Does ‘Meaning’ Substitute for Money?
As I write this article, my Safari is littered with open tabs for half-finished applications to nonprofit jobs in DC. How did I get here, to month ten of my job search?

Growing up in the Maryland suburbs, the soccer moms supplying snacks every Saturday were also career women: national security advisors, nonprofit tech developers, government consultants. In the summer my mother brought her work to the beach, right alongside the sand pail and towels.

While I was an undergrad at Georgetown, friends either found summer internships in banking and private equity or received meager stipends and course credit to work on education and prison reform. Every visit to the career counseling center either recommended I apply to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps or review cases for consulting interviews.

Now, coming out of college with an ostensibly prestigious undergraduate degree, well-employed classmates, and high expectations, I am searching for jobs. According to concerned grandparents, nagging uncles, or even the practical voice in my head, I feel like I have two options available to me: find a job in the for-profit sector, or look for purpose-driven work at a nonprofit. At the latter, I’d be guaranteed to make less, but it would be in exchange for something. Meaning? Purpose? I’m not sure.

As Jill Lepore details in “What’s Wrong with the Way We Work,” the expectation that work gives us ‘meaning’ is a relatively new concept. “‘Meaningful work’ is an expression that had barely appeared in the English language before the early nineteen-seventies,” she says. Slowly, business executives and tech gurus started leaning into purpose as a tenet of job satisfaction, supporting a broad decoupling of wages from labor. “Meaning” was dropped in as a substitute, and “doing what you love” emerged as a new imperative to seek out in work.

Confused and very unemployed, I reached out to Rosita Choy, a DC-based workshop facilitator and coach with over 25 years of experience in the nonprofit sector who works with folks experiencing nonprofit burnout. She sees clients consistently overwhelmed by their work. Scores of young professionals walk through her door ready to throw in the towel. “It’s hard at my job,” Choy hears on repeat, “I don’t feel 100% happy. My boss is terrible! I work too much.”

Choy is adamant these symptoms signal a deeper affliction.

She sees the root of burnout in nonprofit’s huge aspirations: “Nonprofit [workers] are primed for burnout and exploitation because they want to solve these big problems in the world that really have no finish line: end poverty, end racism, make the world a more inclusive place.” With smaller budgets and bigger scope, nonprofits rely on people willing to accept the mission in exchange for less pay and longer hours.

Is that a fair, or sustainable, bargain?
['Alyssa Alfonso']
['Labor', 'Job Hunting', 'Work Life Balance', 'Washington DC', 'Nonprofit']