How many people can afford to move from the private sector to the charity sector?

This has been a draft of a post for a number of weeks. It’s something I keep coming back to, and it appears to keep coming back around in sector headlines too.

It is so important to pay people appropriately for their experience and skills. While staff in private companies are often paid more, it’s the owners’ ‘own money’ to use as they want. In the charity sector we are expected not to be paid as much because 1) donors don’t want to actually fund the running of the charity, but the services and 2) we are expected to be charitable in our nature as well as our career, meaning this can’t possibly be our first choice of career.

How is experience expected to be gained when the pay doesn’t reflect this, how are we meant to have funded our degrees and funded that training course? It’s not about academic or theoretical experience, but actually doing the job, having the transferable skills, and ultimately, building relationships. We are all human, and surely all want to see charities not need to exist. But to do this, we need to invest in those charities offering solutions. Not just leave it to someone else, someone who can ‘afford to work for a charity’.

The charity sector is a career path I chose to take, I didn’t fall in to it when I could afford to, or when I needed more flexibility. It was intentional, and I enjoy supporting others to grow in their knowledge and experience in the sector. Let’s bring others on board, show it’s a worthwhile and appropriately paid career path, and make a difference.

N.B. I was very fortunate to start my career volunteering for a charity whilst still at school, and worked my way up, but I couldn’t have done this without the financial support of family, and I recognise this is not at all the position for everyone.