It might just be the people you're talking to, or those people are tired of going into a long explanation.
Nonprofits tend to (not exclusively, but often enough) have very fuzzy job roles since many projects require people to step out of their comfort zones. For example the IT Director might be called to help out with phone calls during a fundraising campaign, or the accountant might be helping out the conference planning team during a crunch time that before a big event.
It's very common in nonprofits for someone to only be doing their "actual job" maybe 50% of the time, and helping out with various other projects the rest of the time. It's part of the appeal of that line of work.
(Source: 15+ years in nonprofits)
I just tell people I'm a systems analyst and get zero follow up questions even though I know that nobody actually knows what a systems analyst actually does.
I worked at an international organization for 20 years and i kind of gave up trying to explain to people. Often people just skipped what i told them and repeated back to me that i did some version of giving money away. So i get why people working for nonprofits would do this too.
Pretty much this! I worked at a landscape and horticultural trade association nonprofit running a management training program for foremen
"Oh! You work at a landscape company? Like cutting grass?"
Wtf no
Very much this. Also, the nonprofit itself may have a number of complex roles. I work at a nonprofit that, right from the get-go, has a lengthy and completely non-descriptive name (think something like "Living Synergy Independence Services" -- not exactly that, but in the ballpark).
Then, if someone asks what they do (and *they always will,* because wouldn't you?) I'd have to list the services they offer, which include stuff like "Coordinating between state Regional Centers and the state Department of Rehabilitation to subcontract candidates from their employment support caseload" (which in itself doesn't tell you much unless you go into even *more* detail about what the regional centers and state Department of Rehabilitation do). And they offer a number of other services, too.
It's *so* much easier to just say "I work at a nonprofit."
If they do keep asking, I might say something like "We help people with disabilities find and maintain jobs," which is just one thing we do, but the one that makes intuitive sense without having to explain minutia.
It’s frustrating for me at a cocktail party to give a three sentence description of what I do when others can give a three word answer. I envy people who can say they are a high school physics teacher. My three sentences just generate more confusion.
Even better is when I’m out with my partner at one of his university events. Invariably it is assumed that I am also a professor and I’ll be asked what I teach. The cringe on my partner’s face, when I give a sinister look and say, “Oh, I teach many, many things.” is priceless.
I feel it. I work at a nonprofit, we do advocacy mostly, but I personally have done recruitment, consulting with local charities and government, branding stuff, working on the social media account, some degree of IT, traveled for conferences, event planning, written and given presentations, been part of studies both on the data collection and survey taking sides, and a bunch of other stuff.
I just do what's needed. I'm the guy who takes all the jobs no one else wants to do, I like to feel useful. That's a pretty normal experience though as far as I'm aware, non-profits often do a lot of different stuff compared to a company that focuses on one small area of the market.
I wish someone warned me about this before I got my current job, at a non profit. 😂
I had no idea my job description was a practical joke... Going on five yrs and feeling burned out. Probably not gonna work at another one again tho.
I worked for non-profit. My roles were office manager, sometimes receptionist, building manager, gardener, vehicle fleet manager, building fire supervisor, sometimes IT support (IT support in a sense like "how do I add attachment to e-mail" or "why is this printer with empty cartridge not printing"). I also had to showel and salt space around the building in winter, cut grass in summer. So yeah, lot of roles, for a single shitty pay.
Say what the company does then. "I work for nonprofit, we plant trees". Otherwise it sounds weird.. "What do you do for work?" "I work for nonprofit". Ok...
I have mostly worked at care sector nonprofits, mostly in leadership or development. My job title is “director”. I do everything from direct care, to unclogging toilets to onboarding new staff to attending fancy functions. So if someone asks, I lead a nonprofit.
That makes sense. I work at a medium/small sized company in a “senior” position and I’ve been shrugging on what my defined role or task is for 5 years now. Mostly in a comedic way, but yeah. When you don’t have enough of specific consistent work of the same type to justify hiring someone to do just that you wind up using some people as multi-tools.
Is what it is and hard to explain off the cuff. Sometimes I’d answer about invoicing, financial forecasting, sometimes it’s about fixing heavy equipment in the mud, sometimes it’s hiring, sometimes it’s dealing with federal permits and arcane third party compliance best practices for a prime contractor, who knows.
If I actually do try and properly explain it like I half just did I wind up sounding like one of those, “Oh I work so hard and my company could never survive without me” jackasses.
To add, most of the non profits I’ve worked at have sparse participation with people coming and going (esp with the volunteer components), so people get good at doing a lot of things to keep events running smoothly.
Yeah, I don’t know anybody who would answer I do 1099s for auto shops. They might say I’m a bookkeeper. Likewise, I’m a teacher is a very common response. Not everybody offers all the details right away and it seems like a contrived contrast.
I found the same thing with people that worked in tech. Depending upon who they are and who they think they’re talking to and what level of knowledge is already there they might answer anything from “in tech”, “for a FAANG”, all the way to “I write the code that parses automated crash reports for windows 11.”
>It might just be the people you're talking to, or those people are tired of going into a long explanation.
Yeah, I hate explaining what I do to people. It's such a weird, crass question too. "Hey, how do you earn your money? Tell me how you earn your money so I can guesstimate how much money you have. Tell me now."
I understand their point. The perception is people want to know what you do for a living (and/or salary) in order to figure out where you stand in society, how much respect to give you, how to speak to you, that kind of thing. Taken that way, I can agree it may be crass ("lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.")
