15 Powerful Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Nonprofit Career

Over the past couple years, I’ve been providing career coaching for nonprofit professionals and those looking to enter the nonprofit sector from other industries. What I’ve noticed is while everyone’s skill set varies, the desire to contribute is pretty much the same.

Last week, I shared some useful strategies to help you decide the next step in your leadership journey, which inspired me to start compiling a list of all the questions that inevitably come up in my sessions with my coaching clients. I share some of them with you here today so you can ask them of yourself and investigate your own leadership potential, either by yourself or with a coach, mentor, colleague or friend.

What do I most want to get out of my involvement with the nonprofit sector?
What does my ideal nonprofit career look like?
What am I most passionate about in my current nonprofit job?
When am I at my best in my nonprofit job? What contributes to my peak performance?
How does my current role or position fit in with my personal mission and vision for my life?
What accomplishments am I most proud of in my nonprofit career so far?
How do I want to feel in my nonprofit job?
What does nonprofit leadership look like to me?
How can I model my own vision of nonprofit leadership for my colleagues, staff and community?
If I knew I couldn’t fail, what big idea would I implement to improve my organization or community?
In which areas am I holding back in sharing my true gifts with my organization and community?
Am I making a real difference in my current role or position?
What’s really keeping me from deepening my level of commitment to my organization or cause?
What is the biggest opportunity I have in my nonprofit career right now that I’m not taking advantage of?
What would happen if I did what I really wanted to do in my nonprofit job? What would that look like?

Your Turn

Which one of these questions resonates the most with you? Take 10-15 minutes to answer it and journal your reflections!

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http://twitter.com/tellymcgaha Telly McGaha

I thought question #13 was very interesting. I recently came across numerous opportunities with other organizations (when it rains, it pours, right?), but I turned them all down because, one, I wasn’t really looking for another job, and, two, most of them were so far outside my current organization’s mission that I just couldn’t connect the dots as to how I could justify moving from one agency to another. I ended up questioning whether or not I would be as passionate about those other organizations’ mission as I was my current agency’s.

This lead me to thinking about development professionals who move from charity to charity, when the missions aren’t at all similar. Do you think they do this to pursue job opportunities as pure job opportunities, or do you think they are just as passionate about one organization as the next and able to see the value in the services each provides? How do you think that looks on a resume?

Katiegraham781

Telly – What a great observation! I’m struggling with this right now as I begin the job search…I’ve been in the environmental field for the past 3 years, but don’t necessarily have a passion for it. For me it’s always been difficult to focus on one ’cause’ and I do wonder what my resume will ‘say’ about me….
http://twitter.com/bsaunders bsaunders

That’s one cultural difference between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors that I find strange … I think many of us are passionate firstly for our craft, with the application of that craft being important but secondary.

I’m an artist-type, a writer to be precise. I think most artists think this way, but I gather that many other kinds of professionals do as well. I am so passionate to translate ideas and encounters and events into text on paper or a screen, that I don’t want to do anything else – no matter what the cause.

I’ve worked for charitable causes I care about (youth development, animal welfare,) for companies with interesting technologies (cutting-edge natural language search,) and in small, community-serving businesses that touch people directly without particular regard to their neediness (independent retail, fitness.)

I can completely relate to a fundraising professional whose feeling is, “There are so many valuable causes out there, and so many people who want to do good. I love to connect them! And I could just as easily do that to benefit kids, or elders, or the arts, or animals, or the environment.”

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