How the Recession is Hurting Young Nonprofit Leaders
I’ve been thinking lately about how grateful I am that the recession has not really hit me personally in my pocket. I am blessed to a have a decent-paying, flexible nonprofit job with benefits that I work part-time. Along with other projects and teaching, my lifestyle has pretty much remained constant, a much different reality than the millions of young people that are struggling right now. If I did not have advanced education, my outlook would probably be a lot different right now, but that’s another post for another day. For now I wanted to share some trends that I am seeing in the nonprofit community that are proving harmful to the vibrant cadre of young workers we have in our employ. Any way you slice it, the economy has crippled many groups in many ways, but it’s still up to us to be sure we are making the kind of decisions that are good for both our organizations and our employees.
Low, Lower, Lowest Salaries
I was sad to see the findings from the most recent AFL-CIO report, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade,” which surveyed a cross-section of workers under 35 and showed that:
- More than half of young workers earn less than $30,000.
- More than one in three young workers say they are currently living at home with their parents.
- 31 percent of young workers do not have health insurance coverage.
- One-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
While the findings from the AFL-CIO report were not exclusively geared toward young nonprofit workers, it’s easy to imagine that a significant portion of people in the sample had jobs in the nonprofit sector as it was a cross-section. We also know the prevalence in our field of hiring entry-level workers at the ever-so-common $30,000 a year joke of a salary. What we can now also surmise is that our young nonprofit leaders that fall into this income bracket are also less likely to have health coverage and may be forced to live with their parents because they may not be self-sufficient.
This very real economic reality can be illustrated in my own experience a few months ago. I was out for dinner with a colleague of mine – a fellow Gen Y nonprofit leader – and when it came time to pay the bill, her credit card was declined. She literally did not have enough money to pay for her portion of the meal. Is that the quality of life we want to pass on to the next generation of nonprofit leaders?
The Death of Leadership Development
Before the economy tanked, leadership development was a luxury typically reserved for employees at nonprofits that had huge budgets. But even if your organization was low on cash, there were still conferences you could attend or programs you could apply for that could fill in the gap. Now, those opportunities appear to be dwindling. I have seen fewer conferences being advertised this year, and the ones that have held conferences have had lower attendance. One of the most public was the Council of Nonprofits, which canceled its much-anticipated 2009 Nonprofit Congress earlier this year. Then there is the story about Jewish organization, Professional Leaders Project shutting down. The nonprofit had been “dedicated to increasing the recruitment and retention of outstanding leaders who will lead our Jewish community into the future.”
Due to all the budget cutting going on, pretty soon we won’t even be able to go to the library and read nonprofit books to enrich our leadership skills for free.
More Unpaid Internships
Sure, nonprofits are still recruiting interns – recent grads, high school students, people in between jobs. The problem is that I’m seeing more and more of these short-term positions being listed as unpaid. It wouldn’t be so bad if the nonprofits were offering the kind of experience that would help young people learn to lead. What I see happening with many of my colleagues is that we are hiring interns to do the extra work that has been placed upon us because we are expending more energy fundraising. Or we are using interns as a stopgap for administrative support because we can no longer afford to have a full-time administrative assistant. I will use an example from my own organization. We had an unpaid intern for the summer, and most days I observed her doing things like making copies and printing things. We never really gave her the chance to learn anything new, let alone practice leadership. We never even thought about it. We were too busy doing the “important work.”
There are so many opportunities for the younger generation of nonprofit workers to contribute to the success of organizations imperiled by the recession, but we’re clearly missing them. This is why if you are a young nonprofit professional, you must be prepared to be your own best advocate. No one is going to do it for you, especially in these difficult economic times.
Bravo! I am very glad I found this article about a younger generation being lost. I’m going to have to disagree, however, with your last comment.
You see, I have become an advocate for students in financial crisis because of their student loans. That’s one of the reasons why so many younger professionals are living at home – half their paycheck goes to Sallie Mae or Nelnet.
My name is Ms. C. Cryn Johannsen, and I am the promotional writer and marketer for Robert Applebaum’s Forgive Studetn Loan Debt Movement (http://www.forgivestudentloandebt.com/). We are fierce advocates for people who are suffering from a corrupted, broken student lending system.
While I understand the general thrust of saying that you must be your own advocate, I also want people to be aware that they are not alone in their struggles. We are here to support you, and our plan is to create a legitimate lobbying group in D.C. and defend the rights of students.
This article’s theme crosses over into the work and research I do, so I’m glad it’s out there . . .
As a young professional in a non-profit, I see this trend growing more and more. Because of budget restrictions, our professional development has been cut indefinitely. Across the non-profit sector, there is less encouragement to professional growth in because the senior staff don’t have time or view themselves as too important or too busy, or are too scared to teach the younger generation for fear that the tech-savvy younger generation will grow too quickly and end up taking over their positions for less salary. Most positions are moving from non-exempt to exempt positions so that the organizations don’t have to pay overtime.
While none of this is extremely rare in non-profits in general, the current economy has definitely had an acute influence on the environment. While many organizations have a sort of camaraderie, non-profits are starting to feel more competitive than ever. And in their hiring practices are not hiring mid-level staff, but cutting them out because they can hire someone younger, just out of school, at a lower salary. My friends, a few years out of college, with great transcripts, recommendations, and work history, are denied jobs because they are underqualified for high-level management, but are overqualified (read: too expensive) to hire for entry-level work.
Where are our non-profit leaders going and, when they go, who will take over for them? Will their successors have experience? Will they have knowledge in their area? Most likely not.
I think that the situation in the nonprofit sector may actually get worse when the recession lifts a bit–I have several colleagues/friends who are actively looking for higher-paying jobs in the for-profit sector, largely because they are not able to really save for retirement or think about having children or establish a firm financial footing with their nonprofit pay–right now, those higher-paying jobs are in short supply, so they’re staying put in NPOs, but what will happen to some of our best talent when the job market opens up a bit and people need to pay off those credit card bills and dig out of the economic hardship they’ve endured? How are we going to take care of our young nonprofit leaders, whose financial needs are distinct because of their particular personal and economic stage in life, and, in so doing, take care of our social change work?
Hey Rosetta. I saw your post was tweeted out and came to check it out. I have to say…Maybe it’s because I am a Gen X’er and also because I have been supporting a family of 5 on my income of less than 40K a year that I take offense to this post. Yes, I don’t make a ton of money with my nonprofit job and I possibly could make more money else where but I don’t see anything in this post about personal responsibility. I say that because I don’t have a higher degree. I am currently going to school fulltime to pursue that dream and working full time because I have to support a family of 5. So what does that mean: I can’t spend my money on extra things except for those things that are necessary. I have to prioritize my spending and I have to be thrifty and frugal. I enjoy my nonprofit job immensely, but I also know that because I’ve chosen to work in this field, then I have to live within my means with the salary that I make. I hope that after I invest in going to school that I’ll make more money: I’ve been told that I will but until then, I have to make sure that the necessities get taken care of first, i.e. rent, food, and bills, and if there are leftovers, then maybe splurge on extra curricular activities or going out to eat. So if I hear people complaining about not making enough money, then I would say, are you living within your means, if not, then you better learn how and go take some personal financial management classes.
Our country had been so much affected by this Economic Recession. there are lots of job cuts and company shutdowns. We are seeing some signs of economic recovery right now and we hope that it would continue.
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