Not-for-profit, not for you?

By JULIE MIDDLETON

So can a charity job be a stepping stone to the commercial world?

The answer appears to be possibly - and that such a move is more likely to happen now than in the past.

Charities are gaining respect as triple-bottom-line reporting encourages businesses to assess the social impact of their business and to boost their public profiles by forming links with charities.

Wealthy philanthropists - think the Tindall Foundation of Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, among others - are spreading the not-for-profit gospel among their big-business peers.

"There's no doubt that there is a greater focus on charity - there's a greater appetite for and recognition of philanthropic work,"says David Doyle, principal of Auckland recruitment company Chamberlin Doyle. "And these days, charities seem to have higher-profile people."

"But my thought would be that if [charity management jobs] are a stepping stone [to bigger and better in the commercial world], the stone might have some damp moss on it."

Translation: If you want to marry personal career and social service goals, by all means go for it - but first do your homework on the charities you are eyeing up to check they are sustainable.

To avoid damaging your career or slipping below professional radars, you need to choose a charity that is "commercially structured, with tangible and realistic goals," says Doyle.

"If you are in a charity where it's impossible to achieve, then no matter how good you are, you'll fail."

A charity exuding a sense of pride isn't enough, he warns: "Choose a charity where achieving is possible - and it helps if it's a high-profile organisation".

Doyle feels that charities offer greater management challenges than many corporates. Managers are often dealing with volunteers as well as professional staff, must stick to tight budgets and work with sometimes less-than-solid structures.

To manage such diversity, "you've got to be a better manager than the Fletcher Challenge model, where your deficiencies as a manager can be made up for by other members of staff."

Yes, charity workers do tend to get paid less than in the profit sector - it's a function of tight funding where every cent must be accounted for. You'd have to be motivated by things other than money. Doyle has done a study which aims to give NFPs an idea of pay across their sector (see box).

A shortage of good middle and senior charity managers means there are plenty of challenging jobs, says Diane Robertson, Auckland City Mission head.

"There is a lack of people - top-level, social service managers who can oversee, people who've got strategic understanding and business skills - and there is a lack of really good access to training."

Doyle offers a possible reason: the 30-something graduate middle-manager with a young family is more likely to be motivated by money than a sense of contribution: "They can't afford to make the $20,000 trade-off".

Robertson herself is an example of a charity head whose activity is beginning to bring down the walls between profit and non-profit groups. Thanks to her involvement in various committees and boards "representing social services in more corporate areas", she is spending more time mixing in the commercial world than in the past.

Among the boards she's on are the recently-started Robin Hood Foundation, the Committee for Auckland and Social Investment New Zealand.

As fellow board members of corporate colours "come to understand the nature of my business, then they come to recognise the skills, and the fact that this is no different from the types of businesses they might be running in terms of management.

"I think it's just beginning. As I'm interacting with people, their ideas about charities are changing and their ideas about the role of the CEO in charities is changing as well. I guess I challenge, just by my presence and my involvement in these boards, the preconceptions people might hold."