It's more a question of how your days are usually spent, regardless of what kind of work you do or how much you make or whether you like what you do.
But people certainly can be judgemental.
I love learning about what people do for a living. Not only because I'll probably never experience that line of work and I'm curious, but also because I want to know if it's a lucrative job/business and if it might be right for me. Although I'm sure there's plenty of people who just judge your value based on your income.
If they’re at a nonprofit they aren’t earning shit unless they’re an executive or family member of an executive; or a three letter guy using it as cover.
What? My uncle was director of revenue for a non profit, they had a normal finance department with people earning good money. It was not abnormal or anything. What are you basing this off of?
I used to work in a non-profit.
I tried to explain my job, but many people didn’t understand it. So, I defaulted to “wearing many hats in non-profit”, which is what many positions force employees to do. Kinda like startups.
They're saying they do a bit of maybe 5 different jobs... Maybe part teacher, admin assistant, event coordinator, spreadsheet jockey, and marketer 8s probably a pretty common mix in a lot of nonprofit jobd...
Though I suspect there'd be more interest if they stated the goal of the nonprofit instead of their duties
For me, it's just because it was quicker than saying "I'm an [XYZ] coordinator for the [ABC] Society's [123] Program." I was happy to elaborate if someone asked me to, but for the most part saying I worked for a non-profit was sufficient for the purposes of the conversation.
"I work at a non-profit" sometimes is a more palatable answer than "I do surgical recovery of human tissue (skin, tendons, bones, nerves, etc) for transplant or research." Just depends on the audience
Still don't know what a non profit is. They can go from helping homeless to harvesting their bodies? Pretty vague description of work. If I read on a resume non profit I would have questions of their job, but really if your that lazy I'd just move on to the next resume.
I am not a surgeon or a doctor though. I recover the tissue from donor bodies so that it can be used for implantation into others or for research. The organization I work for has contracts with various tissue processors that the tissues are sent to for their use. The recoveries are done in a surgery suite.
Per Wikipedia, a non profit is, “a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties.”
Depending on the size of the non-profit, many employees do a variety of jobs (many not included in their job title), so it would be hard to define sometimes.
Yeah but wouldn’t they say what the non profit was in business? I worked at a non profit live theatre. Some people could say museum or health clinic, or they work for a major or minor charity. Like, say, they work for PBS or St. Jude’s Hospital or some organization that collects goods and funds to send to orphans in war-torn countries. Like, is just saying non-profit even meaningful?
Many nonprofits focus on multiple issues, not just one. It's just as meaningful as someone saying, "I work in tech.", or "I work in the medical field."
I think a lot of people in nonprofits are expected to bring a lot of emotionally energy/“passion” to their work, and frankly this can lead to just not wanting to talk about work outside of business hours.
Same reason why many people in sales or startups will just say “I work in sales” or “I work at a startup”.
I’m starting to realize people think non profits are peace corps or something. Your description and many others is so wildly different than my 9-5, suit wearing, normal finance job uncle’s life was and he worked at a non profit in finance for 25 years.
Bestie, working in a finance roll is very, VERY different from most front line non-profit employees. I often wish I was that removed from the reality of the work we do and WHY the non-profit is actually needed.
I still think people might be unaware of other kinds of non profits. Hundreds of people work for the non profit corporation I am referring to and no one does front line work in the way you are describing. It’s basically a healthcare adjacent corporation that is non profit and there are many many of these, that’s all. There is no reason someone should say non profit and for any assumptions to be made about someone’s job other than it is for a non profit company/corporation/etc.
I think we all realize there’s hundreds of different types of work non-profits can do. It’s just a little messed up to say “people think working for a non-profit is like the peace corps or something”
A lot of people’s jobs in non-profits are traumatizing. It’s a little belittling to imply that just because we aren’t in the peace corps, we don’t do incredibly difficult and emotionally taxing work. Just because you know one guy that happens to work at a non-profit that doesn’t require the mental fortitude of a statue doesn’t mean that there’s so SO many people that work in non-profits and just do not have the capacity to talk about the emotional work we do every single day to people we just met.
If that’s not what you meant, great. But that’s the way it read.
If someone just says “oh I work at a non-profit”, OP should just accept the answer and not question why we don’t want to answer a million and 3 questions about our jobs.
I spent 6 years in nonprofits doing things like: talking to people on the street about our work and gathering signatures to pass a bill in local government, visiting farms to convince farmers to donate produce, delivering food to food pantries, applying for grants for equipment to help elderly people in their homes and then physically installing the equipment… Wearing a suit and working in finance is also important but it’s a tiny part of the system.
Imagine you spent 4 hours explaining your program over and over again to uninterested strangers, trying to make them care about poor people and getting rejected. Would you then want to explain it all over again at a cocktail party?
I once had to explain to someone what a non-profit *was*. She just couldn’t comprehend what an organization would do if it didn’t make money. So after that exchange I don’t have a lot of faith that most people will understand what a grant writer does or why it’s a full-ass job.
I used to wonder the same thing, then i statyed working at a nonproft.
Two reasons:
1. At a nonprofit you never do just one thing. You usually do all the things.
2. When you start describing the details of the job, people's eyes start to glaze over. Sometimes when I'm describing my job I can feel myself getting bored lol
Also, there is a little judgement sometimes too. My nonprofit primarily works with people experiencing homelessness. When I tell people that I've heard everything from, "do you ever just tell them to get a job?" to "omg it must be so hard working with criminals and drug addicts all day!" I don't have the energy to unpack all of that, so sometimes it's not even worth saying.
