It's officially SUMMER! ☀️
Well...in the Northern Hemisphere. Sorry, Aussies.
It's been getting hot here in Western Canada, like...AC full blast, sleeping with no blankets, ice melting immediately in your drink. It's only June. I can't imagine what it'll be like at the end of July and into August.
I also can't imagine what our electric bill will look like, running our AC 24/7...💸
⚖️ It's A Poll!
This heat has made me thankful to work from home.
I don't have to sit in my car or ride on a hot train for an hour each day. I get to eat ice cream and sit on my balcony, and take little walks on my lunch break!
But, maybe you prefer the office life. Maybe your building has bone-chilling AC (that you don't have to pay for) and free snacks!! There's pros and cons to both setups.
So, lmk...
| If you were trying to break into marketing or creative work right now, what would worry you most? |
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Are remote jobs actually harder to get for entry-level roles? Find out here.
☀️ Meet Brianna: Humans of GradSimple
Brianna spent seven years at the same organization.
She joined the YMCA right after graduation, and during that time, she survived layoffs, leadership changes, COVID, received multiple promotions, and became the person everyone relied on when something needed fixing.
But eventually, she came to an uncomfortable realization that many of us are too familiar with: she'd spent so long adapting to everyone else's needs that she wasn't sure what she wanted anymore.
We tell ourselves we'll leave after the next promotion, the next project, the next busy season.
Then suddenly...years have passed.
Brianna talks about the truth of nonprofit work, career transitions, and the emotions that come with leaving something that's become such a big part of your identity.
How do you know when it's time to move on?
🗞️ The Cost of a Mission: Pivot Report
Nonprofit work has a branding problem.
Tell someone at a wedding you “do nonprofit work” and they immediately picture you saving orphaned puppies while crying tears of pure altruism. Reality: you’re probably the person who spent six hours formatting a donor spreadsheet so the gala doesn’t implode.
Hey, still respectable.
But a lot of grads get pulled into nonprofit work because it feels good, without clocking what the job demands long-term.
- “Many hats” is not a perk. In practice, it means you’re the events coordinator, the donor database admin, the volunteer trainer, and the person who knows where the extra folding chairs live. Mission-driven work attracts mission-driven people, and orgs lean on that. Heavy.
- Entry-level nonprofit roles routinely hand candidates budgets, vendor relationships, and donor pipelines that would carry a much bigger paycheck on the for-profit side. The skills transfer. The compensation, historically, has not.
- Almost nobody starts as a frontline fundraiser. The roles that usually open up are data entry, donor records, event logistics...the backend of financial development. Frontline fundraising comes later, if it comes at all.
None of this means skip it. Plenty of people build full careers in nonprofits and genuinely love the work. But going in clear-eyed about the trade-offs is the difference between a few good years and a few years that take more than they give back.
It rewards people who can hold two things at once: real commitment to a mission, and real boundaries around what they’ll let it cost them. That’s a harder skill than it sounds.
Figuring out where your own line is, before an organization finds it for you, is a lot easier with the right context. That's the kind of thing GradSimple Insiders is built for. Join here.
Are you figuring out your career the hard way?
Most people who aren't will tell you the same thing. At some point, a hiring manager, a VP, or someone who'd spent years inside the industry they were eyeing sat them down over coffee and told them exactly what the job market looked like, which paths were worth pursuing, and what it took to break in.
Most people never get that coffee chat. That's what Insiders is for.
Find out how to find a career on easy mode →
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Seeya next time!
⎻ Grace
P.S. Hit reply and tell me your favourite season ☀️🍂❄️