July 14, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Recent college graduates are being encouraged to follow the money rather than follow careers in the nonprofit world because of the staggering cost of higher education.
But Peter Brinckerhoff, a management consultant for nonprofit groups, believes he has a solution.
Mr. Brinckerhoff, writes on Mission-Based Management, says nonprofit groups would be better able to attract young, talented workers if local governments and community foundations offered incentives that would allow recent graduates to pay off their student loans.
He says local governments could create a system in which recent graduates would see a portion of their loan debts forgiven for every year in which they work for a charity. The federal government now does that for people in certain public-service careers.
He also proposes that local governments offer property-tax incentives to nonprofit workers who buy homes in the communities in which they work.
“We want well educated employees. We know we can’t pay our employees salaries that are competitive with the for-profit sector, and we know that our mission-satisfaction makes up for that to a point,” Mr. Brinckerhoff writes. “But mission-satisfaction can’t help here: we have to come up with a better way if we want the best people.”
What do you think of these ideas? Are they practical? Would recent graduates be more willing to take jobs in the nonprofit world if they were given such incentives? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
