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What you will learn in this Chapter
• What
it Takes to Get the Work Done
• Beyond
Skills
• A
Growth Opportunity
• Occupational
Hazards
• Special
Opportunities
• Setting
Your Course
• It
Takes Time
• Quiz
• Study
Guide
Appendix
• Council
on Foundations (COF)
• AffinityGroups
• Regional
Association of
Grantmakers |
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Good grantmakers
grow slowly into their duties.
That is less a comment about program
officers than the peculiarities of the job. Foundation work is
different from most professions. Some seasoned hands even argue
that it is not a profession. It is more of a trade, a calling,
an avocation, an occupational odd-step on the unpredictable career
ladder of sharp-witted, enthusiastic people with a commitment
to the common good.
No matter. Let
us just assume for the moment that life in a foundation is not
quite like anything else you have previously encountered in your
career.
To begin, almost
everybody in the foundation world today came from someplace else.
Typically, foundations draw their staff from individuals more
thoroughly versed in the other side of nonprofit endeavor. They
come from community agencies, service providers, think tanks,
universities and other institutions that directly apply themselves
to the task of improving the world: the seekers, rather than the
givers of grants. Corporate giving programs are typically staffed
or overseen by managers from the public relations or marketing
side of the company. And even though there are a growing number
of graduate and certificate programs in nonprofit management (and
a small number of courses in philanthropy), few foundation or
corporate giving officers land in their jobs fresh out of school.
Indeed, grantmaking is one of the rare important occupations in
our society that until quite recently has been obscured from the
public sightlines. When pressed to reminisce about their first
days on the job, many of the field’s most productive veterans
speak about their initial astonishment at finding themselves in
their new role.
Neither do professional
grantmakers constitute a very large world. Despite the substantial
number of new foundations established during the economic booms
of the 1980s and 1990s, there simply are not many jobs available.
Many of the nation’s nearly 50,000 foundations remain unstaffed.
Among staffed foundations, you are likely to find one or two people
toiling away in a small office in relative obscurity.
Yet if the ranks
of foundation professionals appear slim and slightly obscure,
we should not minimize the influence and importance of our role.
Each year, foundations
and corporate giving programs disburse billions of dollars. They
support programs and projects meant to improve the lives of people
throughout the world and protect the world itself with all its
precious ecosystems.
The people in
charge of deciding where this money will go, however, are not
career politicians, lifelong civil servants or even trained philanthropists.
For the most part, they are people like you: capable, responsible,
passionate, eager, experienced in other endeavors. Almost nobody
enters their job with formal training.
Fortunately, there is a strong and growing
national network of regional associations of grantmakers (RAGs)
and funder affinity groups that can link colleagues working in
similar fields across the country and, increasingly, the world.1
Yet for most people, the best place to learn about the job—or
improve skills—is on the job.
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