Will Going Back to School Help You Get Your Dream Nonprofit Job? It Depends.

I was speaking to an undergraduate nonprofit management class at George Mason University recently (thanks again for the invite, Amanda!) and someone asked the inevitable question that young nonprofit professionals inevitably ask.

Will a Master’s degree help me get a good job in the nonprofit field?

The short, frustrating answer: IT DEPENDS.

Sorry! There is no magic bullet for anything career-related these days, especially when it comes to getting your dream nonprofit job. In fact, if you go back to school in the hopes that it will magically make you leadership material, you will probably be sorely disappointed and end up drowning your sorrows in bourbon and coke every time you have to write that monthly check to pay back your student loans. Now I love bourbon, but those sorrows? Those you can do without.

Stop Asking the Wrong Questions

Anyways, “should I go back to school?” is the wrong question to ask in the first place. A better question to ask yourself is what do you really want to do in the nonprofit sector? What job would you be good at? What difference do you want to make? (Here are 15 more really good questions along those lines.)

If you wanna talk numbers, ask yourself whether the investment in paying for grad school will be recouped over the lifetime of your nonprofit career. Is it worth the $500/month price tag (or whatever you will owe) compared to the salary you will end up making for the next few years? In some places, $500 a month is rent. Just sayin.’ Of course, if you can swing grad school for free because you’re a genius or just savvy enough to find a few awesome grants or fellowships, more power to you. Free grad school is the best grad school. (Actually, I wouldn’t know that for sure. I paid for my own grad school. But I’m pretty sure I would be happier about the whole thing had it been free.)

Nonprofits Value Education, But Experience is Worth More

If you ask the average nonprofit hiring manager if, all other things being equal, they would hire the candidate with five years experience in the field or the one with a Master’s degree in sociology, who do you think they would choose? Most organizations are seeking someone who can hit the ground running in their job and it’s typically a no-brainer to choose someone who’s done it before in another organization.

The biggest mistake that a lot of young professionals make is going to grad school for three years and not working during that time. It’s a loss of three years of potential work experience to back up their fancy education when they’re ready to land that dream job. So if you’ve really got your heart set on more schoolin,’ at least keep working while you study. (I have yet to hear a good reason why people shouldn’t work while they’re in school. It’s a great experience in leadership and time management, especially if you have a family. Me? I worked a full-time nonprofit job as well as part-time as a hostess at a chain restaurant while I completed my Master’s degree. Do what you gotta do.)

Find the Loopholes

Okay, so now you know that grad school is not a sexy magic bullet that will automatically get you that dream nonprofit job that pays well and gives you unlimited career advancement. But you still hear those career “experts” saying that going back to school is a good thing to do in a recession. Presumably, it makes you competitive for the jobs that will open up when the downturn is over . . . which may be two thousand and NEVER at this point. The good news for you is that nonprofits are always in need of talented people who can get things done for their organizations, Master’s or not. (Wanna know someone who leads major social change without a fancy degree? Robert Egger. President of DC Central Kitchen and CForward. Check him out. He’s a doer. He DOES.)

So, loopholes. How can you pursue your dream nonprofit job without spending three years and $50,000 to go back to school? There are a lot of ways. In fact, last year I co-wrote a book that outlines 50 ways to accelerate your nonprofit career and only ONE of them is to get a Master’s degree. That leaves 49 loopholes for you to choose from.

Here are a few to get you started:

Build your nonprofit network. Use Twitter. Or, do it the good old-fashioned way.
Join a nonprofit board of directors. Here’s how. It will force you to become the leader you think grad school will turn you into.
Establish your reputation in the nonprofit field. Get seen. And make sure you have a good personal brand. As much as we like to pretend this stuff doesn’t matter, it does.

Now, back to my original question. Will going back to school help you get your dream nonprofit job? Maybe. But it’s better to try alternate strategies before dropping tens of thousands of dollars on a degree that might bring you big debt and little results.

Further Reading: Four Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Go to Grad School

http://akhilak.com/blog Akhila

Great post! I do think there are some exceptions though- and I think it depends on what you want to achieve and what field you may be interested in. For instance, if you want to go into global health work and work with organizations like PIH, a medical degree at a top school is certainly an asset. Without a medical degree, are you really going to have people listen to you if you talk about health issues, epidemiology, infectious diseases, HIV/TB, or other issues? With a medical degree – you can gain respect, influence, and a chance to have your voice heard on a larger scale. You can be “in the room” when it comes to policymaking.

This is the same reason I intend to go to law school. My passion is focusing on expanding access to justice and strengthening rule of law. I’ve thought about it a lot, but going to a top law school really seems to give me the best chance at being able to work on rule of law issues, and also being listened to and being “in the room” where policy decisions are made about access to justice issues, for example.

I see that most jobs at the UN and other human rights/intl development agencies require a Master’s degree too, so a degree from SAIS, Columbia SIPA, Harvard Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, etc can really serve you well if you want those types of roles.

I think it depends what type of work you want to do, and I personally go against the grain of the anti-grad school theme that seems to be all the rage these days.

But I will say: go to a top, top school or it’s not worth the debt in this economy.

http://www.rosettathurman.com/ Rosetta Thurman

Yep, it certainly depends on your subsector – sometimes a med/law degree is legally required for the people who do the work. I wouldn’t say I’m anti-grad school, though. What I am is anti-”grad school is the magic bullet to get young professionals in the door.” An advanced degree is not a guarantee for anything, even from a “top” school. Even in your case, the law degree is secondary to whether employers feel that you can do the work. The degree itself is simply another asset that complements the talent and abilities you already have. All the best in your journey!

http://akhilak.com/blog Akhila

Of course – nothing is a guarantee these days. All we can do is choose the path we feel fits us best, and work hard. All I was saying is grad school can be definitely very helpful for certain sectors!

Katie Carr

I have been thinking non-profit (as a stay at home Mom with no college education) and I already do some volunteering. I went to google to learn about what you would even go to school for and thankfully this blog came up! It is exactly what I need to read – and reading that you were speaking at GMU was interesting because I am in Virginia so you instantly won points there. Thanks!