Conversations on Nonprofit Careers

Korrin B.

September 19, 2010 - 9:00 PM

As a thank you gift to the Carters this summer for giving us the opportunity to work at The Carter Center and spend time with them in Plains, the other interns and I participated in community service hours throughout Atlanta. I got the opportunity to do some volunteer work with a recently started nonprofit organization called The Global Soap Project (http://www.globalsoap.org/).

The Global Soap Project was started by a man named Derreck Kayongo. Its mission is to provide bars of soap to refugee camps in Africa. To do this, the organization gets leftover, used bars of soap from hotels, disinfects and cleans them, melts them down, and then reshapes it into new bars of soap. It is a few clever way to reduce waste and also help those in need. The soap works as an excellent complement to the health programs being taught in these areas.

Before going to the volunteer event, I looked around the organization's website to learn more about it. I ended up reading the bio for founder Derreck Kayongo. I was so impressed with his extensive experience in the nonprofit world. I also noticed that he had done work with both The Carter Center and the Congressional Hunger Center. I have been looking at the Congressional Hunger Center for the past few years, as it seems like such an extraordinary organization working to alleviate hunger and poverty both domestically, as well as internationally.

I was even more impressed with Derreck when I showed up at the organization on our volunteer day and he was actually there, working on the project with us. It added such a personal touch to the volunteer work to be able to hear the passion of the organization's founder and to be able to see how dedicated he is to the project by being there. Sometimes there can be a disconnect between the higher levels of administration in nonprofits and their actual work. I think Derreck showed dedication, passion, and meaning by being present to help us all make bars of soap.

I got the chance to talk to Derreck a little at the service event, but I was very interested in his work and wanted to talk more. He was very willing to set up a time to meet. However, we weren't able to set up a time while I was still Atlanta, so instead we recently had a phone conversation and I had the opportunity to ask him some more questions and learn more about the nonprofit world.

Derreck had some really great advice and things to say during our conversation and it was very helpful. I think there were two things he said that really stood out to me in particular.

The first was that you have to find a nonprofit career that you can really have passion for. This includes both the work that the nonprofit is doing, but also what you are doing in the nonprofit. If you need to interact with people and be more involved in the direct service work, then that is what you need to do. If you're more policy-based or can handle more of a desk life, then that is the position for you. To be successful in nonprofits, you need to find a position that can make you happy and feel passionate about what you are doing.

The second piece of advice was to find a focus, a particular interest, and become the expert in it. He recommended that it is good to have most of your work and experience focus into a particular interest. I think I have begun this process with my interest in homelessness, but it is nice to know that I should keep on focusing and becoming an expert in it in order to really take off in the nonprofit world.

I really appreciated the time Derreck took to talk with me. There is nothing quite like talking to those in the field to really learn about what a career might be like.