Working in Non-Profits: UCLA Interviews BREATHE Director

Julia Robinson Shimizu shared her experience in the non-profit sector with UCLA.

How did you get into this field? I started out in Public Relations (PR) and one thing led to another and now I am in marketing. A lot of people end up in their jobs accidentally. Marketing is similar to PR; however, PR is begging for outcome and events whereas marketing is paying for outcome.

What kinds of people do you think would enjoy this type of work? Marketing for a non-profit organization requires a variety of skills. You have to be relentless, resilient, optimistic, strong in computer programs such as word processing and spreadsheets, flexible, and able to jump in where needed.

How do you spend a typical day or week at work? I spend a lot of time at my desk. Communicating by e-mail takes up a lot of the day. It is a very important tool and it is very important to return e-mails and calls promptly. I multi-task a lot; for example, I often work on the website at the same time as I am managing e-mails.

What are your major responsibilities? Besides planning events to raise money and awareness, I do community outreach. For example, I just gave a presentation to high school students interested in community service.

What do you find most satisfying about your job? I have a lot of work-related satisfaction. I realized that that only kind of job that I should have is a job that is meaningful to me. I have a list of things that matter to me and environment is one of them. The organization’s mission is aligned with my personal mission.

What are the challenging aspects of working in this field? It is challenging because we are competing with other non-profits and it is hard to come up with original ideas to attract people. For example, celebrities receive a huge amount of requests to help charities and non-profits, but they have to choose because they can’t help everyone. We are hoping that our current fund-raiser will be new enough to attract people. We are having a sky-diving fundraiser on April 26 and for those who are not ready or not old enough to sky-dive, we are having an event at I Fly Hollywood on February 27, where people can participate in a sky-diving simulation. A couple other challenges of this kind of work are that there are high expectations of you and there is a lot of hard work. However, it only feels like hard work if it’s not for you.

How would you advise students to transition into this field? I would definitely say that the best route to getting into the non-profit field is to volunteer for a cause you are interested in. First, you can volunteer for an event. Then, once you feel more comfortable with the organization, you can go to their office and ask them if you can volunteer. They will probably keep giving you more and more to do that longer you stay with them. For example, I first participated in an AIDS walk. Then, I started volunteering for the organization and stamped envelopes. Later, I started making phone calls. There are a lot of different tasks you can do as a volunteer. For example, we would love to have volunteers help us write for our website, enter statistical data about the success of our programs, market our events, and do internet research. For example, if we were considering having a race with hybrid cars, we might ask a volunteer to research whether people have done it before and summarize articles about it.

This informational interview was conducted by Alison Schaefer, a Career Center Peer Advisor.