In NGOs, there are directors, accounting officers, communication managers, administrative staff, office attendants, human resources managers, drivers, cooks; sometimes, depending on the NGO's area of intervention: doctors, psychologists, occupational therapists...; or, for example, using more specific terms from the associative world: advocacy managers, carers, specialized educators, or field workers. (Field Workers).
And then, the famous term "Social Assistant" or "Social Worker" which fulfills a very specific function and role within this NGO - unlike its use in various contexts by almost everyone to refer to anyone working in an NGO - Here are two examples of professions specific to the nonprofit sector:
1. PROFESSION: Fundraiser or Fundraising Officer
Source of Information: Jean-Hugues Gardenne, Fundraising and Communications Manager at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.
Definition:
The fundraiser is the person who will ensure the identification of various revenue sources to explore for the NGO and will liaise with current or potential funders.
Fundraising involves:
- (i) nurturing relationships with local or international partners.
- (ii) to follow up on ongoing projects in order to draft and submit reports to the funders.
This reporting part is crucial in the role of the Fundraising Officer. It is about demonstrating to the funder the concrete impact that the funding has had, and also showing transparency in financial management. This helps to maintain a trusting relationship with the funder. The follow-up also allows for the results of one or more interventions to be seen, although sometimes the results are only visible in the long term.
- (iii) to present and write a project in such a way that it is appealing to the person/company that will potentially fund said project.
A bit like a Marketing Manager in a company, the fundraiser must know how to "sell" their project, presenting convincing arguments to demonstrate the concrete impact the project will have on the targeted beneficiaries, on society, or even on the country.
This also implies that fundraising includes a component of preliminary research on the targeted companies to determine if their values or missions align with the impact that the NGO hopes to achieve with the project.
Thus, the funding request will be better targeted and more relevant.
Criteria and qualities to be a good fundraiser:
Knowing how to speak, write, communicate, sell, and be persuasive, having good interpersonal skills, being bold - being able to find, meet, and connect with your interlocutor, seize opportunities, take a step back and allow time for reflection to understand projects, spend time in the field and understand the teams' needs in terms of money or equipment, and stay close to the daily life of the association. Willing to work beyond traditional hours.
Utility:
It is a key role in an NGO because without funding, the NGO, being non-profit, cannot implement its projects.
2. PROFESSION: Monitoring and Evaluation Officer
Source of Information: Monica Padaruth, Head of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Research at PILS (Prevention, Information, Lutte Contre le Sida)
Definition:
The Monitoring and Evaluation of Projects in an NGO allows to measure the impact that the project has had on several objectives:
- (i) ensure that the objectives set out in the project and by the NGO are achieved; a monitoring of the figures – among the main field data collected by the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer – is carried out in a very systematic, regular, and precise manner.
- (ii) ensure that the team leading the project is heading in the right direction.
- (iii) identify the emerging trends (for example, in the case of an epidemic like HIV, identify the trends for the country)
- (iv) consequently, anticipate the direction to take in the future
- (v) stay aligned with what we want to achieve as objectives
It is about being able to access the quantitative data collected in the field and understanding the context that emerges behind the reality of these figures. But the role of the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer does not stop at understanding the numbers. It is then a matter of being able to translate these figures into a language that speaks to the public, particularly in the form of reports, visuals, graphs, curves, and pie charts.
In this sense, Monitoring and Evaluation is also closely related to Information Research, as one must constantly stay informed about what is happening around them, on a regional, local, and international level. Research also helps to support these evaluations made from data analyses collected in the field and to validate conclusions, confirm trends, or clarify information.
Criteria and qualities to be a good Monitoring and Evaluation Officer:
- To love numbers in order to track them, as it will involve working with a lot of data;
- To have a keen eye for spotting errors that cause changes or reveal trends;
- Curiosity and analytical thinking to be able to dissect the numbers and what they convey;
- A sense of inquiry;
- To enjoy writing and reading, as there will be quite a few reports to draft;
- To have an interest in studying people and understanding behaviors (having knowledge of anthropology or social sciences is a plus).