Getting from Giving

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Creative Capitalism

"We can make market forces work better for the poor," Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates told a group of Harvard graduates, "if we can develop a more creative capitalism"—one in which it's possible to "make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities."

On the other side, the ranks of nonprofits are exploding. There are now about 1.5 million such organizations in the U.S., up from 1 million or so a decade before, the Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics reports. With growth has come opportunity—and not just for volunteers. An analysis this year by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies found that between 2002 and 2004, the paid nonprofit workforce grew by more than 5%, while overall employment declined slightly during the same period.

Nonprofits Attract Top Talent

In all, charities employed 9.4 million paid workers, more than those in the utility, wholesale trade, or construction industries. What's more, as the sector expands, it is attracting the best and the brightest. By all accounts, MBAs are increasingly eager to apply their acumen in finance, strategy and marketing not to get rich, but to change the world.

Tom Tierney, the chairman of Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit that provides consulting services to foundations and other nonprofits, noted at a conference recently that his firm saw 110 applications for every entry-level spot it had open this year. Tierney, who used to be the chief executive of the corporate consultancy Bain & Co., stressed that these weren't second-rate candidates. "That talent pool is every bit as good—and I might argue better—than any talent pool Bain & Co. has even seen," Tierney said. "And Bain pays a lot more."

Why would anybody seek out a slimmer paycheck? It's for the very same reason Drucker identified: a deep desire to engage in "the civic responsibility that is the mark of citizenship." Only now, the trend is transcending volunteering and moving to the place that Drucker had always wished it would thrive: the realm of 9 to 5.

Rick Wartzman is the director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University and an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation.