Graduates find job choices in nonprofits

One recent college graduate joined AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps, and is working in the Ocala National Forest.

Another signed up for Teach for America and landed in a classroom in Texas.

A third hit the road to build and refurbish low-income housing - while riding his bike 3,500 miles across the country.

And a fourth parlayed an internship at a local nonprofit into a full-time graphic artist position for a charity called Change This World.

Whether it's the most dismal job market in decades or an outgrowth of what has been dubbed the "compassion boom," some graduates are turning to nonprofit and charity work this summer to find both purpose and a paycheck.

"We've really seen an increase in the millennial generation in the community service sector," said Ashley Etienne, press secretary at the Corporation for National and Community Service, the nation's largest grant-maker supporting service work and volunteerism.

"They've been through [Sept. 11, 2001,] and Katrina and an economic recession, and all of this has forced young people to look around them and reassess their place in the world."

The organization, created by Congress, runs both AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America.

Applications for AmeriCorps - whose members do a range of activities including mentoring kids, restoring parks and helping crime victims - have tripled in the past year.

In 2009, Teach for America applications rose more than 40 percent over 2008. And a recent survey of 2,500 employers nationwide found the nonprofit sector was one of only a handful planning new hires in the coming year.

"I was looking at a job for the [for-profit] side at first," said Joy Powell, 22, a studio arts graduate from Rollins College. "But when the earthquake in Haiti happened, my heart really wanted to go with the nonprofit world. And, really, I've always known that I wanted to work for a cause."

Powell is a pastor's daughter whose family has run a nonprofit for years. Inter-United Foundation forges cultural exchanges through soccer and music, bringing students to the United States and sending U.S. volunteers abroad. Powell made her first mission trip to a Chinese orphanage when she was 18.

As a college intern for an Orlando, Fla.-based nonprofit called Change This World, she quickly learned she wasn't the type to sit at a desk from 9 to 5. Her best days were spent doing the organization's hands-on service work in the community.

For spring break, she led a group of 15 workers to Panama City, where they recruited fellow college students having fun on the beach to help with a "million-meal challenge" -- packing food that would be shipped to Haitian earthquake victims. "It was a great experience," she says.

Nonprofit work, though, is notoriously low-salaried. Not long after Powell's May graduation, she went to work full-time for Change This World. Between her distaste for the regimentation of a 40-hour work week and the need to make more money, she quickly decided to pare her hours and take on freelance work that will cover her bills.

In surveys, young workers in the nonprofit sector cite the range of experience as one of the draws. They're often given more responsibility and put in leadership positions they wouldn't reach for years in a corporate setting. Travel and adventure are also pluses.

That's what initially attracted 22-year-old Josh Stutte, a Stetson University grad who majored in humanities. He had to raise $4,000 to join Bike & Build, a national nonprofit that organizes cross-country bike trips whose participants both fund and build affordable housing projects.

Stutte, a former cross-country runner, left North Carolina in May with 30 other cyclists, riding some days, working others, and stopping along the way to speak to community groups about affordable housing.

"I've known I wanted to do this since I was a freshman in college," he says by phone from Dodge City, Kan. "I wasn't just doing it for resume-building. Immediately after this, I'm looking to apply with Habitat for Humanity."

While a lot of students do service work to impress scholarship committees or future employers, Stutte has a different motive.

"At this stage in my life," he says, "I'm still young and naive enough to think I can make a difference."