With Purpose Success, part 74

These kinds of transitions from the for-profit world to the nonprofit world are becoming common and have immense value. In Mark's case, the skills and knowledge he brought to his faith-based consulting wouldn't necessarily strike anyone on Madison Avenue as earth-shattering. But within this particular nonprofit sector they just didn't have his level of sophistication. What he brings to them is enormously valuable, and 

Mark's profound sense of contribution provides incalculable satisfaction.

Civic Programs. Nondenominational mentor programs also abound.

Again, they tend to have a strong focus on youth and fall under a national organization like the Foster Grandparent Program (www.seniorcorps. org), Boy Scouts of America (www.scouting.org), Girls Scouts of the 

USA (www.girlscouts.org), Girls Inc. (www.girlsinc.org), National Black Child Development Institute (www.nbcdi.org), Kids and the Power of 

Work (www.kapow.com) and YMCA of the USA (www.ymca.net). The central aim of these types of programs is to impart skills that will help kids throughout their life. 

There are also many locally operated nonprofit mentor programs run by a highly energized founder, which makes them fun to work for if you are a volunteer. The key is matching your passion with the right organization. 

Helping Inner-City Youth 

A longtime supporter and mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters, Gerald Chertavian wanted to step up his service commitment after striking it rich during the dot-com mania in the late 1990s. He never forgot the essays he wrote to get into Harvard Business School, where he later graduated with honors. He had espoused on the need to teach low-income young adults basic business skills. "So I decided it was time to make good on those essays," he says. 

Chertavian, forty-two, grew up in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts but enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street before starting a software development company that, when sold in 1999, put $27 million in his pocket. Long active in Big Brothers Big Sisters, he turned his thoughts to the four million young adults aged eighteen to twenty-four who, he says, are disconnected from society because they've never been given a chance. "That's totally unacceptable," says Chertavian. "This is a solvable problem." 

In 2000, he launched Year Up, a nonprofit that gives disadvantaged young adults one year of training in what Chertavian calls ABC: attitude, behavior, and communications. This interpersonal training is complemented with technical training, usually in computers. Students are paid a stipend of $180 a week and get docked if they're late for class. Some 85 percent find meaningful work directly out of his program; 60 percent of those who enroll have been referred by former students. 

Wilfredo Pena came to the States from El Salvador as a teen refugee, went through the Year Up drill, and found work in the back office at Fidelity 

Investments. "He's now finishing college and has bought a house," says Chertavian. "He's living the American dream." 

Year Up now has seventy employees and an annual budget of $13 mil lion. It operates in four cities and graduates five hundred a year. Chertavian, who just began taking a salary at the insistence of his board, is now raising $18 million to expand into four more cities. "This is incredibly satisfying to me," he says. "I have a real desire to mentor and see other people reach their potential. I'm so blessed. I get to find meaning in what 

I do every single day."