Although the term sounds odd, what it really means and refers to is vacancies in not for profit organisations, like charities, NGO’s and trade unions. These organisations may have volunteers who offer their time and skills for free, but will always require full time paid professionals to do certain jobs for them.

Many of these organisations focus on the welfare of those they are trying to help. Now they realise that to be efficient and to use the donations they receive to their maximum effect they need to employ very professional key staff. These are staff who will be full dedicated to the cause and will do the work that volunteers may not have the time or the experience to do.

The types of positions available will depend on the goals and causes of the not for profit organisation itself and the types of charity work that it does. Not for profit jobs and positions that could be available include general administrative staff, delivery people and managers etc.

Example of a not for profit job
All of these organisations need to create publicity for charities as this will help to generate donations from the public and corporations. Subsequently all of them have a press team or department. The person in charge of this department would be a Public Relations Officer, whose job it is to generate stories and deal with press enquiries for journalists. The PR officers jobs is to get his message across to a wide section of the population, and they do this by issuing press releases about their projects and initiatives to the media outlets to get the widest coverage for their cause.

There are many specialist recruitment agencies who recruit professionals for these Non Profit Organisations, which are also known as NPO’s.

Now these types of vacancies are different form standard public sector jobs who it could be said are with not for profit employers like local authority employers or government departments. This is primarily because they usually provide services that councils etc do not offer, like soup kitchens or offering shelters to the homeless.
If you are genuinely care about the type of work that the organisation does i.e. helping poor people in the third world get out of poverty then you will get a lot of job satisfaction.

Listed below are some not for profit organisations based in the UK who regularly recruit paid staff:

Oxfam
Oxfam House,
John Smith Drive,
Cowley,
Oxford.
OX4 2JY
Telephone: 0300 200 1292

NSPCC
42 Curtain Road,
London,
EC2A 3NH.
Telephone 020 7825 2500

Christian Aid
Christian Aid
35 Lower Marsh
Waterloo
London
SE1 7RL
Telephone: 0207 620 4444

 

Related topics you may be interested in:

Not for Profit Organisation