Non Graduates Welcome campaign launches manifesto
Melanie May | 25 September 2019 | News
#NonGraduatesWelcome, the campaign calling on charities to look beyond formal qualifications when recruiting, has launched its manifesto and website.
In a bid to increase diversity and inclusivity in the sector and fill more roles, #NonGraduatesWelcome is campaigning to remove the requirement for a degree-level qualification from fundraising job descriptions, asking charities to be clearer with applicants about the skills, abilities, knowledge and experience needed to be successful in roles instead.
If you can give us 1 good reason why having an unspecified degree qualification (or equivalent) is essential for your fundraising job we will happily cease. But the truth is this requirement is outdated, unnecessary & excluding talented people from the fundraising profession
— #NonGraduatesWelcome (@NonGradsWelcome) May 25, 2019
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While it believes fundraising is a skilled job, #NonGraduatesWelcome also believes fundraising recruitment is broken and that a degree is not the only way fundraisers can acquire the necessary skills. It wants the sector to encourage everyone with the right skills into the profession and stop excluding people who don’t have a university degree from applying for fundraising jobs.
To achieve this, it is working with recruitment agencies and fundraising managers to get them to review their job descriptions, and challenging organisations calling for degree-level qualifications to abandon this requirement and replace it with more meaningful criteria.
In its Manifesto, it is asking fundraisers to do three things:
- Review your own organisation’s job descriptions and commit to removing this requirement.
- Speak to peers and colleagues (especially those requiring degree-level qualifications) to call on them to review their job descriptions, helping them to make their fundraising teams more diverse and inclusive.
- Include the #NonGraduatesWelcome hashtag when advertising roles.
We're pleased to support the #NonGraduatesWelcome's new manifesto.
There are many ways people can acquire and refine the knowledge, skills and behaviours to be incredible fundraisers. Let’s open up the profession and welcome a more diverse group of talent #ChangeCollective https://t.co/gUjrOij8Re
— Chartered Institute of Fundraising (@CIOFtweets) September 23, 2019
LISTEN: to Dana Kohava Segal on #NonGraduatesWelcome
Simon Scriver’s latest ChangeFundraising podcast includes an interview with Dana Kohava Segal on this campaign.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.