College students are no strangers to how useful Skype is. Loads of people use it to keep in touch with family members back home and friends at other universities.
Today in my Writing for Nonprofits class, we used Skype to learn more about the nonprofit sector and how to run a successful nonprofit. With Skype magic, we were able to have Collin Palkovitz of PureCharity.com join us right in our computer lab classroom.
Pure Charity is a crowdfunding site designed specifically help nonprofit organizations and individuals who need funding for charitable causes. Nonprofit organizations can register with Pure Charity to get tools they need to raise funds more effectively online. Pure Charity itself is a nonprofit, so the money it generates for itself goes straight back to their operational costs.
Collin talked a lot about Pure Charity’s business model and how nonprofits increasingly need to adopt business practices traditionally associated with for-profit businesses.
Collin Palkovitz
He also talked about how he got into his line of work and what it’s like to work for a nonprofit start-up. Pure Charity is still relatively new (having been founded in 2010), but Collin discussed how when Pure Charity was in the early stages of coming together, their small team of employees would often work more than 100 hours a week because they were so passionate about what they were doing. (As you’re probably aware, a standard work week is only 40 hours — these guys were working more than twice that!) Collin emphasized that working this much is not sustainable; the greatest piece of advice I took away from our conversation with him is that when starting a great project or working toward whatever you’re working on, you need to pace yourself–otherwise, sustainability won’t happen.
It was absolutely refreshing to hear someone say that pacing yourself is key. Even though I don’t come close to working 100 hours a week at McDaniel, with all of my classes, jobs, clubs, and my internship, the amount of things I have to accomplish is never ending. If I work too hard all at once, I burn out, and am not able to accomplish much at all.
So as I work through these final ten-and-a-half weeks of my college career, Collin’s advice will stick with me. In order for me to wrap things up as successfully as possible (and have fun along the way), I will need to pace myself.
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