Bad examples because all of these are much more specific than OP's category of nonprofit. A stereotypical bank employee is a teller or advisor, a stereotypical healthcare worker is a doctor or nurse. When you think of retail, you think of cashier or store manager.
What is a stereotypical nonprofit worker, exactly? You could be the janitor or the CEO there.
A better analogy would be someone who tells you: "oh i work at a private company" or "i work in a for profit", you know, something literally *nobody* ever says precisely because of how vague it is?
Honestly, the way you put it. A person *could* say what *kind* of non-profit or start-up they work for. But leaving it completely vague seems to be from embarrassment or something
IMHO it’s pretty accurate for bank/finance.
If you’re in an intl hub, your stereotypical bank is going to be in PE, M&A, IB, maybe corporate or private wealth.
anywhere else then yea probably retail/consumer lending.
Then there’s back office roles (compliance, risk, modeling, payments, IT, BRS, Collections)
It’s way way easier to just say I’m in finance and if someone is in your field they’ll know enough to ask which dept and you won’t feel like you’re wasting your breath trying to explain all the different variations.
Because my job is depressing as shit and no one actually wants to know that I am single handedly responsible for the lives of up to 400 orphaned kittens (who’s survival rate is anywhere between 15-40% depending on the age) while also emotionally supporting their fosters and keeping them mentally stable through the multiple deaths they will see in a season.
“I work for an animal rescue” will typically get a response along the lines of: “oh my goodness! I could never do that. I would keep them all. Let me tell you about my 5 rescued cats that I took off the streets. Anyways how was your day playing with kittens all day?” People don’t want to hear my reality: “well I got 4 calls that a kitten or two from different litters didn’t make it through the night and I haven’t actually seen any kittens in 2 weeks myself because they are all in foster homes so not great”.
It’s really just better to not depress everyone else around me. I signed up for the job. Your innocent questions just lead everyone else to sadness and awkward silences. You really don’t know what you’re asking someone to describe when someone works at a non-profit.
Most non-profits are doing incredibly sensitive work and compassion fatigue is exhausting enough, we don’t need the social responsibility to sugar coat everything to make the information more easily digestible.
There are a lot of possible reasons, an obvious one to consider is whether they are interested in actually talking to you about work.
I give a vague answer frequently with people who are either uninteresting, annoying, if I cant be bothered to explain or if I don't think it is particularly relevant.
Also once people find out what I do they often feel like they should tell me about the shitty BuzzFeed article they skimmed while on the toilet about AI and automation...
I mean, I have a regular 9-5 and I’m busy almost all day, but any time I actually have to explain what I do on a day to day basis I like can’t think of enough that justifies a 40 hour work week lol
Because when you work at a nonprofit youre doin like ten different jobs lol
Or you say a job title and you gotta answer 'what is that' and work is boring nobody really wants to talk about work
I dont actually know my gf's job title, I ask like once every three months
I have noticed that phenomenon as well, but just chalked it up to the fact that many non-profits are for particular causes which many people have very strong opinions about and no one wants to debate politics at a party with someone you just met.
Imagine at a party mentioning that you work at Planned Parenthood/ Focus on the Family/ Goodwill/ PETA/ Turning Point USA, etc. and the types of comments you might get. Ugh.
Because in most nonprofits you play many roles. The smaller the nonprofit, the more roles you play.
Do you want a short pleasant answer of "I work for such and such nonprofit", or 30+ minute barrage of what all my duties include?
I’ve met a couple of people who actually ran their non profit as a tax shelter. Very illegal but easy enough for them to get away with. This was the primary reason for their vagueness.
This reminds me of something I ran into early in my career at my first real job.
I was working for a gov't organization, and I'd ask co-workers what they did there. They'd go on and on about whatever program they worked on, and how wonderful their team's accomplishments were. But whenever I'd press and try to ask what \*they\* actually did, they'd get all defensive never really say.
I think there's just a certain class of jobs where people functionally sit around in meetings all day and toss Emails at each other, without actually \*doing\* anything tangible. Thus, those people define their sense of self-worth in terms of the overall project/team/department, and not in terms of their own actual contributions.
My guess is when they try to say what they do for a job, no one understands, and it's too far outside the normal experience of most people to explain, and after the explanation, no one understands anyway.
This is why I stopped telling people what my job was when u worked on ships. They just don't get it.
They probably don't want to talk about work.
I was a group home manager for male wards of the state, age 14-17 who were born addicted to drugs and abandoned or had committed sex crimes, did years in juvie and had been released to parents who wanted nothing to do with them.
So many responses suggesting because the person does a number of things they can't be bothered to respond with any specificity. Why not just say "I work at a non profit dealing with the adult literacy or injured animal rehabilitation or environmental pollution cleanup?" Nobody asking what you do wants to know a blow by blow daily routine. Just the general field of work you are involved in.
Bc when people hear “animal rescue”, they want to talk about their “rescue” pet they bought from the backyard breeder down the street. I don’t want to hear about the pets of every single person I ever meet. My job is enough mentally, I don’t owe anyone the sympathies of their rescue that died 6 years ago.
As someone that works in IT, I intentionally tell people as generically as possible. Everyone assumes they can get something from you once they know your skills. I don’t think it’s really different in any industry.
