Nonprofit Careers

An informative article from the Foundation Center.

An excerpt.

“Finance. Marketing. Facilities Management. These may not be the first words that come to mind when you think about nonprofits, but these are all crucial parts of most nonprofit organizations' abilities to succeed.

“Similar to corporations and small businesses, nonprofits strive to operate with method and within budget. It is especially important for nonprofits to run efficient operations and demonstrate measurable outcomes because they are accountable to funders, board members, and the government.

“What to Expect

“In any industry, the operations team is the infrastructure of an organization that works behind the scenes to keep things running. This is especially true in the nonprofit sector, where operations staff support an organization in a number of functional areas including accounting and finance, administration, human resources, information technology, marketing, and office management. All of these functions share one goal: to make sure an organization is operating efficiently and to its full potential.

“Most roles in nonprofit business operations require individuals to work with systems. This could mean working to devise an accounting system that helps departments process their invoices more efficiently, or following existing protocols for ordering supplies or on-boarding new employees. While the specific functional area of a role will dictate what type of systems an individual will be involved with, the ability to quickly understand business challenges and address them systematically is an asset to all operations roles. Generally, individuals who are highly organized, analytical, and adaptive do well in nonprofit business operations roles.”