One of the things we at OxFizz are passionate about is encouraging talented students to consider a career in the third sector - working for a charity or a social enterprise.
According to the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations:
In other words, 4 out of 5 charity Chief Executives come in from the business or statutory sectors (I’ll muse in another blog post about other reasons why I think this is unsustainable). As Prospects has noted:
In addition to this, there are skills gaps within the sector. As the UK Workforce Hub’s Voluntary Sector Skills Survey 2007 states:
- Around 30% of employers reported under-skilled staff
- Over 25% of employers reported skills gaps within marketing, strategic use of IT, legal knowledge and fundraising
A thriving charity sector needs talented people. I left university back in 2006, and many of my contemporaries might have been interested in working in the charity sector, but couldn’t see a way in.
There are a number of barriers and misconceptions surrounding a career in the sector, chiefly:
1) I want to be an astronaut or a fireman when I grow up
When at school, pupils aren’t aware of the opportunities of working for a charity. A survey was once done showing that young people think the main people who work for charities are celebrities or old people - these are the people they see on TV associated with charities.
2) Charities don’t pay you do they?
There are many terms bandied about when trying to define the charity sector: ‘third sector’, ‘civil society’, ‘voluntary sector’. The very diffuse nature of the sector makes it hard to define, but the most oft used term is the latter - ‘voluntary sector’. Understandably this suggests to many people that charities don’t pay, and that working for a charity means volunteering in your spare time around your day job. As the Voluntary Sector National Training Organisation has stated:
3) Charities are bad at recruiting young people
The number of paid internships in the charity sector can be counted on the fingers of two hands - such as the excellent Charities Advisory Trust one I did in 2006. Oxfam used to offer paid internships but stopped paying interns a few years back - no doubt having been flooded with applications they decided they could make the posts voluntary. The trouble is that doing unpaid internships becomes socially exclusive, with only the well-off being able to afford to work unpaid for several months.
Charities say they would like to recruit more young people, but usually the issue is resources: lack of finance and the time and money it takes to train up inexperienced people. But this is short-sighted. The impressive Teach First scheme has given a huge boost to the teaching profession by bringing in highly talented graduates and giving them fast-track training. The charity sector urgently needs a similar programme.
So it’s pleasing that progress is being made. I sit on the advisory panel to Do More, an NCVO programme designed to create a structured graduate entry programme. The Clore Social Programme aims to support ‘the next generation of third sector leaders’. OxFizz, in a small way, is contributing with our unique internship programme for undergraduate students in Oxford. And we were pleased to hear today about Charity Works, an internship programme for graduates launched by five of the UK’s leading charities (Advance, RSPCA, Terrence Higgins Trust, Together Working for Wellbeing and The Children’s Society), where graduates are given a £20k salary and three 8-month placements with three of the charities.
More needs to be done, but it is encouraging that this is starting to be taken seriously.
Jamie is a Director of OxFizz