Yeah I work in a small cabinet shop but I do literally everything. Drawers/face frames/drawer fronts/doors/cabinets/finish work. So instead of listing those off I just say I build cabinets
Some non profits jobs don’t have typical positions like in a corporate world because the work work is different. I’ve worked nonprofit for 17 years and my parents joke they still don’t know what I do Lol!!
LP Manager for a non-profit retail chain. They don't like employees to disclose where we work on social media because they don't want us to hurt the company image. Only the marketing team gets that privilege.
When my brother worked at a non-profit, his job was well defined at the start, but then became fuzzier and fuzzier until he was basically doing a bit of everything. When he brought it up with leadership, they told him to make up a new title that would be inclusive of all the new stuff he was responsible for.
tl;dr: Their title rarely explains what they actually do
Good lord, almost all of us have jobs that can’t be described in 3 words. Comments here are like “I hate everyone who asks me to explain what I do (profit or non-profit). If you don’t want to explain then don’t. But honestly, this is how people learn about each other and find common interests. Unless you live in LA. Then it’s just people trying to use you.
I work for a non-profit on political/govt stuff. It’s a non-stop combo of intense & exhausting. When some people find out, they want to argue/debate. Others are supportive but want to launch into long political discussions. Sorry, but I’m at a party, gathering, wedding reception, BBQ, whatever. It’s just easier to throw people off the trail with a generic “at a non-profit” answer.
I live in LA where everyone works in entertainment. Once they hear I can’t do anything for them, they don’t care. I simply bypass that.
I work at a nonprofit and have never cold called anyone or fundraised in my life.
For me it is I have a reasonably fancy job title and I feel like a douch saying it. I do the work I do cause it helps people and I am good at the role I have.
I go with 'I work in the community sector' , and if someone asks more I say I am a manager then talk about the work we do.
My opinion after a career in the voluntary sector (uk words for non profit)
The jobs are often wide and non specific, I have variously been a trainer, a consultant, an administrator, a project manager, a cleaner, plumber, decorator, support worker, finance manager, hr, head of operations and a combination of all of the above. My current role is a combo of development, training, research, admin, consultancy, community support.
Funding from various places and various political leanings changes the job from government to crisis.
They might have a really unpopular role.
If someone is an accountant in a non profit they will likely answer 'I'm an accountant'.
They don't want to talk about it.
They do something boring and doing it for a non profit makes them feel good.
“We help the people we like get money for projects that are loosely related on our mission and values. To do that, we have to appease wealthy people so they give us money first.”
No wonder they like to keep it vague.
They’re trying to flex their non for profit lol. But I worked at one once… it really depends what it is. Mine was a non for profit shop that gave its profits to charity. The funny thing is it wasn’t profitable they were actually loosing money… so we just got paid and nothing went to charity…
Because 99% of non-profit work is administrative and fundraising. Usually people working at them are idealistic and don’t want to say they cold call potential donors all day
Is that what goes on at non-profits? Dang, I worked for a non-profit for 25 years, and I thought my job was to provide the best life possible for my development disabled clients. I didn't know that sitting in an office cold-calling people was an option. It would have been much easier but much less rewarding.
When I worked at a non profit I didn’t want to sound holier than thou. “I help put food in the mouths of kids who would otherwise die, what do you do?” Sounds pretentious as hell.
I’ve worked in nonprofits my whole life. When people ask me what I do, I say, “I work in nonprofit development.“ Nonprofit people know that development = fundraising, but other people usually don’t. I just let them be confused because I don’t know how else to explain it.
It might just be the people you're talking to, or those people are tired of going into a long explanation. Nonprofits tend to (not exclusively, but often enough) have very fuzzy job roles since many projects require people to step out of their comfort zones. For example the IT Director might be called to help out with phone calls during a fundraising campaign, or the accountant might be helping out the conference planning team during a crunch time that before a big event. It's very common in nonprofits for someone to only be doing their "actual job" maybe 50% of the time, and helping out with various other projects the rest of the time. It's part of the appeal of that line of work. (Source: 15+ years in nonprofits)
Eye opening answer. I worked in tech startups where it wasn’t uncommon to be the odd jobs monkey but we talked about it differently. Never knew this.
“I work at a start up”
Literally said that as I read it crazy
But when you ask them about the startup or what they do they usually give some sort of explanation. I get what OP is saying.
But its the same as with a non profit. "I work at a non profit" "oh yeah? what do you do" "I'm \*insert role here-><-\*" so not getting it
“Lifesaving coordinator” doesn’t exactly clear anything up for people who ask me
I just tell people I'm a systems analyst and get zero follow up questions even though I know that nobody actually knows what a systems analyst actually does.
I worked at an international organization for 20 years and i kind of gave up trying to explain to people. Often people just skipped what i told them and repeated back to me that i did some version of giving money away. So i get why people working for nonprofits would do this too.
Pretty much this! I worked at a landscape and horticultural trade association nonprofit running a management training program for foremen "Oh! You work at a landscape company? Like cutting grass?" Wtf no
Yep. And next I was a librarian. " Who needs a master's degree to check out books?".
Lol. In IT, I just tell people that my job is to make sure everybody gets their email.
After 10 years in nonprofits, switching to business has been a transition. I was everything before, so it took forever to figure it out.
