Non-Profit: Non-profit organizations are businesses designed to make change, and not in the monetary sense. Granted 501(c)3, or tax-exempt, status by the government, these organizations focus on a wide variety of causes, including everything from the Africa Fund, which promotes human rights, education, and people-to-people exchanges with African countries, to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Many non-profit interest groups are located in Washington, DC, where they lobby government on behalf of their causes; others have offices near state legislatures, where they lobby for the passage of legislation favorable to their causes.
Non-profits derive their operating revenue from foundations, government grants, membership dues, and fees for services they provide. They typically attract people who are passionate about solving social problems. The big upside of working in this sector is that you can make a positive impact on behalf of your organization's cause; the downside is that most jobs in the non-profit sector don't pay very well.
Non-profits and charitable organizations are becoming much more entrepreneurial, learning lessons from the private sector about how to operate more efficiently and do more with less by adopting marketing techniques to enhance their fund-raising efforts, or even starting their own small businesses to help generate income to fund social programs.
Government: Some 20 million people work for governmentóagencies and departments that on a federal, state, or local level handle issues as diverse as highway construction and the protection of wilderness areas, public health programs, subsidies to tobacco farmers, the space program, and fireworks displays on the Fourth of July. Governments collect taxes and use them to fund programs. That includes everything from a small-town government filling potholes on Main Street, to a big city providing police and fire fighting services, to a state issuing drivers licenses, to the federal government sending troops into combat or making Medicare payments to a long-term health care facility for the elderly.
Federal and state legislators make laws, and city and county supervisors pass ordinances. Executive agenciesófrom the White House to the state house to city hall - issue regulations. Governments employ armies of civil servants, bureaucrats, lawyers, and specialists of all kinds to implement their policies and staff their programs. These include people who analyze policy and draft legislation for U.S. senators, people who issue building permits at town hall, and everyone in between.
One way to think about the immense range of careers in government is to consider the broad categories the U.S. Office of Personnel Management uses to direct job seekers looking for careers that match their skills and abilities: Business Detail (think: accountants, security guards, etc.); Humanitarian (doctors, nurses, social workers, and chaplains); Leading-Influencing (policy analysts, law clerks, and Internal Revenue Service agents); Mechanical (air-conditioner repairmen, aerospace engineers, and boat designers); Plants and Animals (agricultural inspectors, zookeepers, cemetery caretakers, and park rangers); Protective (border patrol agents, Securities and Exchange Commission regulators, federal corrections officers, and gaming regulators); Scientific (cartographers, horticulturalists, and infectious disease researchers); and, of course, Other (everything from museum curators and interior designers to barbers and fork-lift operators).
It's important to note that while the federal government is giganticóit employed nearly 2.9 million people in 2000óthere are far more jobs available across the country at the state and local government level; in 2000, close to 18 million people were employed by state and local governments.
