E-Mail This Article to a Friend Sweet charity Nonprofits offer community-minded students a way to put their interests to work BY LARYN IVY

If you want to work for a nonprofit, you live in the right city. Boston has hundreds of these organizations, and plenty of graduate programs for people interested in such careers.

Dawn Sylvester, marketing director for the Trustees of Reservations (www.thetrustees.org), a Massachusetts nonprofit conservation organization, earned an undergraduate degree in environmental studies and economics, and then received an MBA from Harvard University with a focus on social-enterprise courses. She points out that "nonprofits are increasingly professionalizing, so they’re looking for employees who not only care about the world but who have all-around skills in writing, strategic planning, and development." While salaries at nonprofits are still lower than those in the corporate world, "they are catching up," Sylvester says.

Jen Irving, public-events manager at Castle Hill, a property run by the Trustees of Reservations, was a public-policy major in college who worked at a consulting firm after graduation. She moved to the Trustees earlier this year. Irving says employees of nonprofits get lots of responsibility early on because "there often just aren’t enough people to do all that needs to be done." They also benefit from the bond with their co-workers that develops because "[your] colleagues are there not only because of where the job will get them next, but because of concern for the organization and commitment to the cause," she says.

Sylvester suggests those interested in nonprofits as a career test the water by volunteering. Because nonprofits are so entrepreneurial, employees often have to wear lots of hats. Getting real experience through volunteering can help applicants demonstrate versatility and an ability to assume leadership quickly.

City Year (www.cityyear.org) offers a 10-month program that provides its corps members with wide exposure to nonprofits by having them teach civics-literacy curriculum in schools. Members also run mentoring and homework-help after-school programs. Once a week they participate in a physical-service project, and on Fridays the program has leadership-development training, covering subjects such as résumé writing, leadership skills, and financial literacy. Upon completing the year, members receive a $4725 award through AmeriCorps that can be applied to post-graduate programs or to student loans.

According to Andrea Bruce, assistant dean of admissions at Simmons School of Management (www.simmons.edu/gsm), "nonprofits are finally striving to be run like a business" — not to make a profit, but to deliver the biggest benefit to their constituencies. Additionally, says Kristen McCormack, director for the Public and Nonprofit Management program at Boston University (management.bu.edu/gpo/pnp), "many nonprofits are starting businesses within their organizations to enhance their bottom line and raise money to promote their mission."

As nonprofits are run more like businesses, different skills become important. Thus, people interested in management jobs are pursuing advanced degrees — in either social work, urban planning, public policy, or business. These graduate programs have an average student age of 25 to 28, and seek to enroll those who have demonstrated, through either work or volunteer experience, a passion for the nonprofit field.

For example, the Boston University master’s program in social work (www.bu.edu/ssw/) offers a macro social-work practice — a combination management/social-work program — that focuses on community organization, human-services management, and social planning. Ken Schulman, assistant dean for enrollment services and external relations, points out that this field of study has a "focus on social and economic justice that is not always shared by other disciplines."

According to Schulman, the program has a "dynamic urban mission — due to our location — which is important in terms of the type of issues and experiences students are exposed to and the education they receive." Grads go into a variety of private and public nonprofit organizations, as well as for-profit companies such as mental-health institutions, the Department of Correction, and nursing homes.

There’s also the Tufts University master’s program in urban and environmental planning and policy (ase.tufts.edu/uep). According to department administrator Ann Urosevich, though the program requires classroom courses and a thesis, it is a learn-through-doing degree with many field-based courses that provide students with practical and professional skills. There are specific nonprofit-management classes, as well as general courses emphasizing issues relevant to nonprofits.

Urosevich says what makes the program different from an MBA is that "many MBA programs are heavily quantitatively based, putting primary importance on numbers. We recognize the importance of numbers and do have relevant requirements, but numbers don’t tell the whole story, so there is a significant qualitative component of framing the issue that our students investigate." Students go on to work with organizations such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and the United Nations.

Over in Waltham, the Heller School at Brandeis University (www.heller.brandeis.edu) offers a specific MBA in mission-driven management, which admissions officer Cory Proud says is tailor-made for those who want to manage a nonprofit. Students enroll in MBA courses that address general-business issues unique to nonprofits; electives are mostly policy and social-justice classes. About 15 percent of graduates go into the private sector; the rest go to work in development, communications, management, or other roles at nonprofits.

Boston University also offers a full- or part-time MBA with a concentration in nonprofit management that’s designed, McCormack says, to give students the business skills they need to successfully run nonprofits. Students take core quantitative MBA classes supplemented by course work in areas such as nonprofit accounting, fundraising and development, and working with boards of directors.

The benefit over a traditional MBA, McCormack says, is that students learn about issues unique to nonprofits while surrounded by peers interested in similar work. The required summer internships can lead to jobs: one student set up a volunteer program for the employees of a large bank and was hired after graduation to run that program.

The graduate program at Lesley University (www.lesley.edu) offers a master’s of science in management with a focus on nonprofits. The part-time evening program currently enrolls 15 students. Upon graduation, students have gone to organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the Department of Mental Health, or started their own organizations.

Marian Darlington Hope, assistant professor in the program, differentiates Lesley’s program from traditional MBAs by its emphasis on the "people" side of things. Students take courses such as fundraising, organizational behavior, accounting, and human relations, and perform a field-based internship. Darlington Hope also believes students receive a broader sense of nonprofits as a sector, and see different avenues into that sector that they might not with an area-specific (urban planning, social work) degree program.

Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) offers a traditional MBA that can be supplemented with nonprofit-specific coursework. Students in the full-time-only general-management MBA program take required coursework in their first year, but choose electives from the social-enterprise program in their second year. Field-based internships and volunteer experiences allow students the chance to explore opportunities in nonprofits.

HBS’s philosophy is that students benefit from the general-management approach to education and from thinking about what role they want to play in social enterprise. Some become full-time employees of nonprofit organizations, while others become private-sector employees who volunteer for or serve on the boards of nonprofit organizations.

Finally, Simmons School of Management offers a women’s MBA program. Although the school doesn’t offer a nonprofit-management concentration, a third of each incoming class comprises students from backgrounds in nonprofit work — something Andrea Bruce believes happens because these students realize the value of business skills in their sector. Students enroll in required courses, but choose electives such as nonprofit management and perform internships.

Bruce argues that the benefit of a traditional MBA program over one specific to nonprofit management, social work, or other policy program is that "MBA skills are portable and transferable." Additionally, students learn from classmates from diverse backgrounds with a variety of experiences. In addition to learning about the power of numbers, Bruce believes Simmons’s organizational-behavior courses are its strength. "Learning to be persuasive and to negotiate is helpful in management and working with donors, volunteers, and board members," she says.

Laryn Ivy can be reached at larynivy@verizon.net.