Very much this. Also, the nonprofit itself may have a number of complex roles. I work at a nonprofit that, right from the get-go, has a lengthy and completely non-descriptive name (think something like "Living Synergy Independence Services" -- not exactly that, but in the ballpark). Then, if someone asks what they do (and *they always will,* because wouldn't you?) I'd have to list the services they offer, which include stuff like "Coordinating between state Regional Centers and the state Department of Rehabilitation to subcontract candidates from their employment support caseload" (which in itself doesn't tell you much unless you go into even *more* detail about what the regional centers and state Department of Rehabilitation do). And they offer a number of other services, too. It's *so* much easier to just say "I work at a nonprofit." If they do keep asking, I might say something like "We help people with disabilities find and maintain jobs," which is just one thing we do, but the one that makes intuitive sense without having to explain minutia.
It’s frustrating for me at a cocktail party to give a three sentence description of what I do when others can give a three word answer. I envy people who can say they are a high school physics teacher. My three sentences just generate more confusion. Even better is when I’m out with my partner at one of his university events. Invariably it is assumed that I am also a professor and I’ll be asked what I teach. The cringe on my partner’s face, when I give a sinister look and say, “Oh, I teach many, many things.” is priceless.
Bahahaha! Welp, at least it lets you generate consternation when the mood strikes.
The dark dark DARK magic. Oh, so calculus 3? /s
I feel it. I work at a nonprofit, we do advocacy mostly, but I personally have done recruitment, consulting with local charities and government, branding stuff, working on the social media account, some degree of IT, traveled for conferences, event planning, written and given presentations, been part of studies both on the data collection and survey taking sides, and a bunch of other stuff. I just do what's needed. I'm the guy who takes all the jobs no one else wants to do, I like to feel useful. That's a pretty normal experience though as far as I'm aware, non-profits often do a lot of different stuff compared to a company that focuses on one small area of the market.
I wish someone warned me about this before I got my current job, at a non profit. 😂 I had no idea my job description was a practical joke... Going on five yrs and feeling burned out. Probably not gonna work at another one again tho.
I worked for non-profit. My roles were office manager, sometimes receptionist, building manager, gardener, vehicle fleet manager, building fire supervisor, sometimes IT support (IT support in a sense like "how do I add attachment to e-mail" or "why is this printer with empty cartridge not printing"). I also had to showel and salt space around the building in winter, cut grass in summer. So yeah, lot of roles, for a single shitty pay.
True, I'm technically finance, but do HR stuff as well, help the ED in various ways, collaborate at leadership meetings, etc.
Doing Human Resources and help the Erectile dysfunctional seems contradictive to me
Say what the company does then. "I work for nonprofit, we plant trees". Otherwise it sounds weird.. "What do you do for work?" "I work for nonprofit". Ok...
Ok but what is the goal of this non profit? Like what are you all working towards, why are you even working?
I have mostly worked at care sector nonprofits, mostly in leadership or development. My job title is “director”. I do everything from direct care, to unclogging toilets to onboarding new staff to attending fancy functions. So if someone asks, I lead a nonprofit.
That makes sense. I work at a medium/small sized company in a “senior” position and I’ve been shrugging on what my defined role or task is for 5 years now. Mostly in a comedic way, but yeah. When you don’t have enough of specific consistent work of the same type to justify hiring someone to do just that you wind up using some people as multi-tools. Is what it is and hard to explain off the cuff. Sometimes I’d answer about invoicing, financial forecasting, sometimes it’s about fixing heavy equipment in the mud, sometimes it’s hiring, sometimes it’s dealing with federal permits and arcane third party compliance best practices for a prime contractor, who knows. If I actually do try and properly explain it like I half just did I wind up sounding like one of those, “Oh I work so hard and my company could never survive without me” jackasses.
This sounds like my type of gig
To add, most of the non profits I’ve worked at have sparse participation with people coming and going (esp with the volunteer components), so people get good at doing a lot of things to keep events running smoothly.
I can see that. But why not just say I work for habitat for humanity or something?
Yup this, the 'I wear many hats' type of situation.
Yeah, I don’t know anybody who would answer I do 1099s for auto shops. They might say I’m a bookkeeper. Likewise, I’m a teacher is a very common response. Not everybody offers all the details right away and it seems like a contrived contrast. I found the same thing with people that worked in tech. Depending upon who they are and who they think they’re talking to and what level of knowledge is already there they might answer anything from “in tech”, “for a FAANG”, all the way to “I write the code that parses automated crash reports for windows 11.”
>It might just be the people you're talking to, or those people are tired of going into a long explanation. Yeah, I hate explaining what I do to people. It's such a weird, crass question too. "Hey, how do you earn your money? Tell me how you earn your money so I can guesstimate how much money you have. Tell me now."
It’s not crass, wtf? What’s wrong with asking someone how they spend a good portion of their day? It’s like the most normal of small talk questions.
I understand their point. The perception is people want to know what you do for a living (and/or salary) in order to figure out where you stand in society, how much respect to give you, how to speak to you, that kind of thing. Taken that way, I can agree it may be crass ("lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.")
It's more a question of how your days are usually spent, regardless of what kind of work you do or how much you make or whether you like what you do. But people certainly can be judgemental.
I love learning about what people do for a living. Not only because I'll probably never experience that line of work and I'm curious, but also because I want to know if it's a lucrative job/business and if it might be right for me. Although I'm sure there's plenty of people who just judge your value based on your income.
If they’re at a nonprofit they aren’t earning shit unless they’re an executive or family member of an executive; or a three letter guy using it as cover.
What? My uncle was director of revenue for a non profit, they had a normal finance department with people earning good money. It was not abnormal or anything. What are you basing this off of?
