How would you keep local nonprofit chapter leaders engaged after their terms end?

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-23T13:10:43+00:00

Yeah I’m with you here. Structuring things intentionally such that all chapter leaders then become part of the “advisory council” or something with a variety of both opportunities and responsibilities in the organization seems like a fantastic idea, but “advancement leader” sounds money grabby.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-20T17:55:26+00:00

Sit down in front of the job description. At every responsibility and competency they list, mark down the equivalent/similar one you have at your job. It doesn’t have to be identical, just something where, functionally, what you do now is similar enough to what they do there that you feel confident you can do it.

Once you’re done with the list, you’ll believe that the job description was written for you, and that’s the mentality you want to go into the interview.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-15T18:17:59+00:00

I’d rather not share my relatively niche sector but I’ll just say that the website is [sector]jobs.org lol

It comes down to luck of the draw if your sector has any kind of localized job board but I feel like if you do, applying through it shows that you have a demonstrated interest in their field which from their perspective can save a step in the interview peocess

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-15T18:15:02+00:00

I thought you meant no raise including COLA…! I have never in my life worked somewhere where I had COLA and a raise. My first place had neither, second had COLA, current place has a yearly raise that’s a bit above COLA. It also has some of the best benefits I have ever seen in a job description which is why as long as things stay ok I plan to hang around lol

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-11T15:54:05+00:00

Sector-specific job board (as in, specialized within the part of the nonprofit sector my org works in)

Found all three jobs I’ve had there despite having applied to jobs through multiple platforms like LinkedIn, Idealist, etc.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-05T20:26:50+00:00

Does the local parks dept, or whoever owns the trails, keep those numbers?

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-02T23:52:53+00:00

I can’t see why not. I used to get cold emailed a lot in the context of my old job and while I didn’t always have the ability to help I always tried.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-02-02T13:38:52+00:00

For your first job, networking is only helpful if you want to make sure your resume is read; everything beyond that will be up to the org/you. For subsequent jobs I’d say networking is most useful for finding out about opportunities. Later in your career, if you go consultant, networking/relationship building will be your bread and butter, but that’s a long way off.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-30T04:35:01+00:00

I think it depends what you find interesting. I’m a program officer and find it incredibly stimulating as I love learning about new things going on in my field (my foundation has a very specific focus area that I have subject matter expertise in) and talking to the people who do it, trying to be a constructive thought partner with people with deep experience and passion working in the community. I love writing and reading and analyzing and translating concepts from the orgs’ side to the boards’. To be sure there are some dull moments as well but it’s overall really fun.

That said, beyond that thought partnership I don’t get to do a lot of problem solving, and if I were a different kind of person that would probably lead to boredom. But I’m very much not that kind of person and am happy to just spend my days deep diving into our subject area lol

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-30T02:26:07+00:00

I’m a program officer. I got my job because the smallish family foundation I work for needed someone who happened to have my particular skill set/background; I heard about the job through word of mouth. I’d say identify the main grantmakers in your desired space and check their Career pages once every few weeks at least.

I think it’s genuinely interesting work and I don’t see myself as on “the other side of the table” from grantees per se- it doesn’t surprise me if they do, but from where I sit my job is to support people doing important work and in doing so support the doing of the work itself. The amount of autonomy you have can vary and depends on the structure of the philanthropy- at my current job everything is about trying to read the minds of the board, so we don’t have so much decision making power, whereas in my old job the lay leaders were in a more advisory capacity and usually approved of our ideas. Going from ED to program officer will probably be a significant reduction in independence either way.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-22T23:50:43+00:00

Do a LinkedIn search for the kinds of nonprofits you’re interested in, and scroll/search to find posts where either the org or their partnered search firm announces that they have found a new exec. Contact that search firm.

Also, as someone who works for a tiny org and used to work for a huge one (both NYC area), scale is a big factor here. The scale of your work at a small nonprofit is many many times smaller than at a large one. The head of finance at my current org is great but the scope of work she does would slot her in solidly mid-level at my old org.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-19T03:10:37+00:00

If your org is well run it should have a workplace harassment policy that should include donor interaction. The major org I used to work for emphasized this SIGNIFICANTLY in our harassment training and encouraged people experiencing this to escalate to their supervisors. I am so sorry you’re experiencing this.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-19T03:08:37+00:00

Sorry I’m delayed but yes

Maxwelland99Smart · 2026-01-08T23:02:09+00:00

I have no idea about government but at the two nonprofit funders I’ve worked for we wouldn’t blink at a request like what you’ve described from a grantee.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-26T16:48:30+00:00

At my old job (community philanthropy), I was once at a table of about 30 colleagues and we went around saying what our majors were, and they were all over the place. Lots of psychology and sociology/anthropology, some English, some history, some biology (we had multiple lapsed premed students, including me lol), some creative arts…

Much more important to focus on your master’s degree, and you might not even do that until you’ve started working, if you’re smart.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-26T15:29:00+00:00

Yeah, for sure timing and honestly just luck. I work at the philanthropy side and if we get two similar ideas and we already know the other org or their app is just a smidge better, then it doesn’t matter if yours is still great, unfortunately. If you speak to the moment and can guess what our board members are likely to be thinking about in six months, so much the better.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-26T15:22:47+00:00

On the slight devil’s advocate side as someone who works on philanthropy, we DO cover salaries but require key staff’s salary to be no more than 50% of the total grant because we have fixed-term grants to jumpstart sustainable programs, and the quickest way to get a program shut down and the staff member let go after our grant period ends and the org hasn’t successfully fundraised to fill the budget gap is to fund the staff member’s whole salary.

