Did LinkedIn help nonprofits & leave nonprofit professionals behind?

Some time back I blogged about LinkedIn's (then new) Board Connect Service as a great new resource for nonprofit organizations. In the couple of years since, LinkedIn has built upon and expanded their vision of "LinkedIn for Good" and their offerings to nonprofits. I have taken part in a couple of free nonprofit technology trainings provided by LinkedIn and have enjoyed meeting their enthusiastic and caring team.

One of the great nonprofit tools they have is being able to search for professionals who are interested in volunteering or board leadership opportunities by their job skills, education, location, industry, and a host of other factors. Related to that, nonprofits can also use LinkedIn's job posting function to advertise for volunteers at 90% discounts.

As great as that is, and as much as I recommend the organizations I work with check that out, that's also the source of a potential problem.

It has recently been pointed out to me that these volunteer listings appear along with regular employment opportunities when LinkedIn members conduct a search.

On the plus side - and I'm sure this is why it was designed this way - it puts your volunteer listings alongside in front of job hunters who have not previously thought about volunteering. It grabs their attention and presents them with an opportunity they might otherwise have missed.

On the down side, for those of us who are nonprofit professionals, and who may be looking for (paid) career opportunities, it has made LinkedIn nearly useless as a job hunting tool. Simply put, the number of volunteer opportunities that come up in any search so greatly outnumber the (real) jobs that weeding through them all is a frustrating mess.

After learning of this problem I did a few test searches, from broad searches to highly filtered narrow ones. Each time I was overwhelmed with volunteer positions. In most of the searches I was finding only a handful of paid jobs for each 100 volunteer listings.

Using their advanced search tools, I was able to choose only jobs for experience levels of "mid-senior," "executive," and "director." While that dramatically cut down the total number of results, it still included volunteer opportunities.

To narrow my search to what should have only been paid opportunities, I searched for "Industry: Nonprofit," "Function: Consulting," and "Location: within 50 miles." Of the 146 results, there were only 4 paid jobs, and they were all listed on the final page of results. Of the four jobs, one was listed as being in Beirut, Lebanon... a little greater than 50 miles from my zip code.

It seems that with all their zeal for helping nonprofit causes, LinkedIn has neglected to take into account that it takes professionals who are dedicated full-time to those causes to make the organizations function.

Two suggestions:

1 - LinkedIn should make it easy to filter out volunteer opportunities. Yes, they do offer the ability to filter listings by salary range, but that is a premium feature to paid members only ($29.99/month), perhaps out of the budget for many nonprofit staff.

2 - LinkedIn could expand their LinkedIn for Good efforts by offering discounts to nonprofits on regular job ads as well. Perhaps not the same 90% they discount for volunteer opportunities, but something close to it. I know there are nonprofits hiring that I'm not seeing in my search results. Price is a factor.

Let the Commencement Commence!

Good afternoon graduates, faculty, administration, families, friends, and distinguished alumni. I am very pleased to have been asked to give this year's commencement address at this fine institution, even if I was a last minute replacement following the protests that accompanied your first several choices.

I am even more pleased that every single one of this year's graduates has chosen to move on to a career in the human services sector. I don't know if your parents, who paid for your education, are pleased, but I am.

I suppose I should start with some sort of inspirational quote. Some platitudes along the lines of, "This is America, and anybody can do anything they want, and as long as you want success, by gosh, you shall have it!"

But that would be an insult.

An insult to each of you, to imply that a good attitude is all it takes to succeed, and that your own hard work, personal attributes, and family connections have nothing to do with it.

But more to the point, it would be an insult to many of the people who are about to become your clients. As if to say, "You wouldn't be in this mess if you just learned to whistle your troubles away."

The reality is that not everybody has access to the same set of choices that you've had. Not everybody is even aware of the choices they do have. External factors, from the physical to the mental, from geographic to economic, have limited their options.

If they have a defeated attitude - and you will soon learn not to assume "low-income" as synonymous with "bad attitude" - it's only because they have earned it.

Everybody wants decent jobs and a decent place to live, and enough food that their children don't suffer. Yes, they want success. That's why they're about to show up in your new office asking for assistance.

You want an inspirational quote? How about Woody Allen: "Eighty percent of success is showing up."

The rest is hard work. And, boy, are you going to work hard! You will toil long hours in uncomfortable settings for low pay and you're going to love it. Because it's meaningful, or something like that.

Here's another quote for you: "I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?"