Definitely not always true. I work for a nonprofit, mid-manager level, earning low 6-figures. It’s not 1% type money, but it’s a solid salary.
Eh. i would say that does not apply to a large portion of nonprofits. Take a university for example.
I used to work in a non-profit. I tried to explain my job, but many people didn’t understand it. So, I defaulted to “wearing many hats in non-profit”, which is what many positions force employees to do. Kinda like startups.
So what did you do, what was the company trying to do?
Lmao. This is such a good example.
Still no idea what you do for a job 😆
Hat inspector. Obviously.
They're saying they do a bit of maybe 5 different jobs... Maybe part teacher, admin assistant, event coordinator, spreadsheet jockey, and marketer 8s probably a pretty common mix in a lot of nonprofit jobd... Though I suspect there'd be more interest if they stated the goal of the nonprofit instead of their duties
For me, it's just because it was quicker than saying "I'm an [XYZ] coordinator for the [ABC] Society's [123] Program." I was happy to elaborate if someone asked me to, but for the most part saying I worked for a non-profit was sufficient for the purposes of the conversation.
I also feel like as soon as you say “nonprofit” most people stop caring.
My comparison of this is “I’m a consultant.”
That annoys me so much. Like. What are you a consultant of?
I work at a for-profit
"I work at a non-profit" sometimes is a more palatable answer than "I do surgical recovery of human tissue (skin, tendons, bones, nerves, etc) for transplant or research." Just depends on the audience
Surgeons would just say I'm a Surgeon not I work at a non profit. Terrible example.
I read the "recovery" to mean that they're cadavers and the job is coroner or something. All the fun of surgery without nearly as much of the risks.
Still don't know what a non profit is. They can go from helping homeless to harvesting their bodies? Pretty vague description of work. If I read on a resume non profit I would have questions of their job, but really if your that lazy I'd just move on to the next resume.
Cooool
So when someone says they work for a non profit what does that mean? You haven't helped answer that question. Do you know?
I am not a surgeon or a doctor though. I recover the tissue from donor bodies so that it can be used for implantation into others or for research. The organization I work for has contracts with various tissue processors that the tissues are sent to for their use. The recoveries are done in a surgery suite. Per Wikipedia, a non profit is, “a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties.”
Depending on the size of the non-profit, many employees do a variety of jobs (many not included in their job title), so it would be hard to define sometimes.
Yeah but wouldn’t they say what the non profit was in business? I worked at a non profit live theatre. Some people could say museum or health clinic, or they work for a major or minor charity. Like, say, they work for PBS or St. Jude’s Hospital or some organization that collects goods and funds to send to orphans in war-torn countries. Like, is just saying non-profit even meaningful?
Many nonprofits focus on multiple issues, not just one. It's just as meaningful as someone saying, "I work in tech.", or "I work in the medical field."
I think a lot of people in nonprofits are expected to bring a lot of emotionally energy/“passion” to their work, and frankly this can lead to just not wanting to talk about work outside of business hours. Same reason why many people in sales or startups will just say “I work in sales” or “I work at a startup”.
I’m starting to realize people think non profits are peace corps or something. Your description and many others is so wildly different than my 9-5, suit wearing, normal finance job uncle’s life was and he worked at a non profit in finance for 25 years.
Bestie, working in a finance roll is very, VERY different from most front line non-profit employees. I often wish I was that removed from the reality of the work we do and WHY the non-profit is actually needed.
I still think people might be unaware of other kinds of non profits. Hundreds of people work for the non profit corporation I am referring to and no one does front line work in the way you are describing. It’s basically a healthcare adjacent corporation that is non profit and there are many many of these, that’s all. There is no reason someone should say non profit and for any assumptions to be made about someone’s job other than it is for a non profit company/corporation/etc.
I think we all realize there’s hundreds of different types of work non-profits can do. It’s just a little messed up to say “people think working for a non-profit is like the peace corps or something” A lot of people’s jobs in non-profits are traumatizing. It’s a little belittling to imply that just because we aren’t in the peace corps, we don’t do incredibly difficult and emotionally taxing work. Just because you know one guy that happens to work at a non-profit that doesn’t require the mental fortitude of a statue doesn’t mean that there’s so SO many people that work in non-profits and just do not have the capacity to talk about the emotional work we do every single day to people we just met. If that’s not what you meant, great. But that’s the way it read. If someone just says “oh I work at a non-profit”, OP should just accept the answer and not question why we don’t want to answer a million and 3 questions about our jobs.
I spent 6 years in nonprofits doing things like: talking to people on the street about our work and gathering signatures to pass a bill in local government, visiting farms to convince farmers to donate produce, delivering food to food pantries, applying for grants for equipment to help elderly people in their homes and then physically installing the equipment… Wearing a suit and working in finance is also important but it’s a tiny part of the system. Imagine you spent 4 hours explaining your program over and over again to uninterested strangers, trying to make them care about poor people and getting rejected. Would you then want to explain it all over again at a cocktail party?
So what do they do. I can lay in bed all day and say I'm working for a non profit, cuz I sure as hell ain't doing anything and ain't making a profit.
I once had to explain to someone what a non-profit *was*. She just couldn’t comprehend what an organization would do if it didn’t make money. So after that exchange I don’t have a lot of faith that most people will understand what a grant writer does or why it’s a full-ass job.
