Rookies With Heart

For Groves, a political science and international relations major who spent summers working for Pepsi Co. and an international investment bank, the opportunity to build an organization from the ground up just one year out of college makes work at NSP well worth the financial strains. At the same time, growing NSP from a dream to a reality has tested everyone's will and determination. Both Kreiter and Lodal left school last spring to work on NSP full time. Kreiter, an economics and African American studies major, returned to Yale this fall and will graduate in May. Lodal will return in January as a junior. The rewards, however, began trickling in when NSP learned it had won the support and admiration of Eli Segal, president and chief executive officer of Welfare to Work Partnerships -- a nonprofit that encourages businesses to hire former welfare recipients.

"I love how they came up with a big idea and then were able to execute it," says Segal, first executive officer of Americorps and chief-of-staff for Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. "It's an extraordinary story of young people doing good right now."

In these heady economic times, we more often hear and tell the stories of young people making millions, than of young people making a difference. Our society, always infatuated with age, has perhaps never been so taken by the convergence of youth and money. And as the stock market soars, so do the income expectations of college graduates. In a recent poll conducted by KPMG LLP, 42 percent of student respondents said they expect to earn upwards of $50,000 in their first job.

Cory Sorensen, national program coordinator for NSP, has the esteemed task of convincing future breadwinners at campuses across the nation to volunteer for a fraction of those projections. A recent University of Michigan graduate herself, 22-year-old Sorensen knows how focused students become on their professional goals. During campus recruiting trips, she appeals directly to their career ambitions.

"For the future social worker, this is an incredible hands-on experience working with people in the community," Sorensen explains. "For the people who could care less about welfare but want to go on to Salomon Smith Barney, we put them in charge of finances."

In the end, NSP's true aim is to convince volunteers that they needn't choose between business and public service. In order to stress the "both-and" rather than the "either-or," NSP has adopted the non-hierarchical model of new economy startups. By doing so, they hope to inspire volunteers' commitment and creativity by giving them the freedom to define the organization and pursue projects that interest them.

"We resemble other modern day companies in that we are very concerned with our bottom line," Kreiter says. "Our bottom line just happens to be improving our community and giving others a hand."