Area graduates are getting more job offers and higher salaries from nonprofits than ever before.
Nonprofits are hiring due to an increase in demand for their services, an increase in overall membership and growth in the communities they serve, said Paul Villella, CEO of HireStrategy, a recruiting firm headquartered in Reston.
“The sector is now big enough that people can make their careers in it, whereas they couldn’t so much in the past,” Villella said. “Yes, there are volunteers, which there always will be. But on an entry level, there are livable salaries to be made.”
Depending on experience and how a student performed in school, new graduates can expect to make $30,000 to $40,000 annually, according to Mark McCurdy, director of strategic development for Professionals for Nonprofits. He said financing and fundraising tend to have the best salaries.
“The nonprofit sector employs more than 11 percent of the region’s total private employment,” said Rosetta Thurman of the Nonprofit Roundtable, citing her group’s 2005 report “The Business of Doing Good.”
The report, based on research from 2003, indicates that more than $9.6 billion dollars in area wages come from a sector whose economic impact is historically overlooked.
Local colleges seem to be responding.
“The number of nonprofits who have recruited here have tripled in the last three years,” said Ann Pauley a spokeswoman for Trinity College. She says that about 20 percent of their graduates who go directly to work after graduation go into the nonprofit sector.
“A year or two ago, students started asking for more classes to work with the nonprofit sector,” said McCurdy. He said that Georgetown University and George Washington University have recent expanded their nonprofit programs, including job fairs featuring only nonprofits.
The upward trend in salaries that nonprofits have been enjoying in the last 10 years will depend on several components including domestic response to the individual organizations and the overall health of the economy, said McCurdy.
