So you’re the sort of selfless, noble human being who’s looking at charity sector jobs, hoping that you can find a job where you can make the world a better place while also, incidentally, paying your rent. There are good reasons to go into the charity sector, and not the just the warm fuzzy feeling you get from doing good. It’s a great place to pick up skills, and is a good place for graduates to start looking for work. The charity sector has the highest proportion of works with higher education qualifications, and there’s plenty of room here to develop your career.

So, charity is a great place to use your hard earned qualification, make the world a better place, develop your career and looking really good when people ask you your job at parties. You clearly want to work here, so, how do you find a job where you get to do good, and be paid for it? Well, fortunately we’re here to help.

Work Out What You Actually Want To Do

“Charityer” isn’t a real job. Or even a real word. You don’t decide to do charity, you look at the sort of job you want to be doing, and see if there’s a way you can do that work for a charity. There are a number of sectors worth looking at.

Marketing and PR is a huge part of charity work, with charities living or dying by their public perception. Remember, we’re talking about an organisation that makes money simply by asking for it. The marketing and public relations workers in these organisations are crucial, not just for getting people to donate, but also to make sure that the public is aware of the organisation and knows about the good work they’re achieving.

Closely tied to the marketing and PR work done by charities, is the fundraising department. Fundraisers can be everywhere from high streets across the country with a clipboard or a bucket, to people organising large scale fundraising events. This line of work involves a ton of hard labour, and can be disheartening as the majority of people, when asked to give away money, will say no.

However, if you stick at it, you can help make a real difference and there’s plenty of room to develop you career.

If you want some work that’s a little more hands on, it might be that you want to look at mentoring or caring work. This will put you right on the front line, but the flipside of this is that it also lets you see exactly what the charity you’re working for is doing. The best way into this kind of work is to start off as a volunteer, if you can, as you’ll find this is the quickest and easiest way to get yourself trained up with the relevent skills. If you want to make a career out of this however, you’re going to have to get an SVQ orr equivalent.

Start Looking

Once you’ve decided exactly what it is you want to be doing for these charitable organisations, how do you go about finding the job?

First, the Internet is full of websites that can tell you which positions are open in the charity sector and tell you how to apply for them. It’s also worth contacting any charities you particularly care about to see if there’s anything you can do to help them out. Charity being, you know, charity, you may have to start off working on a volunteer basis. There’s no getting around this- charities are organisations that run entirely on good-will, so if there’s a paying position it’s most likely to go to someone who has already shown a commitment to the cause.

Nobody ever said this would be an easy sector to get into, the work is hard, and there are a lot of people looking for jobs that allow them to help people. You’re going to have to really push to succeed. But if you make it, you’ll find the rewards are entirely worth it.

About the author: Chris Farnell is a freelancer writer interested specialising in recruitment, including charity sector jobs throughout the UK.