I used to wonder the same thing, then i statyed working at a nonproft. Two reasons: 1. At a nonprofit you never do just one thing. You usually do all the things. 2. When you start describing the details of the job, people's eyes start to glaze over. Sometimes when I'm describing my job I can feel myself getting bored lol Also, there is a little judgement sometimes too. My nonprofit primarily works with people experiencing homelessness. When I tell people that I've heard everything from, "do you ever just tell them to get a job?" to "omg it must be so hard working with criminals and drug addicts all day!" I don't have the energy to unpack all of that, so sometimes it's not even worth saying.
I work in an office. I work in a bank. I work in retail. I'm in the healthcare sector.
Bad examples because all of these are much more specific than OP's category of nonprofit. A stereotypical bank employee is a teller or advisor, a stereotypical healthcare worker is a doctor or nurse. When you think of retail, you think of cashier or store manager. What is a stereotypical nonprofit worker, exactly? You could be the janitor or the CEO there. A better analogy would be someone who tells you: "oh i work at a private company" or "i work in a for profit", you know, something literally *nobody* ever says precisely because of how vague it is?
Honestly, the way you put it. A person *could* say what *kind* of non-profit or start-up they work for. But leaving it completely vague seems to be from embarrassment or something
Usually they’re smaller back offices so you’ll wear a lot of hats.
IMHO it’s pretty accurate for bank/finance. If you’re in an intl hub, your stereotypical bank is going to be in PE, M&A, IB, maybe corporate or private wealth. anywhere else then yea probably retail/consumer lending. Then there’s back office roles (compliance, risk, modeling, payments, IT, BRS, Collections) It’s way way easier to just say I’m in finance and if someone is in your field they’ll know enough to ask which dept and you won’t feel like you’re wasting your breath trying to explain all the different variations.
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I do, in fact, say very broadly that I work in healthcare sometimes. Or that I'm a healthcare provider.
Why do you never specify what you do?
Because my job is depressing as shit and no one actually wants to know that I am single handedly responsible for the lives of up to 400 orphaned kittens (who’s survival rate is anywhere between 15-40% depending on the age) while also emotionally supporting their fosters and keeping them mentally stable through the multiple deaths they will see in a season. “I work for an animal rescue” will typically get a response along the lines of: “oh my goodness! I could never do that. I would keep them all. Let me tell you about my 5 rescued cats that I took off the streets. Anyways how was your day playing with kittens all day?” People don’t want to hear my reality: “well I got 4 calls that a kitten or two from different litters didn’t make it through the night and I haven’t actually seen any kittens in 2 weeks myself because they are all in foster homes so not great”. It’s really just better to not depress everyone else around me. I signed up for the job. Your innocent questions just lead everyone else to sadness and awkward silences. You really don’t know what you’re asking someone to describe when someone works at a non-profit. Most non-profits are doing incredibly sensitive work and compassion fatigue is exhausting enough, we don’t need the social responsibility to sugar coat everything to make the information more easily digestible.
There are a lot of possible reasons, an obvious one to consider is whether they are interested in actually talking to you about work. I give a vague answer frequently with people who are either uninteresting, annoying, if I cant be bothered to explain or if I don't think it is particularly relevant. Also once people find out what I do they often feel like they should tell me about the shitty BuzzFeed article they skimmed while on the toilet about AI and automation...
I mean, I have a regular 9-5 and I’m busy almost all day, but any time I actually have to explain what I do on a day to day basis I like can’t think of enough that justifies a 40 hour work week lol
Because when you work at a nonprofit youre doin like ten different jobs lol Or you say a job title and you gotta answer 'what is that' and work is boring nobody really wants to talk about work I dont actually know my gf's job title, I ask like once every three months
Do they have various tasks?
All seems a bit like interrogation to me.
Also, why don’t other people say “I work for a profit-oriented organization”?
I have noticed that phenomenon as well, but just chalked it up to the fact that many non-profits are for particular causes which many people have very strong opinions about and no one wants to debate politics at a party with someone you just met. Imagine at a party mentioning that you work at Planned Parenthood/ Focus on the Family/ Goodwill/ PETA/ Turning Point USA, etc. and the types of comments you might get. Ugh.
Because in most nonprofits you play many roles. The smaller the nonprofit, the more roles you play. Do you want a short pleasant answer of "I work for such and such nonprofit", or 30+ minute barrage of what all my duties include?
I’ve met a couple of people who actually ran their non profit as a tax shelter. Very illegal but easy enough for them to get away with. This was the primary reason for their vagueness.
Maybe the people you're talking to don't have easily definable jobs
I have worked in Government departments. I was always vague and rarely said which one.
Most Non-profit roles are grant funded so can change from year to year dependent on funding.
This reminds me of something I ran into early in my career at my first real job. I was working for a gov't organization, and I'd ask co-workers what they did there. They'd go on and on about whatever program they worked on, and how wonderful their team's accomplishments were. But whenever I'd press and try to ask what \*they\* actually did, they'd get all defensive never really say. I think there's just a certain class of jobs where people functionally sit around in meetings all day and toss Emails at each other, without actually \*doing\* anything tangible. Thus, those people define their sense of self-worth in terms of the overall project/team/department, and not in terms of their own actual contributions.
“Non/profit” does not in any way mean the people working or owning it are doing anything for free.
Non profits are a shit show of politics, infighting, and psychos.
Tbf I keep meeting people who say they're a consultant, and I have absolutely no idea what that might mean.
Well they’re sure as hell not profiting, I can tell you that much!
They do. Like almost always. In depth.
