Customer Reviews

Change Your Career: Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector

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This is a remarkably comprehensive and well-written book. It not only covers everything you need to know as a newcomer to the nonprofit sector -- the different types of nonprofits, their "personalities," their business models, their developmental stages, the issues they address -- but also how to identify the right positions and to best present yourself to a new and quite different audience. Gassner Otting provides informed analysis about cutting edge developments in the nonprofit sector, such as venture philanthropy, social enterprises, and socially-responsible businesses.

The tone is pitch perfect. There's no breathless fluff, no Dr. Phil, no "What Color is Your Parachute?" Gassner Otting knows her audience and treats them like the experienced professionals they are. The content is consistently meaty and extremely well-organized, and her observations are uniformly astute and insightful, never facile or cliched. Consider the following example:

"Nonprofits in transition tend to be three to seven years past their start-up mode. They are often on their second or even third executive director, and they have begun adding senior staff positions, like operations, finance, or administration directors.... Great opportunities exist for corporate career changes in these organizations, as long as you don't try to transition the organization too quickly."

And this:

"Founders can be enormously exciting to work for, especially when they are in their element... However, founder types in nonprofits in transition, at a steady and stable point, or in decline can be phenomenally destructive. As in the for-profit sector, the nonprofit sector recognizes 'founder's syndrome,' even if the founder doesn't. No founder wants to stay past their prime, but most simply don't see that it has passed. In fact, staff and board are often complicit in founder's syndrome, continuing to remain supportive in public even if they have begun snickering in private."

I was particularly impressed with the way Gassner Otting extracts patterns and grouped information in ways that are consistently useful to the reader. Examples include her descriptions of the types of nonprofits (including their personalities), nonprofit trends, nonprofit myths and stereotypes about private-sector expatriates, organizational life cycles, and analysis of job titles and org. charts. Her taxonomies and commentary are comprehensive and richly informative. Also, she provides a number of useful profiles of successful career changers, which, contrary to usual practice, don't sound like they were written for People magazine.

Her advice about job search strategies, networking, informational interviewing, and resumes and cover letters is far above average, with much more sophisticated examples of well-written communications. This is entirely appropriate for her intended audience of job seekers who already have successful careers behind them. She provides excellent advice about how to translate private-sector experience into the language of nonprofits. Her appendix of resources is both comprehensive and selective, including jobs boards by interest area, executive search firms servicing the nonprofit sector, and educational resources by state and online.

As Gassner Otting states, "even in the best of circumstances, job searches are long, arduous, and often lonely processes." I cannot imagine that any successful person thinking about transitioning into the nonprofit world would not benefit enormously from this truly outstanding and definitive text on the subject.

This book is uncanny in its accuracy and surgical in its analysis of the issues those looking to change from the business world to the non-profit world will encounter. It seems at times that the author was there as I discovered the language, disposition, motivational, resource and work-style differences I have encountered in my own effort to transition to non-profit work.

Firstly, it demystifies the non-profit world by categorizing and organizing it for the reader, explaining the many and non-obvious differences between family foundations, advocacy and service groups, founder-led, executive director-guided and board driven organizations. Nowhere is the modern non-profit sector better explained.

Secondly, it is fantastically useful to help business people understand how they and their business accomplishments will be viewed in the non-profit world. Included is advice on the small presentation "tweaks" can turn a hard-nosed business `achievement' into a `contribution' interesting to the non-profit ear. The reader is treated like an interested and intelligent being while being taught these basics. While consistent themes run throughout the book, you are not bludgeoned with the constant repetition characteristic of so many career books. A vast majority of the many examples and war stories are told positively and with clear lessons.

Worth keeping as a reference or passing on to the next one you meet facing the change, I am surprised that Amazon has the book available for resale, but encouraged that resale prices are so close to the new price.....this book is a bargain at twice the price.

Laura Gassner Otting's new book is a terrific resource for people of all ages who are interested in moving into work in the non-profit sector. She demystifies the process, gives useful hints and fills the reader with tools, energy and hope. Her writing combines energetic idealism with practical ideas for moving forward. Anyone interested in jobs in the non-profit sector would be well-served by this book!

This book was very informative. It was helpful in the understanding of the vast size of the non-profit sector job types. It also gave many helpful ideas on how to get into non-profit job fields from the private sector.

I used this book as a constant reference while looking for a non-profit development position. It was informative, practical and had wonderful examples of resumes and cover letters. I have reccommended it to several people and will continue to do so.

Before reading "Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector," I interviewed author Laura Gassner Otting for a story I was writing for my U.S. News & World Report column. Ms. Gassner Otting was an absolute wealth of information and skillfully articulated nonprofit trends and advice for career changers considering making a jump to nonprofit work. I wasn't surprised to find her book even more detailed and useful. It is full of advice covering everything you'd need to know to decide if a career working for a nonprofit organization is right for you. Then, Gassner Otting (the founder and president of a search firm working extensively with nonprofits), shows readers, step-by-step, how to make a transition successfully.

The author includes nuanced information, including specifics about nonprofit language and lingo and how to identify the right type of nonprofit organization to match your personality. As a job search coach who helps people land their target jobs, I was very impressed with the level of detail in this book, and highly recommend it to anyone thinking of taking advantage of potential new hiring opportunities in the nonprofit sector.

I found this book to be very helpful.It came highly recommended to me by a nonprofit career development instructor.