Oxymoronic as this might seem at first blush, consider this: nonprofits are merely a different animal of business. They're run like for-profit businesses, oftentimes built on business models, and compete like businesses. The crucial difference, of course, lies with the bottom line. Where for-profits measure their bottom line by financial profits, nonprofits measure theirs by how successfully they fulfill their missions. And nonprofit or for-profit, you can't have a productive fiscal year without skilled—and highly educated—managers.

"It's not enough to do good," says Liz Livingston Howard, associate director of the Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "You have to do good well."

Supplying the Demand
This need is real. There are more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and spending in the tax-exempt sector comprises approximately one-tenth of the economy. Furthermore, international nonprofits—non-governmental organizations, or NGOs—are playing an increasingly important role in world economics, affecting policy and trade decisions from the U.N. to the World Bank.

"The number of non-profit organizations has escalated," says Howard, "and competition [for funding] is growing faster than [financial] support." This, coupled with significant challenges in the global economy, means big demand for business-savvy managers.

Sensing the opportunity, many business schools have begun incorporating courses on the nonprofit sector into their programs. Researchers at Seton Hall University who've been studying the growth in nonprofit management education for over ten years have found 114 colleges and universities offering graduate degrees with a concentration in nonprofit management.

Why an MBA?
"Business students have two objectives for taking nonprofit-focused classes," says Howard: "[First,] either to prepare for paid careers in nonprofits, or second, because they want to have an active volunteer life." Particularly in light of recent scandals at large nonprofits, executive-level volunteers such as trustees and members of boards of directors need to understand exactly what they are overseeing—and getting an MBA is a perfect way of doing so.

MBA programs at Yale, Northwestern, and elsewhere offer courses on topics specific to nonprofits, such as board governance, volunteer management, social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, the ethics of fundraising, and global development. Government relations can also be invaluable to future leaders of nonprofits that rely on public funding, which is why UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business offers a summer program in Washington, DC, and Stanford's Graduate School of Business offers courses in public policy.

And it's not only the nonprofit sector that benefits from business schools-the converse holds true more and more in recent years. "There's been a generational shift," says Howard. "People coming to business schools today are more socially conscious than before." Even students who have no intention of working in the nonprofit sector take nonprofit-focused courses because they want to be effective, responsible volunteers. And as nonprofit directors will tell you, it's the knowledgeable, passionate, engaged board members that can be a nonprofit's strongest asset.

Investing Your Idealism in the Real World
Obviously, before you can put your MBA to good use, you have to actually earn one. And that takes money—loads of money. While MBA graduates working in the for-profit sector are able to pay off their investment relatively soon after graduation, nonprofit salaries are, naturally, dramatically less.

"Many students work in business for several years, engage as volunteers, then once they've paid off their loans, switch to nonprofits," says Howard. And if you're interested in corporate social responsibility? "It's rare for companies to hire MBAs directly to their CSR departments," she says, "because social responsibility is much more than just doing a clothes drive or sponsorships. It's the whole supply chain. You have to start somewhere in the company to learn how it works."

If you're still deciding on an MBA program—and if you are, return on investment should definitely be one of your main criteria—keep in mind that several schools offer loan forgiveness programs for students going into nonprofit or government jobs. Kellogg, for instance, pays up to $100,000 of students' Kellogg-related loans ($10,000 per year for ten years) as long as the student's adjusted annual income is $60,000 a year or less. The income threshold on loan forgiveness varies—Yale requires contributions once you earn over $43,000—but has risen over the years in synch with increases in tuition and overall cost of living.

The search process for nonprofit and government jobs is less uniform than the fairly standardized corporate recruitment, which starts in the fall. Nonprofits post jobs as they open up (try idealist.org or other career websites for listings) and usually don't have the capacity to actively recruit beyond posting a job description online or with a school's career center. All the guidelines of the for-profit job search apply—you'll have to be patient, professional, assertive, and network like crazy.

While for MBAs the road to nonprofits isn't as smooth or wide as the road into business, it is becoming more heavily traveled. For people who can't sleep well at night unless they know they're making a real difference in the world, putting an MBA to work in the nonprofit sector just makes sense. "Today's business students put 'quality of life' at the top of the list," says Howard. "They want more from a career than simply a job." Sound like anybody you know?