Volunteering: A Way to Expand Your Nonprofit Career

Networking is an invaluable tool that can expand the horizons of your organization or program…...and your career. Especially in tough economic times like these where every day it seems there's another article about a company cutting tens of thousands of jobs or a nonprofit organization cutting staff or programs. As the Director of a job training program for homeless and low-income women, I stress to our students the importance of networking in getting your next job.

Volunteering can be a useful way to network at a nonprofit and advance your career. It's one of the reasons (and I think the main reason) that I got my first job in nonprofit five years ago. In my "previous life" as an attorney at a law firm in Manhattan, when I was looking to make the move into nonprofit I was finding it difficult getting any response to jobs I had applied for at nonprofits. Well, it was more than difficult…..I wasn't getting any interviews. I could just imagine the staff person at the nonprofit looking at my resume and saying "Who's this lawyer trying to run a program at a nonprofit? He has no nonprofit experience." What I did have, however, were transferable skills. I had been managing projects and supervising junior attorneys, paralegals and administrative assistants for years. This was just not getting through.

I had a rough idea of what type of work I wanted to do (assisting the homeless and/or working on civil liberties issues), so I did some research and found a handful of organizations that I thought I'd want to work for. None of them were hiring at the time. I sent emails and made phone calls and said I was interested in volunteering my time and helping out in any way. Rather than volunteering at one organization for extended periods of time, I thought it would be a better strategic move to volunteer at multiple organizations for a few hours every other week, that way I was expanding my possible network. Each time I volunteered, I made it a point to say hello to the Executive Director and/or Deputy Executive Director at the organization to keep me in the forefront of their mind if any opportunities ever arose. And, I didn't say no to any level of work. Most of the volunteer work I was doing some would probably consider "too easy" or "beneath" my skill level, but I felt at the time (and still do) that it's just important to be helping out in whatever area the organization needed it, whether it was stuffing envelopes or answering phones, because it showed that I was committed to the mission.

After a few months a position opened up at Coalition for the Homeless and the Deputy Executive Director approached me about applying for it. I believe this would have never been possible had I not been there week after week helping out. My resume would have just been added to the pile, and I would have possibly not even been called in for an interview because their preference was to hire someone with an MSW, which I didn’t have. Five years later, I'm still working at Coalition and was promoted to another larger program two years ago.

Regardless of your career stage and whether or not you are working right now, I believe that volunteering can be an important way to expand your network and your career potential.

Rich Lombino, Esq.
Director - First Step Program