Younger generation redefines public service

President Kennedy's call for young people to serve their country once energized an entire generation, and government institutions such as the Peace Corps and the Foreign Service were often the beneficiaries. If a president made a similar appeal today, young people might respond by asking not what they could do for their government but what they could do for a nonprofit organization.

The very meaning of public service has changed, and the transformation has had huge ramifications in Washington. Young professionals today often choose careers in the nonprofit world, as opposed to traditional jobs in government agencies. The rise of nonprofits, advocacy groups, think tanks, and lobby shops has made it much harder for federal agencies to attract young people to government service. Even when aspiring public servants enter government, they are often enticed to leave by job offers in the nonprofit or private sector.

Greg Berger, a 23-year-old administrative assistant with Public Citizen, a group founded by Ralph Nader, liked the idea of working for an independent organization. "I was very attracted by the fact that they don't take corporate or government money. The fact that they have a mandate to really do what their members think is the right thing to do. And they're not tied down by any other major political goals. And I think that gives them an incredible amount of freedom," he says.

Berger, who once interned for Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., says he loved the excitement of government work. But he thinks that government workers become beholden to too many constituencies and outside interests. "When you work outside of the government, trying to influence the government, it's easier to maintain your position and easier to maintain your point of view."

Elisa Ortiz, now with the National Council of Nonprofit Associations, worked at the Feminist Majority Foundation and NARAL Pro-Choice America. "For me, and for a lot of people I know, I think there didn't seem to be as many options in government," she says, explaining why many young people are turning to nonprofits. "I think it's probably the larger variety of options available in nonprofits, the flexibility available, and just the perception of the ability to do more with people instead of with paperwork."

Ortiz, 27, thinks that the rise of nonprofits was partly a ripple effect from the social movements in the 1960s. "Once the big public demonstrations are over, the problems haven't been solved.... So I think people turned [to] nonprofit organizations because they wanted to continue to work for the public good."

At 44, Joe Scantlebury is older than Berger and Ortiz, but he shares their enthusiasm for nonprofits. Scantlebury is a senior policy officer on education issues in the Washington office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He had a positive experience at the solicitor's office at the Labor Department and has nothing but high praise for government. "I think we're additive. At the Gates Foundation, feedback and learning is critical to how we do our work. We push our thinking, we try to learn, we fine-tune our strategies. We travel everywhere we can. We have a lot of on-the-ground experiences," Scantlebury says, adding, "We're not bound by politics, because we're nonpartisan."

The nonprofit sector is growing rapidly. (According to a report by the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, the number of jobs in the nonprofit sector in the Washington area increased by 33 percent between 1995 and 2003, from 163,943 to 218,344.) The federal government, meanwhile, faces a serious worker shortage. According to Tim McManus, vice president for education and outreach at the Partnership for Public Service, within the next few years nearly one-third of the entire federal workforce will be eligible to retire. Partnership for Public Service did an analysis showing that 193,000 "mission-critical" jobs -- positions that federal agencies deem vital to carrying out their work -- are expected to be vacated soon.

Many people simply don't get enough information about jobs in the public sector, McManus says. "It's really not that [young people] are turning away from government. They simply don't know enough about government and the opportunity that government presents to go in that direction in the first place." Although federal government recruiting on college campuses has improved somewhat, experts say that the private sector remains far more aggressive. "It's not simply students that don't understand where jobs for people like them are, but faculty and career services individuals don't understand the depth and breadth of opportunities in the federal government," McManus says.

Carl Fillichio, vice president for innovation and public engagement at the Council for Excellence in Government, says, "The folks that are retiring are the ones who answered John F. Kennedy's call to go into government with that great 'Ask not' speech. And the research that we have is, there are a lot of young people that have never thought about going into government because simply nobody's asked them."

In addition, many people point out that hefty student loans make working in higher-salaried corporate jobs much more attractive for recent college graduates. Tara Yglesias, deputy executive secretary of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, also notes that the hiring process in government is slow and cumbersome, particularly for jobs that require national security clearances. "We have students who come to us very interested in government experience," she says, "but the length of time that it takes for them to find a position often is discouraging to them."

McManus, Fillichio, and others argue that the image of government workers lost in a sea of bureaucracy is dead wrong. Frequently, they insist, you can take on major responsibility in high-impact positions far faster than in the private sector. "A lawyer two years out of law school that goes to the Justice Department can litigate major cases, while their counterpart at a private law firm is fetching coffee," Fillichio says.

A number of people agree that the days of people going to work at the same federal agency for 30 years are long gone. Government is now only one component in a person's career, and young professionals usually see the benefits in gaining experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Brendan Kelly, 31, is a social-science research analyst for the Administration for Children and Families at the Health and Human Services Department. Kelly's case is instructive because he views government not simply as a place to hang his hat but as a forum to help people and engender change. He started out at the Labor Department, but he found working there frustrating. "I was bright-eyed and wanted to save the world, and it's really hard to save the world from a desk in Washington, D.C.," says Kelly, who left to earn a graduate degree in public administration from Syracuse University. He finds his work at the ACF, which administers Head Start, federal welfare, and other programs, extremely rewarding. But he wants to make sure he keeps growing and contributing to the agency. "When I stop feeling like government is the place where I can be an agent of change, either because I've changed or because the issues that I'm concerned about have changed, then I'm going to move on as well."

Elsewhere in Washington, the growth in the lobbying sector has its detractors. And most people wouldn't categorize lobbying on behalf of a client as a form of "public service," even though causes can run the gamut from helping the disabled and protecting the environment to defending an unpopular industry. But lobbying is clearly in a kind of competition with government work and is a frequent destination for former Capitol Hill staffers. If you believe that helping business is beneficial to society at large, then lobbying for a particular business interest becomes another form of serving the public.

Kirk Blalock, 37, is a free-market lobbyist who has also worked in government and political fundraising. He believes that he is not only doing well but doing good. A former aide to then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, he eventually joined George W. Bush's White House as a special assistant and deputy director of public liaison, where he was the president's point man for the business community. Now he's a lobbyist with Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock and is also the national chairman for Young Professionals for McCain, a group of people age 45 and under who agree to raise $50,000 each for Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Blalock was motivated to come to Washington to push for core tenets of the Republican Party: lower taxes, less spending, and fewer regulations. And, Blalock says, his clients in industry all share these fundamental values. "They want a freer market to operate, and the ability to keep people employed and provide their workers health care and retirement security. And give back to their communities. You know, all very good things, which we like being a part of."