs a "national service" culture, and TFA has, for a certain group of young people, become that. After 9/11 this country squandered a powerful opportunity to ask our citizens to contribute through some form of national service. Instead President Bush asked people to go shopping. Lot of good that did us! I think TFA has tapped into an important need for people (especially young people) to contribute through national service. I would like to see other similar organizations (like Taproot Foundation!) also provide the infrastructure and platform for young people to give back for a couple of years. It is sort of like punching your ticket or even military service. Doing some kind of good work, either for Taproot, TFA or other nonprofit, should be a key part of the coming of age of our young people today and in the future.
TFA has certainly shown how this approach can work and become not only a legitimate undertaking but also a prestigious one, too.
Patrick, agreed. TFA shouldn't change their model and service is a great way for American's to start their careers.
The point I was trying to make is that filling the nonprofit management pipeline with top talent in high quantity can't be two years and out. It requires people to stick.
I think another major draw of TFA for young alumni is that from day one TFA participants are doing interesting work, work that requires them to rise to the challenge. There's a lot of entry level work out there that's just not stimulating. I think a great number of recent grads are looking to learn and grow in their positions, and will willingly take on a heavy or demanding workload (and I have heard from TFA friends that teaching was one of the most challenging jobs they have ever done) in order to do so.
Cassie and commongood careers just introduced me to a new effort at New Sector Alliance. It is an interest model for addressing this issue in Boston. Here is the description from their site:
"New Sector’s Residency in Social Enterprise places recent college graduates and young professionals full-time, on-site with clients for one full year to work on strategic capacity-building projects. Residents participate in an intensive training program designed to build their knowledge of consulting, project management, and the social sector. Each Resident is matched with a professional consultant mentor and a New Sector project liaison."
Apparently they placed 25 people this year. A drop in the bucket, but perhaps it could scale to reach TFA numbers.
Compelling post, Aaron, particularly having read the Wendy Kopp book on your recommendation/insistence.
The broad nonprofit sector aside, I see the licensed professions (architecture, engineering, law, and medicine) that I track closely struggling to create a meaningful transition from education to practice. Even with the kind of steep attrition rates that we see in architecture (anecdotally, >50%+ leave traditional practice), none of these professions have even begun to think about the "lifelong" commitment to a cause that TFA seems to build and foster from day one.
In a bit of a twist on your original post, there are two wonderful examples of "fellowships" that place relatively high-achieving architecture school grads in nonprofits around the country for 1-3 years. The one-year program is called the Design Corps Fellowship, which utilizes Americorps/VISTA. The three-year program is the Rose Architectural Fellowship, facilitated by Enterprise Community Partners. I love these programs and promote them regularly, but the reality is they a far less than a drop in the bucket; each year, there are >2,000 architecture school graduates, while
All that said, despite how comfortable people seem to be taking pride in these severely under-resourced fellowship programs, I believe all sides genuinely yearn for more. The question is how to scale up, without requiring the kinds of overhead and often unreasonable sacrifices that these fellowships often require, reinforcing stereotypes about this kind of work that it doesn't pay, etc.
Personally, I don't believe the solution is more fellowships, more nonprofits, or anything of the sort. The solution is a higher quality and inspiring professional environment that every graduate who seeks it can find.
Aaron,
Thanks so much for featuring our Residency program. Indeed this is exactly what we're striving to build with RISE: a powerful incubator for future social change leaders--for life.
This year we are placing another 25 Residents around the Boston area, working on strategic, exciting projects. In addition to the placement, we offer a "mini-MBA" training curriculum throughout the year, mentorship from experienced consultants and nonprofit leaders, and a fantastic peer network. Like many programs of our kind, including Teach for America, we are growing with the support of AmeriCorps.
And we're not stopping at Boston! The current plan starts with San Francisco area in the fall of 2010 and grows from there...
I'd love to keep the conversation going on how we can recruit diverse leaders, and ensure that the ability to serve is available to everyone, not just those that can live on $22,800 per year.
For more info on RISE and New Sector, please visit www.newsector.org.
-Jessica Lee
Program Manager
Two related points, both very interesting and worth much further exploration: getting people into the sector and keeping them there. Pooled recruiting and brand-building for the sector is certainly important and there are interesting ideas cropping up around that. The first step is to identify who the target audience is – who do we want to be attracting to the sector -- and then figure out where to find them. A lot has been made about MBA students and the impact they can have in the sector. MBA Nonprofit Connection is a job board that connects MBA students with great jobs in the social sector as well as providing career advising and summer internship connections.
We agree with the idea of national service as a concept, but also agree that we need to keep talented people in the sector. There is an argument to be made that by requiring national service, you expose many talented people to the sector who may not otherwise have looked at it for career opportunities and they may stay. The Breakthrough Collaborative, for example, exposes young people still in high school and college to the rewards and challenges of teaching under-served students across the country with the hope and expectation that many of them will pursue professional careers in teaching and education (which they do).
We also need to educate and train organizational leaders to incorporate best practices in hiring, on-boarding, professional development, and retention into their work in order to keep talented professionals in the sector. By making the social sector a truly great place to work, full of professional opportunities, challenges, appropriate compensation and benefits, and flexible work arrangements, pooled recruiting and brand-building will be a more realistic endeavor.