Finding Your Way in the Non-Profit Sector
Your Portable Mentor for Avoiding Pitfalls and Seizing Opportunities
The helpful career guide Finding Your Way in the Non-Profit Sector introduces young professionals to the particulars of nonprofit work.
Drawing on decades of nonprofit management experience, Sonya Bruton’s career guide Finding Your Way in the Non-Profit Sector suggests tools for achieving success and fulfillment in the course of social services work.
This book introduces five central recommendations for building a thriving nonprofit career: caring for the people and work involved, tapping into the strength of one’s community, collaborating effectively, refusing to quit in the face of adversity, and being adaptable to change. To support its recommendations, it distinguishes between traditional businesses and nonprofit organizations well, noting, for example, that nonprofit collaboration involves reviewing an organization’s history and working with the public. Anecdotes help to flesh these perspectives out further, as with an account of a woman who transitioned into nonprofit work from an environment where workers were kept separate; she struggled to adjust to a culture in which she was in charge of a full process.
The book shares precise tips for facing prospective challenges too. To advance in nonprofit fields and avoid dealing with others in a harsh way, it advises nuanced assessment of organizational procedures over immediate judgments. It encourages workers to build on preestablished methods while also utilizing their personal skills, knowledge, and ideas to the organization’s benefit. It also outlines steps for identifying what success means to each person, and for identifying where one’s contributions fit best. Clear lists make such tips easy to digest.
Still, much of the book’s advice amounts to self-care tips designed to enable individuals to thrive at work. There’s advice for finding mentors, for example, and on how to be an effective contributor in one’s new community. Many of these recommendations are unsurprising; they lean into familiar information, as about hindrances to change and the development of positive and flexible mindsets. Of more use is the social services entry quiz, which enables prospective workers to self-assess whether or not they are suited to nonprofit work—though it will be most useful prior to actually entering nonprofit work; there are no tools for assessing one’s performance once one does elect to join a nonprofit organization.
Written with young professionals who are considering nonprofit work in mind, Finding Your Way in the Non-Profit Sector introduces a clear framework for navigating related leadership and cultural issues.
Reviewed by
Edith Wairimu
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
