From Direct Service to Philanthropy

Angie Chen, whose work at the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation focuses on environmental learning in California, unabashedly describes herself as a do-gooder. Part of it has to do with her family, Chinese immigrants who instilled in her a love of education and the outdoors. Angie has a deep-seated drive to bring the outdoors (and better health) to the diverse urban communities she experienced first-hand growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Respond to the needs that surround you

Although she’s a self-described data nerd, it may surprise people to learn that Angie’s never planned out her career in extensive detail. Colleagues describe her as someone who responds to opportunities in the moment. In fact, that’s how her work in nonprofits began – not through planning but through something that presented itself in the moment. In high school, Angie helped a close friend form a group to educate students about HIV and AIDS. Stepping out of her comfort zone to help a friend build confidence in his identity gave her a real appetite for cause-related work.

Unpaid work can be a powerful networking tool

Based on her experience, Angie highlights volunteering as a great way to use your skills and meet potential colleagues and collaborators. She also believes this can be a way for highly motivated and talented people to get familiar with nonprofits, where they are sorely needed.

“It can be as simple as volunteering for an organization that’s compelling to you. Many people hear that and think it’s about handing out soup. But it can be much broader. Nonprofits today have to keep up with things like technology and finance. So it’s actually becoming easy to apply your skills in a targeted way.”

Take time to learn the space

Before furthering her education and career goals by getting her master’s in policy at UC Berkeley, Angie worked for some truly grassroots nonprofits. In one role, she was responsible for fundraising for a network of homeless shelters. There, she got to understand the challenges that smaller nonprofits face in gaining financial resources and access to top talent.

It became clear to her as she headed into graduate school that despite challenges she encountered in the nonprofit world, she was determined to continue working in the space:

“By this time, I realized how hard it was for grassroots nonprofits to get the staff they wanted. I didn’t see a lot of Ivy Leaguers like myself in these organizations and started to think there must be a way to get them more involved. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to stay.”

Transferring Skills and Passions to New Areas

For Angie, joining the foundation community gave her a powerful way to continue supporting grassroots organizations and the communities she cared about. When she was an associate program officer at the David and Luile Packard Foundation and now as program officer at the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, she also discovered that private philanthropy has some great advantages. In many ways, she has more flexibility in how she can apply resources. She can take more investment risks. And she can help bring organizations together – from grassroots start-ups to high-level stakeholders – to collaborate on new solutions.