Business majors pondering a career after graduation may have visions of landing jobs at a Wall Street banking behemoth or tech titan like Google or Amazon.
The lure of working for large companies or industries is part of the attraction for students pursuing a bachelor’s in business administration or degrees in other business fields.
So how about an industry that accounts for more than 5% of the gross domestic product, pays 9% of the country’s wages and salaries and has assets of $2.9 trillion? The nonprofit industry had all of these things as of 2011, according to the latest information from the National Center for Charitable Statistics.
In 2013, Americans gave $416 billion to charitable causes, roughly the corporate worth of Amazon and Google combined.
Nonprofits are a huge business and there are a lot of them. There are about 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations, according to the center for charitable statistics. Of those, about 950,000 are public charities with another 96,000 private foundations. The remaining roughly 450,000 are tax-exempt groups such as chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations and civic leagues.
And though the goal of these charities and foundations is not returning value to investors, nonprofit organizations in the country need to make and manage money in order to make a difference. They need people with business education to provide financial and business fundamentals for their operations.
With personal donations rising 13% in 2013 and 24% since 2007, nonprofits are seeing more money coming in. This has helped create a need for workers who can help them cut costs, operate efficiently, perform human resources services for employees and manage investments.
The type of jobs themselves can range from entry-level work to management positions. Job options may include helping to raise money, setting up events, working with volunteers or directing employees.
Most organizations also have executive positions such as COO, human resources manager, CFO and CEO.
An advantage for business majors is the flexibility and versatility of business education. Standard business courses such as finance, marketing, management, ethics and human resources easily fit into the needs of nearly every charity or foundation.
Versatility is exactly what recruiters for nonprofit groups are looking for and the flexibility is necessary with the varied tasks and responsibilities that come with nonprofit jobs.
With over 1 million charities and foundations, business majors can find a host of job possibilities in the nonprofit world. The NonProfit Times website, a publication for nonprofit management, lists more than 500 jobs, mostly executive and director positions.
The size of the nonprofit organization typically dictates the salary ranges with larger charities paying more, according to a 2012 salary survey by The NonProfit Times.
The overall average salary was $36,000 for entry-level jobs with workers in the Northwest and Northeast making slightly more, the survey found. For workers in middle level jobs, the average pay was $41,100.
For executive positions, the salary range for chief financial officers, for example, ran from $47,500 at the smallest charities with budgets less than $500,000 to $324,700 at the largest with revenue more than $50 million. The overall average pay for CFO was $107,500.
The survey also showed management-level salaries varied by the type of organization. For example CEOs of charities involved in arts and culture earned $89,000 while those working for education organizations earned $106,000.
Though the pay may be lower than comparable positions in the traditional business sector, there also is an intangible element to jobs with nonprofits – the satisfaction from working for a good cause.
