Non-Profits Turn Off Young Workers
The Chronicle of Philanthropy carries an article written by Caroline Preston entitled, "Long Hours, Low Pay Turn Off Young Non-Profit Workers." Based on results from a survey, the article says that few of the young non-profit workers expect to spend their entire career working in the charity world. The turn off - long hours and low pay. The low pay is driving men and minority groups out of the field leading to a lack of diversity. This leads to charities paying women lower salaries for comparable work. They speak about sexism and racism and glass ceilings existing in what they had believed would be a more equitable part of the marketplace.
This is a sad commentary on an industry segment that has much need of bright, motivated employees.
Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive
Comments
I am one of those statistics: female, works in non-profit, underpaid and over worked. I've worked in the non-profit sector for over six years now and the Chronicle of Philanthropy is RIGHT on the money (or right off the money).
The glass ceiling is still very much in place and the favoritism still happens and our wage is not comparable to our male counterparts. I'm looking to get out of non-profit work altogether beause of the exact statement above--low pay and long hours and I'd like to add another criteria: bad, poorly trained upper managment. It's really sad when I have more education (a college degree) than my executive director--very sad, indeed. That's why they have underqualified people working in non-profit because they won't or can't pay qualified people to run NPO's.
It is sad and there are many wonderful, amazing talented people that I've worked with over the years in non-profit who left because of the reasons stated above. I hate to say it but very soon you'll only have imbeciles running the non-profit sector.
Posted by: PT | April 19, 2007 4:09 PM