Surveying the Field: Interview Guests & Your Turn to Answer
Written by Victoria Shadle
If you’ve been following along with the Surveying the Field series, you’ve seen how nonprofit professionals from across the United States responded to our four big-picture questions:
1. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about the nonprofit sector?
2. If you could tell nonprofit volunteers, donors, or board members one thing — what would it be?
3. What do you believe people think about working in the nonprofit sector, and how has that aligned with or challenged what you’ve experienced?
4. What cultural or structural norms have you seen at individual nonprofits or the sector as a whole that you would like to see change?
I set out with the goal to individually interview 20 strangers, purposefully deciding to not tap into my network of peers or colleagues and instead find guests through other means. In July and August I found guests by posting about this project on Medium and through The Nonprofit Collective social media accounts, and by promoting the idea in online groups like Your Thriving Nonprofit, Nonprofit Happy Hour, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ forum for members. I sent out a simple survey explaining the project and asking for people interested in being interviewed to share their name, email, and a brief explanation of their role in the nonprofit sector or their LinkedIn account.
Over the course of a month 38 people fill out the interview interest form. I mostly reached out to people on a first-come, first-serve basis to schedule a half-hour interview; near the end of the process I began prioritizing people with different backgrounds than those I had already heard from.
In the end, of the 20 people I interviewed below is a breakdown of their demographics:
- Gender: 80% female, 20% male
- Professional Role: 40% are senior leaders (CEOs, directors, etc.), 35% work as consultants (focused on nonprofit fundraising, communications, technology, etc.), and 25% are entry to mid-level employees at nonprofits
- Location: 25% are from the Midwest, 25% are from the Southeast, 25% are from the West, 20% are from the Southwest (all from Texas); just one guest is from the Northeast
- Education: 100% have or are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree, 30% have advanced degrees including one with a JD and one with a PhD
- Race/Ethnicity: 55% self-identified as Caucasian/White; 35% self-identified as biracial or people of color, more specifically as South Asian, Hispanic, or African American; and two people did not provide their race/ethnicity
- Age: guests’ ages ranged from early 20s to late 70s, with the average age being roughly 42 years old
While this was a very informal study, from the beginning I wanted to report out on guests’ demographics because it was important to me to make sure that I’m hearing from a fairly wide swathe of the sector and not just one demographic. There are clearly some gaps, but overall I believe this group provides a good array of experiences and, considering the fairly wide variety, it’s interesting how similar so many of the answers were.
I found the most consensus with my first question regarding the biggest misconceptions about the sector — with many people citing that they find people don’t understand that the nonprofit sector is a professional workforce made up of experts who are (and should be) paid rather than only unpaid volunteers. Having said that, in response to the last question about what norms or trends in the sector guests would like to see changed, many would like to see nonprofits investing more in their staff and creating a work environment that is more comparable to the for-profit sector in pay, benefits, training, and resources.
I’m planning to dig deeper into how guests responded to these question — and share my thoughts on them — but first, it’s your turn to answer!
How would you respond to these questions? Do you want to share your experience in the nonprofit sector on The Nonprofit Collective Blog? Use this form to share your take on any or all of the four questions, or tell me what other questions you would be curious to hear people from across the sector answer.
Learn more about The Nonprofit Collective by visiting our website, and stay in the loop about what we’re up to by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Want a refresher on how guests responded to the Surveying the Field questions? Read the article below to hear how Paul and Zulakha answered.
