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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ok LISTEN TO ME, I have worked with nonprofit analytics for over a decade and have interviewed at least a dozen entry-level data scientists out of college to do this kind of work.

Business analytics is a perfectly good major! Better than math probably - math is extremely abstract. Interesting, yes, but it's a long line from a math major to the actual analytics work that nonprofits are doing. Economics or political science would be other interesting ones to consider, and even a minor in computer science. She could also look into minors in public policy or international affairs to get a stronger qualitative background.

The most important thing is that she learns and gets exposed to the right tools: I assume she wants to work in big NGOs, not local nonprofits? If that's the case, ignore the posters saying that nonprofits can't afford to hire analytics talent. That's not true at all. Gates Foundation, Red Cross, CARE USA, United Way, UN, etc. all have data and analytics teams AND you can also look at their "monitoring and evaluation" teams to see additional applications of statistics and math.

The most important thing for her is getting the right skills: Excel and Tableau will be nice to have, but R is a must have (or Python is great, or less-great but still helpful are SPSS or Stata). SQL would also be a very useful skill but she can pick that up pretty easily from an online tutorial.

Here are some interesting volunteer and fellowship opportunities she should look into: 
https://www.datakind.org/
http://www.dssgfellowship.org/
http://www.dssgfellowship.org/projects/

If she's really, really ambitious, the best recommendation I can make is that she starts building an online portfolio. It can be small, with a link to her github and a summary of 2-3 projects that she's proud of. Preferably using public data in an area she's interested in. If I were starting college now, I would make it a goal to add one new project to my portfolio per year. By the time she graduates she'll have a nice little online portfolio, a few great and high-demand technical skills like R or Python, and hopefully some sort of relevant internship under her belt. She'll be golden!

I would also encourage her to at least consider starting in consulting or, if she can stand it, private sector work. The big NGOs love to hire talent out of the private sector. She doesn't have to do it but I would throw her resume in for a few really good private sector jobs (Google, Big 3 consulting, Amazon, etc.) because if she does that for 4-5 years she'll learn a ton and she'll be able to leapfrog a few levels in the nonprofit sector that way.

Good luck to your daughter, it's a fun field! [/quote]

The other thing that she should know is that there are pretty concentrated and limited number of employers for her. With a few exceptions (Gates in Seattle or MacArther in Chicago for example) she's almost definitely going to want to head to NYC or SF after graduation. DC's not a bad city for it but it's definitely not the best. Outside of those cities there are very, very few opportunities for this kind of work. [/quote]

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