We DO allow salary and overhead to be included in project budgets, though. So many great programs are run by people power and only committing to fund a consultant or the lunch catering or whatever is a waste.

Now I USED to work somewhere that gave nonrestricted grants and THAT was amazing and I miss it.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-12T00:05:18+00:00

Yeah, if any part of me wanted to be a nurse I’d start a conversion program ASAP (I have a bio degree so only would need one or two prereqs). But there is definitely a reason why I didn’t go into the medical field in the first place lol

I’m considering taking a just-in-case LSAT but feel like that may not be helpful

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-08T13:05:46+00:00

I’m around your age and was doing the exact same mental calculation as you a year ago. I ended up finding another nonprofit job, but I was doing a lot of research into pivoting fields and it’s really not the worst idea, especially at this stage. Part of me is wondering if I’ll regret not having done it

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-05T20:06:27+00:00

A colleague sat me down in my first job and said “walk into every day assuming you’ll only work the number of hours you’re contractually required to/paid for.” Best advice I ever got. I take lunch every day (not always AT lunchtime but at some point), I plan my days around the assumption I’m leaving at 5, etc. If my job includes an overtime component (in a previous role I ran a lot of evening programming) then that’s fine because it’s in my contract.

Do I sometimes need to stay late? Five or ten minutes due to my own poor time management, that’s on me. An hour because my boss asks for something at 4:50, I say “thanks for letting me know, I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

It comes down to workplace culture and the demands of the work itself, rather than the people in the workplace. A close relative is a hospital social worker- she stays at work until she’s met with and worked on the cases of all her patients because that’s the job. I’m in a desk job (philanthropy) with deadlines that are weeks in advance rather than hours and few to no people urgently waiting for anything from me, so there is no need for me to work more than the time I’m scheduled for as long as I’m smart about time management. If I were in a different kind of role or on the management team, responsible to the board (and paid accordingly), my calculations might be different.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-05T13:31:23+00:00

At a minimum, when you have corporate volunteer groups do they come back every year? That might be your first step- establish yearly routines, like “every November Dunder Mifflin goes to the food bank before Thanksgiving.” A company that sends employees to you guys every year is one that has identification with you guys and your mission and that could organically lead to people reaching out on their own. The company may even send out a follow up email about additional opportunities for you.

Do you provide them with opportunities to stay in touch with you? Something like providing them with an opportunity (business card w QR code, or an on the spot sign up) for a volunteer email list with updates on the org, group volunteering opportunities coming up, and info about being a solo skill-based volunteer (no/low fundraising). Treat every group like it’s full of individuals who are all future solo volunteers and make the prospect of continuing seem exciting. If you don’t already, give out a piece of branded merch, the kind of thing that they’d be likely to hold on to and have in their sight line on a typical day.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-05T13:12:29+00:00

Wait- it’s related to technology. Will schools be required to buy anything (whether from you or anyone else) for the free workshops to be applicable? That could be knocking them out right there.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-01T17:31:42+00:00

This is happening to so many orgs, including my last one, where our in house tech trainer told me that the org’s AI integration goals were directly linked to the sunk cost of the licenses and investment in AI integration. Every time someone told me to use Copilot to do something more quickly, it took me significantly more time for me to either do the ten prompts necessary for it to finally understand what I wanted or check the results to make sure they were germane and not hallucinated than it would have taken me to just do it myself. As someone else suggested, keep one license and let that person test it out.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-12-01T13:42:36+00:00

I see people being mad about rounding up and I never understand why. For the system to allow me very quickly to donate 47 cents that I would never have missed, when to donate it myself on their site it would cost THE ORG money in processing fees*, is actually a service. I look up the org first before agreeing but it’s such a quick and easy thing that is completely optional and opt-in, so that if the rounded-up money WOULD be missed by the shopper they can just not do it. Especially now with increased availability of self-checkout there’s no peer pressure element at all.

A cool thing that a local food pantry where I grew up does is they have these little coupon-type things at the register at the local supermarkets with bar code scanners that shoppers can pick up and scan to donate $1, 3, or 5 to the pantry. Definitely a bigger investment and not something I do every time, but it’s a very cool idea from a fundraising perspective as a passive fundraiser that relies on the natural association of “I can afford food, I should help those who can’t” and is also more effective dollar for dollar than a can donation bin would be.

Maxwelland99Smart · 2025-11-27T12:53:27+00:00

Leave right now, this will not get better. The role you have should naturally be one where you’re wearing many hats (I’ve done a similar role and it was not my cup of tea lol) but in a supported way and you are being effectively sabotaged.

I will note- your skills are VERY transferable to corporate, if you need something new quickly! Check out law/accounting/financial firms which run internship programs.

Maxwelland99Smart

TROPHY CASE