Dustin Hoffman said that one, and it's good advice. Each time you see (or smell) an approaching client and you're tempted to roll your eyes, give a sigh, and regret taking on a career in the human services, do your best to find the innocent babe within their eyes.

And, yes, I have now twice defined your future employment as being in "the human services." Don't let the scope of your employment limit your mission to a single task. You may find yourself providing housing assistance, or job training, or maybe something related to health care. But your job is to help that individual person, the whole person, whatever they may need.

That means go the extra mile. Refer them to services you don't provide. Take a minute to reach deeper, and find out how you can truly help beyond processing them from one point to the next.

I'll leave you with one more bit of inspiration, this time from Mark Twain: "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

You figure that one out for yourself.

Well, that's all I've got for you. I know your grandmother is waiting to take a picture of you with your cap and gown on and I don't want to disappoint her.

Good night, congratulations, and good luck.

My First Nonprofit Job

A first blog posting after a long absence is always difficult; so many things to talk about, it's hard to decide what the most relevant topic would be. First, let me remind you where I've been...

After about seven years as an independent consultant, in January I began a regular, full-time executive director position with a local nonprofit organization, and spent the month fully immersed in learning the programs, the culture, and the needs. I've been working long days (and nights) and coming home exhausted but happy. My orientation and training will continue for another couple of months at least, but I feel I can come up for air long enough for a blog post or two.

Which brings us to the topic of this post, how did this career of mine start? The truth is, at the time of my first nonprofit job, I had no idea that it would be my career. At the time, I was still planning a life in film production. I had not yet returned to school to get degrees in politics (BA) and public policy (MPPA), and was just looking for an interesting and meaningful way to earn some money to pay for my creative projects and take a few cinema classes here and there.

I don't even recall the exact year, but it must have been in the early or mid 1980s, when I accepted a job as a canvasser for the Campaign for Economic Democracy (aka Campaign California) in Santa Monica; an organization started by Tom Hayden and his (then) wife, Jane Fonda. At the time, Hayden had recently been elected to the state Assembly, but he did speak with us occasionally. I don't recall ever seeing Ms. Fonda, but rumor was that her exercise videos were our number one funding source.

Each afternoon we'd gather in our 3rd Street office for some motivational presentation before hitting the residential streets of Los Angeles County to knock on doors and ask for signatures on petitions (mostly promoting solar energy and environmental protection) as well as collect donations to support our work.

Asking for those $10 and $25 checks was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Nobody could have ever guessed at that time that fundraising would become a large part of my professional career. Confession: I was not the best at getting those checks, although I did get many signatures.

There was, of course, a downside to working for a figure such as Tom Hayden. As much as he may have been lionized in certain west-side, ultra-liberal enclaves, he was quite reviled and hated elsewhere, especially in areas where there were many veterans of the Vietnam war. I was physically threatened on several occasions, including once by gentleman who kept a saw by his front door and chased me off his property waving the saw violently after me.

But there were many wonderful people too, who would invite you in for a glass of lemonade on a hot LA evening. We'd make note of these "safe houses" to know where to run when the guys with weapons got out of control. I didn't last long as a canvasser, but I did eventually get better at asking for money...

How about you? What was your first experience raising money for a cause or working for a nonprofit?

Mission-Driven Careers

I know of very few people in the nonprofit sector who are here "just for a job." The few that are don't rise high in the ranks, and don't usually stick it out for very long. Those of us who've made a career of the nonprofit sector do it as part of our personal mission.

Mission is what drives us to work long hours for below average wages and next to no benefits. Mission is what makes all of that bearable, and even inspiring. We may occasionally be tempted to look for greener pastures, but we always end up back on our missions.

Jobs for Change, a part of change.org, is looking to inspire and recruit the next generation of nonprofit leaders - those looking for a mission-driven career. Here's a part of their Vision Statement: "We believe...

• "People are the most important factor in advancing social change. To address the social and environmental problems we face, we need to attract a diverse range of people and the most promising leaders from across the country to work on issues both local and global in scope.
  
  
• "To attract these people, we need to enhance the social sector's ability to recruit, develop, and retain talent. Too many people interested in a career in service do not end up or remain in the sector because of a range of obstacles that include misperceptions about work and compensation, insufficient information about how to take the first steps, or limited recruiting resources from budget-strapped organizations. We need to address these issues."

I've signed on to that vision statement and am pleased to put my name on the list of those who've been mission-driven in our careers, and who hope to inspire the next generation of nonprofit leaders.