Non-profit management postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

For the past two years I have written minutes, chased signatures and booked rooms for a tenant engagement team, and in that time I have become steadily more interested in the decisions being made above my desk. I can see which residents' groups get funded, how outcomes are reported to the board, and how often good work stops because a one-year grant ends. I want to study non-profit management because I would like to be the person shaping those decisions rather than only recording them, and because I have realised that the problems I find interesting are organisational ones: governance, money and who gets a say.

My degree was in Geography, which turned out to be a useful route into this field. My dissertation looked at how four small community organisations in a valley town in south Wales applied for funding from the same local authority scheme. I interviewed volunteers and one part-time paid coordinator, and read through the published application guidance and monitoring returns. What struck me was how much depended on capacity that had nothing to do with the quality of the work: one group had a retired accountant among its trustees and could produce clean figures quickly, while another relied on a volunteer who was learning bookkeeping as she went. I also noticed how the language of the application form pushed groups towards describing their neighbours as deprived. Writing that up taught me to be careful with evidence and made me want a more direct grounding in management, finance and governance than a geography degree could give.

Since then I have been reading around the subject in a fairly unsystematic way and would welcome the discipline of structured study. I found Dan Pallotta's argument about the non-profit sector being held to a distorted standard on overheads genuinely provocative, though I think it underplays how much public trust rests on that scrutiny. I have also been following the Charity Commission's guidance for trustees, partly out of self-interest, as I am treasurer of a community allotment association. That role has been my most practical education. I prepare the annual accounts for around forty plot-holders, handle water charges and the lease payment to the council, and last year I had to explain to members why we could not spend our small reserve on a new shed. Persuading volunteers that dull financial prudence matters is a skill I expect to need again.

Alongside work and the allotment, I share the care of my grandmother with my mother and aunt. We cover different days between us, which means my week is planned in advance and I have learned to get things done in the time available rather than the time I would like. It has also given me a close view of how voluntary sector services actually reach people: a befriending service that changed coordinators three times in a year, a day centre that runs well because two long-standing volunteers hold it together. Those experiences have made me sceptical of strategies that assume a stable, well-resourced organisation on the ground.

From postgraduate study I am looking for the things I have been picking up piecemeal: financial management and interpreting accounts properly, the legal framework for charities and social enterprises, how impact is measured without reducing people to indicators, and how to lead and retain volunteers. I am particularly interested in the tension between funders' demands for evidence and the realities of small organisations, and I hope to take a dissertation in that direction, perhaps looking at monitoring requirements from the grantee's point of view.

After the course I would like to work in funding or development for a housing or older people's charity, ideally in Wales, and to seek a trustee role once I have something worthwhile to contribute. I am applying now because my current job has shown me both what I enjoy and what I do not yet know how to do.