Don’t use grad school to break into fundraising

// March 20th, 2008 // Blog, Career, Education, Fundraising, Non-Profits

In the last post, I suggested several professional development programs that young professionals should look at in order to build their credentials for a career in fundraising. In response, a friend of mine shot me an email this morning, questioning if grad school was an option to break into fundraising or get high-paying jobs in non-profits. This is definitely not the case. Grad school is not a smart option for millennials trying to break into the field.

There are a few professional degree programs in fundraising out there — Columbia and NYU to name a few. However, these programs don’t seem to provide anything that good work experience in fundraising and some professional development couldn’t — at a fraction of the cost.

As Penelope Trunk has pointed out several times, grad school isn’t something 20-somethings should rush into.

I would recommend that people wanting to break into the field pursue the professional development programs I listed in the last post and spend years working in the non-profit or political sphere to gain work experience and perspective on the fundraising world.

Now, some of us millennials are Covey-esque in our “begin with the end in mind” thoughts — we might not go to grad school now, but we like to think about what programs we should be applying to in the years to come. Heck, I have GMAT, LSAT and GRE books on my bookshelf, just so I’m prepared for whatever program I decide to apply for in the future.

If after working in the field for five years you are truly interested in making fundraising your career, a graduate degree is required to get top, senior-level jobs — senior consulting for big firms, CEO gigs for large foundations, and serving as vice president for development or advancement at universities. There is no set degree path to getting senior-level jobs, though, and that’s pretty frustrating to a lot of folks.

Many people would recommend versatile degrees such as MBAs or JDs for seasoned professionals looking to get top fundraising jobs. One of my former bosses, NYC Education Chancellor Joel Klein, said that getting a professional degree in an uber-specific field limits you in the long run and highly recommended a law or B-school for both the non-profit and for-profit worlds.

But it’s a matter of choice. In an old Chronicle of Higher Ed article, Mark Drozdowski, a fundraising administrator at Pierce College in NJ, outlines the many degree paths you could choose (degrees in law, business, higher ed, public policy, and philanthropic studies) to enhance a fundraising career and get to that senior level, but his final recommendation is the same as mine– professional development.

One Response to “Don’t use grad school to break into fundraising”

Obbop says:

August 22, 2009 at 7:04 pm

Appears to be mighty fine advice in the above essay in the semi-lucid mind of this Disgruntled Old Coot who believes that in many positions a basic college degree may or likely be needed to “open the door” but that it is actual productivity that keeps one in the exit side sign of the door rather than on the outside peering in and people skills that often leads to promotion.

Remember, though, if your superior performance and willingness to work too much for too little causes your superior(s) to perhaps view little old you as a possible or even potential threat to their job you may find yourself shunned or with barriers placed before you or, in the worst cases, actually set up, framed or whatever so as to allow your superiors to shove you out the door and be one of many who finally learn a reality schools do not teach and whose existence goes so much against the many myths of the USA that shoved into our brains from such an early age.

The trite arrive early, stay late, do more than you have to, work hard, put the employer first, be loyal, the Horatio Alger myth, climb the corporate ladder, the best and brightest rise to the top all those trite knee-jerk rhetorical spewings with little basis in reality.

Just be aware of reality and in our modern bizarre USA society try to keep your debt down by minimizing college debt.

Again, good essay up there and it receives the Student Revolutionary Strike Force seal of approval.

We would post the seal pic but a Great White shark ate it off Ano Nuevo Point a few months ago.

A sad day for all but it was nature at work. Raw, brutal, heartless; much akin to corporate America and most hierarchical organizations, even those related to charities, religions and other groups where one would expect a little less ruthlessness from their fellow humans.

Derwin Dubose