The Nonprofit sector, in Italy, Spain or Europe, pulls fiercely from the employment point of view, but does not meet “the right people”, like those who come from companies, who already have developed managerial experiences and with a decent level of English (Level B2).
Moral: within the sector, we still don’t have enough professionals to meet the requests of our partner NGOs. It would be worth saying that, as always, in Italy, we are between the ridiculous and the dramatic, if it wasn’t the same also in Spain- where I live- and elsewhere. I will clarify myself and go straight to the point. These are the most requested profiles:
– Project administrators, for the contexts of development cooperation or post-emergency (humanitarian). People able to manage the budget and reporting – therefore accountants and so on, are urgently needed. Lodovico Mariani, Director of the Social Change School Master HOPE- in Humanitarian Operations in Emergencies and Financial Director at Amref, was a full time business consultant before ‘stepping on the field’.
–Project Managers, for international cooperation, engineers or those with a degree in business are privileged, better if with managerial experience and even better if in the Nonprofit, a third of our students is over 40-45 and has managerial experience in ‘for profit’ companies.
– Fundraisers are sought all over the world, from the US to Europe. Why? Because by thinning the public funding, they are those who, more than anyone else, ensure the financial survival of the NGOs. Here we need people who come from the sectors of communication, marketing, web marketing and social media, advertising, business (like many former managers, consultants, business developers). But also, people with a humanistic background, with an ‘educational’ approach, able to enter ‘social’ NonProfit realities in which they would not talk in terms of “target/costumers portfolio /remarketing” and technicalities, but more in terms of awareness campaign, events etc.
–Managers and consultants, for example, the Corporate Fundrasing deals with synergistic partnerships with for profit companies and their managers, for which people of an adequate standing are needed. The same when dealing with distribution foundations, presenting them projects and above all being able to explain the social impact. A good presentation is essential, the ‘nonprofit guy’ with an untidy beard and earring would not work.
The Legacy Fundraising, until not many years ago in Italy, was nearly an exclusive domain of the Catholic Church, and it is now in sharp growth, with 104€ billion per year, ‘free’ from heirs, therefore potentially available for the Nonprofit, as expected for 2020 (Source: Cariplo Foundation). This surely is an area of commitment, useful for many lawyers or professional with an education in law or psychology. Whereas, the more operative fundraising of the ‘Individual donors’ would gain from the analytic competences of those who have pursued paths in statistics.
Within the field of Humanitarian Emergencies, business profiles are needed, but also logistics and ‘supply chain’. Many of our students aged 30-40, coming from the field of the for profit logistics, straight after their Master Diploma, they take up positions as logistics or supply responsible, in South Sudan or in other critical sceneries, for a challenging but wonderful humanitarian career. We also have policemen, former army and civil protection personnel, people who know how to stay on the field.
Well, we no longer know how to say it: for changing the world, there’s time, space and… salaries!
Marco Crescenzi, Social Change School President
Read the original article: “Nonprofit: se siete commercialisti, avvocati, business administrator fatevi avanti” on Il Fatto Quotidiano Blog.
If you would like to know more about work in the NGOs and on the dialogue between the HRMs of the sector, you can find more posts on our Blog4Change.
