15.1.2009
Nonprofit MBAs – No, this isn’t an oxymoron
Do MBAs only care about money? Are business-school graduates only trained for the cut-throat world of beating targets and elbowing their way to boardroom status? Many people say yes, and the truth is that there are probably a lot of MBAs out there with said mentality, but of course not all. If you are interested in business but want to make a ‘different’ kind of contribution to the world, don’t discount the MBA.
The MBA world provides more opportunities than you think, especially if you are interested in working to help smaller or under-funded businesses, or any business in the nonprofit sector. After all, more than nine per cent of the US population are employed in the nonprofit sector – a sector including upwards of 1.5 million businesses; and those are just the businesses that are required to register. In Canada, almost 13 per cent of economic contributors are employed in the country’s nonprofit sector.
Nonprofit organization MBA Corps prides itself on providing ‘professional consulting services, management guidance and technical assistance in (its) strike zones—economically challenged urban and rural areas.’ MBA Corps, an American operation, gives volunteers the opportunity to help businesses within the US or overseas.
Another organization, MBA Enterprise, allows recent business-school graduates to help underserved economies abroad. The new MBA who signs up with MBA Enterprise will get the chance to donate 12 to 15 months of her time to help build economies, decrease poverty and assist communities to gain many technical, social, and practical qualities necessary to help societies evolve.
If you want to gear your career towards the nonprofit sector, you will be happy to know that many business schools cater to your intentions. The Haas School of Business at Berkeley offers the Nonprofit and Public Management Program (NPM) which awards its graduates with an MBA and the necessary tools to ‘found, lead, manage and govern nonprofit and public organizations for the public good.’ The University of Geneva, HEC School of Management, offers the International Organizations MBA – an MBA for those who wish to ‘pursue a career in the increasingly interconnected fields of international governmental and nongovernmental organizations and companies that work with these institutions.’ If Australia is an option, the Queensland University of Technology offers an MBA in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies. These are just a few of the many MBA programs now dedicated to the student who wants a career in the nonprofit sector.
If you are thinking about joining the nonprofit sector in the future but desire a broader business education, you will still find opportunities in the nonprofit realm. Organizations like MBA Nonprofit Connection link business school graduates with employers in the nonprofit or NGO sectors who are in need of strong MBA skills. Because nonprofit organizations don’t traditionally attend the corporate recruiting events that take place at business schools, many future MBAs may underestimate the demand for their skills in this sector.
Nunzio Quacquarelli, Managing Director of QS, the company behind the QS World MBA Tour, the world’s largest series of business school information events, reports on the growing interest in the nonprofit sector as an option to MBAs: “There has definitely been an increase in the number of future MBA students looking to apply the leadership and management skills taught in business school to the nonprofit sector,” he says. “And likewise, there is a strong demand within the nonprofit sector for leaders with an excellent business grounding to pave the way for potentially groundbreaking developments within not-for-profit organizations.”
Global Grassroots is a nonprofit organization dedicated to arming marginalized communities (particularly women) with the tools to improve their societies, many which are labelled ‘post-conflict’. Founder and director Gretchen Wallace made her inspiration reality after getting her MBA from Tuck in 2001. “Starting up Global Grassroots would have been much harder if I had not done an MBA,” she says. In Gretchen’s case, the ‘hard skills’ taught in business school were not only essential to founding her own organization but were imperative to pass on to the next generation of social entrepreneurs. “We teach the hard skills learnt in traditional MBA programs to the people we work with, but we adapt them where people need to create sustainable solutions within communities,” Gretchen explains.
If you are thinking about joining the nonprofit sector but are constantly telling yourself that you have bills to pay and that such a job won’t help you do so, think again. Loan forgiveness policies for MBAs joining the public or nonprofit sectors are popping up everywhere. Stanford GSB gives graduates the opportunity to have 100% of their student loans paid off if they take jobs in specific government or nonprofit organizations. Other business schools, including Yale, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago offer similar incentives, but with stricter guidelines. The graduate’s salary must be no higher than $30,000 for example and he or she must take a job working for the government or a tax-exempt organization. Some schools will require its loan forgiveness recipients to perform volunteer work or take a job in a specific under-served community.
Whether you plan to start-up an environmental protection organization or a charity that promotes education in developing countries, an MBA could prove fruitful in the success of your endeavour. The qualification doesn’t have to be about corporate advancement (that is, if you don’t want it to be), but can be about the advancement of people, places, knowledge and many other evolving entities.
by Marie Field |
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