I graduated from university a decade ago, picturing an ethical career with a worthy employer. I had loved volunteering as a family support worker for a children’s hospice charity while studying and I thought that I might pursue some sort of charity work – but what?
One of my earliest applications was for an administration role within a charity via a high street job agency. But my vague sense that I might want a career in the third sector was quickly put to one side by a savvy recruiter. They saw a malleable arts graduate and placed me in a junior sales and marketing role. They told me it would help to “get my foot in the door of a real company – you can turn your hand to the charity sector anytime”. Nearly 10 years and two healthy stints in “real company” jobs later, I paused and wondered where the worthiness had gone.
I found myself buried in a corporate job, managing supplier marketing contracts and tenders for a global retail conglomerate. It was a cyclical existence characterised by long slogs and short, sharp peaks when I closed deals.
My mind began drifting back to those student volunteer days, to the slow-burning warmth of my voluntary role. Only this time, I knew what I wanted to do: I’d take my sales and marketing skills to the charity sector and become a fundraiser. I’d won business from some of the biggest global brands and managed marketing funds for some notoriously ruthless suppliers; charities would be falling over themselves to employ me.
But it didn’t work like that. The interviews were not forthcoming. My carefully honed commercial CV with all the big names and numbers was passed over by charity after charity. After one particularly painful “No thank you” email, I picked up the phone to ask why. By chance, the call was answered by the chief executive, who told me (as kindly as possible) that she’d been concerned, based on past experience, that I was looking for a bit of a holiday from the strains of sales, and that I would “move on quickly after six months of mourning an expense account”. She also pointed out that I hadn’t really demonstrated how my corporate experience would transfer to a charity.
I remade my CV, stripping out the roll-call of self-aggrandising achievements and name-dropping, focusing instead on the skills I could offer; writing persuasively, using my contacts to network with potential corporate supporters, project management and working to targets. After sieving the sales ego from my CV I had a much better idea of which roles I should go for.
The changes paid off and I found myself at an interview for one of the UK’s best known disability charities. I will never forget opening the door to that boardroom. I was wearing my sharpest negotiation suit, pointy patent stilettos, my leather portfolio tucked proudly under one arm, and faced a room full of people wearing jeans, greeting me with bemused expressions. I wish I could forget fumbling hopelessly over a question about the future of statutory funding. But it’s a bad interviewee who blames her outfit. The truth was I still had a lot to learn about charity funding streams, industry issues and working cultures.
Better researched and less terrifyingly dressed, my next charity interview led to a London-based contract role in corporate sponsorship, followed by a permanent role as corporate fundraiser in my home city, for a charity supporting children and adults with neurological movement disorders.
I’ve had a frantic, but fruitful start. My awareness of the inner workings of corporate social responsibility strategies and marketing budgets has helped me to build a group of corporate supporters for my new charity. I thought I would miss the thrill of sales, and the pace of delivering to deadline, but have found these elements to be just as prevalent in the fundraising environment, with the added satisfaction of knowing the impact of a healthy month’s figures on the charity’s services.
The thing I like the most about my new role is the working environment: our fundraising office is fully integrated within the charities’ services, which means I work to the sounds of laughter, music and children singing and often wander into groups to say hello and learn about the day’s activities. I can share a cup of coffee with participants from our Parkinson’s support group or take a break from the desk to help a volunteer sort out donations of toys and books.
It’s a sharp contrast to my previous life where I was either alone in the car, train or plane or working from a hot desk, sat opposite a person that I might only speak to twice a year despite working in the same department. The desks are shabbier and the paperwork copious, but my new environment is truly refreshing and motivating.
In many ways working for a charity has given me that feeling of satisfaction I had hoped for as an idealistic graduate. Now I see colleagues around me, both paid employees and volunteers, who have given a lifetime of service to their cause. The mission of our charity is in their bloodstream, under their skin, a part of who they are. And while I am also deeply connected to our cause, and put in the groundwork with the best of them, I still sometimes feel salesy. It clearly takes a while for the shoulder pads to deflate, but I hope I prove worthy of my new career.
Confessions of a charity professional is the Guardian Voluntary Sector Network’s anonymous series where charity workers tell it how it is. If you would like to pitch us an idea, click here.