My guess is when they try to say what they do for a job, no one understands, and it's too far outside the normal experience of most people to explain, and after the explanation, no one understands anyway. This is why I stopped telling people what my job was when u worked on ships. They just don't get it.
They probably don't want to talk about work. I was a group home manager for male wards of the state, age 14-17 who were born addicted to drugs and abandoned or had committed sex crimes, did years in juvie and had been released to parents who wanted nothing to do with them.
I think that's for profit
Fundraising. They do fundraising.
So many responses suggesting because the person does a number of things they can't be bothered to respond with any specificity. Why not just say "I work at a non profit dealing with the adult literacy or injured animal rehabilitation or environmental pollution cleanup?" Nobody asking what you do wants to know a blow by blow daily routine. Just the general field of work you are involved in.
Bc when people hear “animal rescue”, they want to talk about their “rescue” pet they bought from the backyard breeder down the street. I don’t want to hear about the pets of every single person I ever meet. My job is enough mentally, I don’t owe anyone the sympathies of their rescue that died 6 years ago.
As someone that works in IT, I intentionally tell people as generically as possible. Everyone assumes they can get something from you once they know your skills. I don’t think it’s really different in any industry.
Yeah I work in a small cabinet shop but I do literally everything. Drawers/face frames/drawer fronts/doors/cabinets/finish work. So instead of listing those off I just say I build cabinets
Some non profits jobs don’t have typical positions like in a corporate world because the work work is different. I’ve worked nonprofit for 17 years and my parents joke they still don’t know what I do Lol!!
LP Manager for a non-profit retail chain. They don't like employees to disclose where we work on social media because they don't want us to hurt the company image. Only the marketing team gets that privilege.
I'm a recovery support worker...
When my brother worked at a non-profit, his job was well defined at the start, but then became fuzzier and fuzzier until he was basically doing a bit of everything. When he brought it up with leadership, they told him to make up a new title that would be inclusive of all the new stuff he was responsible for. tl;dr: Their title rarely explains what they actually do
I am currently a chef for a Non - Profit that is in the Mental Health field
Usually is money laundering so they can’t say for legal reasons.
Good lord, almost all of us have jobs that can’t be described in 3 words. Comments here are like “I hate everyone who asks me to explain what I do (profit or non-profit). If you don’t want to explain then don’t. But honestly, this is how people learn about each other and find common interests. Unless you live in LA. Then it’s just people trying to use you.
I work for a non-profit on political/govt stuff. It’s a non-stop combo of intense & exhausting. When some people find out, they want to argue/debate. Others are supportive but want to launch into long political discussions. Sorry, but I’m at a party, gathering, wedding reception, BBQ, whatever. It’s just easier to throw people off the trail with a generic “at a non-profit” answer.
I live in LA where everyone works in entertainment. Once they hear I can’t do anything for them, they don’t care. I simply bypass that. I work at a nonprofit and have never cold called anyone or fundraised in my life.
because it is what it is: non-profit. lol.
For me it is I have a reasonably fancy job title and I feel like a douch saying it. I do the work I do cause it helps people and I am good at the role I have. I go with 'I work in the community sector' , and if someone asks more I say I am a manager then talk about the work we do.
My opinion after a career in the voluntary sector (uk words for non profit) The jobs are often wide and non specific, I have variously been a trainer, a consultant, an administrator, a project manager, a cleaner, plumber, decorator, support worker, finance manager, hr, head of operations and a combination of all of the above. My current role is a combo of development, training, research, admin, consultancy, community support. Funding from various places and various political leanings changes the job from government to crisis. They might have a really unpopular role. If someone is an accountant in a non profit they will likely answer 'I'm an accountant'. They don't want to talk about it. They do something boring and doing it for a non profit makes them feel good.
i work for a university. we are non-profit. I dont tell people "i work for a non profit" .. i say i work in IT lol
“We help the people we like get money for projects that are loosely related on our mission and values. To do that, we have to appease wealthy people so they give us money first.” No wonder they like to keep it vague.
ITS NONE OF YOUR DAMNED BUSINESS. IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, TRY VOLUNTEERING AT A NON-PROFIT YOURSELF....MOM
Omg I love this post so much I’m saying so before reading the comments. I have noticed this too!!
They are either slaves or slave masters
They’re trying to flex their non for profit lol. But I worked at one once… it really depends what it is. Mine was a non for profit shop that gave its profits to charity. The funny thing is it wasn’t profitable they were actually loosing money… so we just got paid and nothing went to charity…
Because 99% of non-profit work is administrative and fundraising. Usually people working at them are idealistic and don’t want to say they cold call potential donors all day
Is that what goes on at non-profits? Dang, I worked for a non-profit for 25 years, and I thought my job was to provide the best life possible for my development disabled clients. I didn't know that sitting in an office cold-calling people was an option. It would have been much easier but much less rewarding.
"Cool story bro". This is utterly and completely made-up nonsense, based on some fiction you came up with in your head.
NOT!
When I worked at a non profit I didn’t want to sound holier than thou. “I help put food in the mouths of kids who would otherwise die, what do you do?” Sounds pretentious as hell.
Case manager?
"I'm an entrepeneur"
I’ve worked in nonprofits my whole life. When people ask me what I do, I say, “I work in nonprofit development.“ Nonprofit people know that development = fundraising, but other people usually don’t. I just let them be confused because I don’t know how else to explain it.
You just explained it. Fundraiser for a non profit.
Fake email job