apt142's Journal: Non-profit

I work in the non-profit world. Did I ever mention that? I probably did in a comment or two.

So... Non-profit, what's that like?

Let me describe my job. I am the one and only Web Developer at an Umbrella Charitable Organization. I won't name names but, I'm sure if you look those words up and put two and two together, you'll have a good idea. We're set up to cover several counties in our state. So, we've got smaller satellite offices in each of the surrounding counties and one big head office in the main city. So, it's pretty important that we do a lot of communicating between locations since physical distance is about an hour drive from the main office to any of the satellites.

So, this means that we need an intranet for internal communication and of course we have our external site for public communication.

The work environment is interesting. I'm the only developer on staff. I'm also one of three computer technical people on staff. I say technical because we wear a lot of hats and switch them around frequently. I'm beginning to think I'm the only active developer in all of the sister organizations to ours. We're certainly the only one with a home built intranet site that responds with dynamic content. Non-profits are notorious for skimping on their IT staff in the belief that budgets are better spent on the fundraising folks or the good cause they are committed to. For some of them, that's perfectly acceptible. For others, it just leaves the organization stagnant and unflexible. Thankfully our Org leaders have a different view on that. The moment that changes, I may be out of a job.

During the first year or two I was here, I obsoleted so many of our daily functions. I think I easily saved my salary in expenses those two years. Some of the things I obsoleted were just ridiculous wastes of time.

It took me nearly 4 years to get to the point where I had stopped feeling like I was playing catch up.

Overall, the experience is rewarding. I'm surrounded by people who are professional and caring. The salaries aren't what you'd get at the megacorps. So, we tend to attract people who want to make a difference over making a killing. It feels good to know that I'm enabling people to make a bigger difference. I like to think that for every task I simplify, I add about a minute a day on average to my co-workers. And when you multiply that out by the co-workers and the number of days in a year, that really adds up. Hey, it's how I get my warm fuzzies with out directly interacting with the community. (I'm lousy at that anyways.)

Downsides? Salary. Definitely salary and benefits and all that jazz. And, because we're a non-profit, were constantly being looked at and evaluated for honesty, efficiency and outcomes. So, there tends to be a committee-group-think decision process on things that seem really basic. It's annoying but workable. Just do the due dilligence and you'll be ok.