Charity and non-profit
Charities raise money from grants, trusts, bequests and public donations, and redistribute it towards beneficial social activities. The areas in which charities operate are immensely diverse and varied. These include: aid, development, relief, healthcare, medical research, social research, policy lobbying, culture and arts funding, and working to assist the homeless, refugees and political prisoners, and many more.

Charitable organisations are defined by four key criteria:

1) They are independent of government and business
2) They are non- profit-distributing
3) They provide a wider public benefit that goes beyond any membership
4) They are non-sacramental religious bodies or places of worship*

Charities range in size from global household names, such as the Red Cross and Oxfam, to smaller operations focusing on local concerns, such as a local welfare office or community group. Some charities cover the whole spectrum of the process of raising money and pursuing funded projects, while others are concerned only with fundraising, and others only with carrying out projects.

There are around 153,000 charitable organisations in the UK, which employ around 569,000 people. There are a further 16.2 million unpaid volunteers (942,000 full time equivalent); and an estimated 750,000 trustees who take responsibility (unpaid) for the governance of individual charities.Charities are incorporated as trusts and must work towards the charitable purposes set out in their charter. The trustees ensure that the charity is operating correctly; and they have the responsibility of assuring that the funds the charity receives are disbursed appropriately and transparently.

Charities and graduate jobs
The charity sector is an increasingly popular destination for graduates, because of the variety and challenges it offers as a career path; and perhaps as a means to make a difference while working. At the time of writing (April 2005) around 37,800 Milkround subscribers (of a total registered number of 415,000) were interested in working in the charity or not-for-profit sectors. Because charities operate in large part as businesses, the sector offers the opportunity to operate in a number of business roles, from management and finance to human resources, as well as in some occupations that are specific to the charity field, such as fund-raising and fieldwork.

Business roles such as finance and management come with their specific challenges in the charity sector – for example as a manager, you might be responsible for supervising a workforce of volunteers; and in finance you might be involved in processing and redistributing donations.The charity sector is surprisingly competitive – as much so perhaps as the corporate sector – both in terms of gaining employment, and in terms of the competition between charities, in the same area, for their share of the funding available to them from grants and public donations. In this profile, we’ll set out the main job roles, the attributes which are looked for by employers, some methods of gaining entry to the sector, and the kinds of career paths which are possible.

*Source: The UK Voluntary Sector Almanac, NCVO.