3 Questions To Ask About Mission Before You Decide to Work in a Non-Profit

I need to be doing something more. I want to make the world a better place. I want to help people.

As a career and executive coach with a background that includes working in and with mission-driven organizations, I hear some version of those statements practically every week. Clients often seek me out when they’re questioning their career and are wondering if they should pursue a more “meaningful” or mission-driven path.

The people I coach are mostly MBAs and other high-achieving professionals. They work in a wide variety of industries and are often in consumer products, healthcare or tech. Quite a few are in the process of planning a transition out of management consulting, banking or investing.

Despite their many achievements and successes, they feel like something's missing. They can’t quite put their finger on it and they’ve begun to question the value and impact of their work. They wonder if they could be doing something more. Something that would have a more beneficial impact on people and the world.

They naturally wonder if they should be working for a non-profit.

If that’s currently you, has been you, or might possibly be you sometime soon — you should probably ask yourself the following three questions. The first two are more basic and are about the nature of your work and its mission. The third is about context and might help you determine if you should be working in a non-profit or not.

What is the mission of my current work?

A surprising number of the people I coach haven’t stopped to consider the mission of their current work. Or if they have, they’ve lost sight of it. It’s often because their connection to mission has been obscured by a toxic work environment, their frustration at not advancing quickly enough, or a general loss of interest in the subject matter of their work.

Considering the mission of work at first seems a little alien to many of the MBAs I work with. Most don’t consider themselves to be supporting a “mission” when I ask them about it. After all, they and their company are out to make a profit — to increase shareholder value.

True to a point.

After all, I remember being instructed in those very concepts when I was an MBA student at Wharton. Every decision, or at least most decisions, should be made with the end goal of increasing shareholder value. The teaching had an almost religious quality to it. But increasing shareholder value doesn’t really tell the whole story. In order to increase shareholder value, the company, and you, need to be providing a good or service that the world and the people in it want or need.

I would make the case that meeting that need or fulfilling that want or desire is supporting a mission. It’s just a mission that’s pursued with an end goal of turning a profit. In a purely mission-driven organization, the difference is that the profit motive is generally absent and mission is the final consideration. But in the end, both for-profit and non-profit work necessarily support a mission.

So — what is the mission of your current work?

Are you working to find a cure for an orphan disease? People and the world certainly need that.

Are you developing products that reduce acne flare-ups in teenagers? I’m willing to bet that those teenagers who use your products will tell you that they need them and that reducing their acne makes a big difference in their self-confidence and everyday experience. (I just happen to know that this is true from my own “mission-driven” work for Neutrogena when I was at Johnson & Johnson.)

Are you working to solve problems for clients that are beyond their organizational capabilities in terms of conducting analysis and proposing solutions? That too is needed and could constitute a mission for the management consultants out there.

Spend some time thinking about this. Describe the mission of your current work in a sentence. Think about what initially drew you to that mission.

Is the interest still there?

Is the mission I’m currently working to support sufficiently important and compelling to satisfy my desire for meaning?

Whatever the mission you’re supporting might be, and assuming that it still interests you, is it interesting and important enough to satisfy your longer-term need for meaning? The answer to this question could be fairly nuanced.

The nuance doesn’t arise so much when it comes to personal interest. In most cases, that interest is either present or not. The people I coach tend to know the answer to this question at a gut level. I’ll acknowledge though that a loss of interest in the subject matter of work can sneak up someone. They don’t realize they’ve lost interest in the main focus of their work until someone asks. Then it dawns on them that they’ve just taken their interest for granted.

The analysis does become more nuanced, however, when they stop to consider importance. The defining characteristics of important work will likely be unique to each individual. I never assume that I know what the answer will be when I’m working with someone for the first time.

To help you come up with your own appraisal of interest and importance, I’ve found that the following two questions can be helpful:

1. If I’m interested in doing work that benefits people, is it necessary that I personally see or interact with those people? Or is it enough that I know that they’re out there and benefit from my work?
2. Does the reach or scale of my work matter? Is serving or helping one or a few people at a time sufficient? Or do I need to reach dozens, hundreds, thousands or even millions of people to feel that my work has an impact?

Take time to write your thoughts down. How do you define importance? Does the mission of your current work meet that personalized definition? And are you still genuinely interested in the main focus of your work?

Does your current or potential work environment provide the best context in which to support your chosen mission?

Whether you’ve validated the current mission of your work or determined that you need a new one, you’ll ultimately need to find the right context in which you can pursue your chosen mission. That could potentially be in either the for-profit or non-profit worlds.

Your definition of the ideal context will likely be determined by multiple factors, including:

Commitment — Is the company or organization you currently work for or are considering working for sufficiently committed to its stated mission? In other words, does the organization say the right things? Is the mission front and center in external and internal communication? When I worked at Johnson & Johnson, the mission of the organization was embodied in the Credo. It was physically posted everywhere and it was often referenced when making consequential decisions.

Resources — Does the allocation of resources in terms of people, time and budget reflect the stated mission of the organization? Or you could ask: Does the organization walk the talk, or is mission just window dressing? And are the resources of the organization sufficient to achieve the impact and scale that would be personally satisfying to you?

People — Are your colleagues similarly motivated by the mission of the organization, or do they just pay lip service to it? This is a little harder to gauge, but you should be able to get a gut read on your current or potential colleagues’ authenticity and earnestness when it comes to mission. Is the mission of the organization a motivating factor in their day-to-day activities, does it elicit eye-rolls, or is it something in between?

Compensation — While compensation isn’t necessarily correlated to mission, it can definitely have an impact on your work satisfaction. Be honest with yourself. If compensation is a driving factor and you can support a compelling and important mission in the for-profit world, then perhaps that’s where you should be and stay. If compensation, for whatever reason, is not a driving factor, then you might also consider opportunities in the non-profit world. That’s not to say that high salaries can’t be found at non-profits, but it’s probably best not to count on it.

Conclusion

While answering the questions I’ve suggested you consider won’t necessarily allow you to determine the exact mission you should support or the context in which you should do your work, the answers should provide just a little clarity.

You should gain a better understanding of:

• The mission you’re currently working to or have been working to support.
• Whether or not that mission is sufficiently interesting and compelling to offer longer-term meaning and job satisfaction.
• The overall commitment to mission of your current organization or an organization that you’re considering joining, and its ability to compensate you at a level that you require.

With some clarity, you may be in a better position to decide if you need a new mission or a new workplace, or both, and if that workplace might or might not be in the non-profit sector.

And don’t forget, you can always support two missions — one in your day job and one as a volunteer. If you’re in and decide to remain in the for-profit world, you can always serve as a volunteer to a purely mission-driven organization in some capacity, including as a Board member or donor. You’ll be supporting a mission you believe in, and you’ll be enabling an organization that champions it to increase its reach and scale.