Matt Hugg, president of Fundraising Transitions, uses his 20 years of charitable gift fundraising experience to help non-profit professionals, and those who aspire to be non-profit professionals, find the jobs they want at the organizations they love. Hecan be reached at matt@fundraisingtransitions.com. (c) Matt Hugg 2006
I hate to break this to you...
I hate to break this to you, but I'm sure that I'm not the first. So here it goes... Some day you're going to die. No, this isn't a religious treatise, or even a planned giving message, but something to think about as you build your career.
I can hear you now... "My career? Besides the amount in my retirement fund, what's death have to do with my career?" I'll tell you... remember someone telling you "when you're lying on your death bed, nobody ever says I wish I spent more time at work?" Well, actually, for a nonprofit professional that may not be true. After all, you helped to feed thousands of starving children, or brought music to the world, or supported the next great inventor, or cured the planet of a communicable disease, or... you get the idea.
As a nonprofit professional you can have a significant impact on any number of people or things that have real meaning, real death-bed meaning. Now that's not something that a paper salesman can say, or someone who makes cars or trades stocks - all good and useful things to do, but not what you'd call meaningful at the very, very end.
That's great, but what does this have to do about your career today? It's all about your mission. Now is the time to decide about your mission. Organizations have missions, and you may have sat in a meeting or two that considered the mission of your group, but people? Yes. In fact it's one of the most important keys to a successful career. You have a mission whether you know it or not. Will you take any job? No, you may want to just do planned giving, or maybe direct mail, or maybe you're a committed generalist. That's good.
How about the kinds of organizations you'll work for? Healthcare, higher education, environmental, the arts? Maybe you have a passion for one of these through a personal experience, or maybe you just like the culture.
See, you already have some focus. The key here is to be intentional and specific - for your next job and for your life's work. Doing this puts you way ahead of most people whose idea of career planning is scanning the want ad's for something close that pays more money.
It may be counter-intuitive, but narrowing your focus so that you have a mission in your professional life actually increases your chances for success.
First of all, you spot more opportunities. Here's an example - what car do you drive? I drive a PT Cruiser (and believe me, I was the last person I thought would own a PT, but I love it). I never noticed PT's on the road before, but now in any one day I must see at least a dozen, and I can spot the differences between them in a heartbeat. It's the same with your mission. Once you define it in your mind, you see it more and more - like it's coming at you!
The other way determining your mission helps you in to reduce the clutter in your professional life. By knowing exactly what you want to do, you have a measuring stick against which you can define all the opportunities you see. This allows you to focus on exactly what's right for you - and drill down deeper than ever before.
If you decided that higher education was your focus, in a short time, almost through osmosis, you become an expert in more than just fundraising in higher education. You can speak intelligently in any number of aspects of the academy, and while you may not want the director of continuing education job, you're being able to address the issues makes you a much more valuable person to your organization - and in your career.
So back to your deathbed (sorry, but we have to wrap this up, and you still have last minute confessions to make), but along with that quick codicil to compose, you can be one of the few who can say, "I wish I had more time for work..." feeding children, cleaning the environment, preserving the oceans, clothing the homeless or where ever your mission took you.
