Wondering about a charity career?
In deciding whether to embark on a charity career, perhaps the first question to
ask yourself is, “What is my aim?”
What is My Aim?
It is important that you ask yourself seriously what the aim of your career is going
to be. It could be:
- To make lots of money?
- To develop your skills?
- To build a business?
Or it could be
It is easy to be so taken up with our own lives, our own success that we forget
and fail to see that the world is
Full of needs
Full of hardship
Full of injustice
Full of people who need help
Full of appalling conditions
Spend a lot of time thinking honestly what the aim of your career is. When you are
young it is easy to be idealistic; but you will have to live with the career choices
you make – so make them carefully. (Gosh! I sound like your mother!)
If you feel passionately about a particular injustice, or the environment, or people
with certain disabilities, then maybe charity work is for you…
What is a Charity?
Perhaps we should start by defining what a charity is. There are various terms used:
voluntary sector, not-for-profit sector, non-profit sector, community sector, third
sector.
We are going to restrict ourselves mainly to Registered Charities. The key criteria
for a registered charity are:
- Independent of government, business, individuals
- No distribution of profits
- Public benefit
Range of Charities
There are about 169,000 charities in the UK, employing 608,000 paid workers (231,000
part-time). About 1 in 50 people in employment in the UK work in charities.
Volunteers are a key element in the sector. Volunteering is basically the community
mobilising to achieve goals. There are about 13.2 million volunteers in the UK.
The largest charity is the National Trust, with a turnover of £35 M and a membership
of 3.4 million. On the other hand many charities are very small, with a pretty hand-to-mouth
existence.
Charities cover a huge range of purposes: social care, animals, the environment,
international development, religion, the arts, education, and leisure.
Income Sources
Charities get their funding from a range of sources
- Fundraising: Community, Corporate, Direct Marketing,
Events, Legacy, Major Donor,
Regional, Statutory, Trust
- Government funding. Increasingly national and local government purchases services
from charities
- Sales of goods and services
Social Enterprises
Social Enterprises are a growing phenomenon. These use entrepreneurial principles
to organize, create, and manage a venture to enable social change. Examples are:
CafeDirect, The Big Issue, The Co-operative Group, Welsh Water, the Eden Project
Jamie Oliver's Fifteen, Grameen Bank.
Types of Charity Work
What types of charity work are there? Many! Almost any expertise you have can be
used in the setting of charity: accounting, IT, HR, research, project management,
engineering.
But the specialist jobs in charities can be split into:
- The “Sharp End” - for example in a social care charity, the people with social care
experience and expertise who work with the client group served by the charity.
- Fundraising - the equivalent of Marketing and Sales in business
It is probably fair to say that people who work in other roles can sometimes feel
slightly out-of-focus in the structure of a charity - not really in the centre of
the action.
Charity Work - The Sharp End
In a social care charity, these will be those who work with the client group. In
a campaigning charity, these are the campaigners.
To succeed in these roles you will need a huge amount of passion as well as expertise.
Competition for these roles is often intense, and the financial rewards are often
not great.
But if you have passion and expertise, you have all you need to be successful in
this work.
Fundraising
Fundraising is the equivalent of Marketing and Sales in a business environment.
It is worth saying that the marketing model in charities is rather different from
businesses. In a business, companies deliver benefits to customers in return for
money. A charity delivers benefits to a client group (often) and the donor pays
the money. In other words, the person paying the bill is not receiving the direct
benefit. That means that the skilful fundraiser must find other benefits to deliver
to donors in order to encourage them to give.
There is a wide range of specialist fundraising roles in charities these days:
Community, Corporate, Direct Marketing, Events, Legacy, Major Donor, Regional, Statutory, Trust
For Corporate Fundraising and Major Donor fundraising you will need to be comfortable
dealing with the great and good. You will need to be comfortable chatting at a party
with celebrities, or with the head of a large company.
For Direct Marketing fundraising you will need to be comfortable with analysing
databases. For Events fundraising you will need to be a great Project Manager and
organiser, able to keep track of a hundred things that could go wrong.
So what does it take to make it to the top of fundraising? Probably a mix of many
of these skills: a good marketing brain, creativity, and perhaps most importantly
you will need to be great (really great) at dealing with and managing people.
What about the Money?
Is it true that charities pay less than businesses? Yes! A recently survey of Chief
Executive pay found that charity Chief Execs were paid 20% less than the CEO’s of
businesses of the same size.
And that probably applies pretty widely.
But they are also often much fairer organisations, the equal opportunities are generally
stronger, and the working conditions (hours, etc) can be much better.
Here are some sample salaries for fundraising from 2007, to give you an idea.
|
Job Type
|
Salary Range
|
Average Salary
|
|
Fundraising Assistant
|
£16,000 - 22,500
|
£19,500
|
|
Fundraising Officer/Executive
|
£19,000 - 33,500
|
£25,000
|
|
Fundraising Manager
|
£24,000 - 50,000
|
£33,000
|
|
Director/Head of Fundraising (small/medium size organisations)
|
£34,000 - 60,000
|
£43,500
|
Getting Your First Job
The key to getting your first job in a charity is to know what you want, your skills
and strengths. Then sell them effectively in your CV.
Of course, you will need the right qualifications. For social care jobs a social
work degree is now the basic qualification. You do not need a specific Fundraising
qualification to get a job in fundraising, but you do need marketing or communications
qualifications.
Try the direct approach. Decide what your ideal field is, then the ideal organisation
within that field. Ask if they have vacancies. But also ask if they have volunteering
roles. Offer to work in their fundraising department over the summer without payment.
This shows commitment and looks great on your CV.
For volunteering roles you can also try our volunteering
page and other online sources like www.do-it.org
Is Charity Work for You?
So, what about YOU? Do you have a passion for a cause?
If so charity work may be for you.
Be realistic. You won’t make
as much as you would in businesses. But there will be other rewards. Also, it is
relatively easy to move from a job in business to a job in charity. But it can be
harder to move the way.
Whether you end up working for a charity or not, do continue to be
idealistic. Please! Keep your eyes open to the massive
real needs in the world.
Any if you don’t end up working for a charity, please, please, please, at least
support one!