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&lt;p&gt;Call it a silver lining of the recession: with so many people struggling to find jobs, nonprofits have had a surfeit of talent to pick from over the last couple of years. Case in point: John Hanawalt, a graphic designer profiled in a &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; video segment today.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Having graduated valedictorian of his college class, Hanawalt&amp;mdash;like many graduates over the past couple of years&amp;mdash;struggled to find a position with his first choice of employer: &quot;an agency setting with an advertising agency or PR firm.&quot; Instead, he ended up working for Boston-based nonprofit Fenway Health, where he is in charge of the organization&#39;s entire graphic design operation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the video, both Hanawalt and Chris Viveiros&amp;mdash;Fenway&#39;s Associate Director of Communications&amp;mdash;offer insights into the benefits of doing nonprofit work rather than following  a corporate track straight out of college:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;John [&amp;hellip;] is in charge of all of our graphic design projects,&quot; says Viveiros. &quot;You may not find that if you&#39;re in the corporate world. You may be stuck doing really basic and boring jobs for the first five years or so of your career.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hanawalt concurs, telling the &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; that one of the major benefits of his position is that &quot;I get to wear a lot of hats.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The one drawback: money. &quot;I think the biggest difference between a nonprofit and private sector work is the lifetime earning potential,&quot; says Hanawalt. But he also recognizes that there&#39;s no reason he can&#39;t do both: build a portfolio of experience that may have been out of reach in a corporate job, and then take the money later.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That possibility is raised in the video too, albeit by the &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; journalist&amp;mdash;and it offers an interesting potential downside of the recovery, if only for the nonprofit sector: &quot;the question remains as to whether these recent grads will stay in their new careers or be lured back to corporate positions as the economy recovers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there is something that will hold grads, it may be that the nonprofit industry offers something only rarely found in the corporate world: a sense of purpose. Or as Hanawalt puts it: &quot;When you work for a nonprofit, you go in every day knowing the mission of the organization and you know exactly how what you&#39;re doing contributes to that mission.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many in other professions can say that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The New York Times&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: Doing Good in a Bad Economy (Full Video)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related on Vault:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Career Paths: Nonprofit Consultant&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Career Decision: How to Choose Between Startups and a Big Corporation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--Phil Stott, Vault.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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