If he’d had the opportunity as an undergraduate, Tony Mallon would have pursued nonprofit management from the beginning.
Mallon, the director of the Institute for Nonprofit Organizations (INPO), studied biology, worked as a teacher both stateside and in Japan, and sold health club memberships early in his career. A conversation with friends opened his eyes to social work, and today he’s using his position to create opportunities he didn’t have for students.
“If I had known that nonprofit management was a career path when I was 19 or 20, I probably would have done it from the get-go,” said Mallon, who spent his early social work career as a counselor for individuals receiving treatment for substance use problems and psychiatric diagnoses.
Housed in the School of Social Work, the INPO’s curriculum includes topics of financial management, fundraising, grant proposal writing, recruitment and management of volunteers and program evaluation. The institute, founded by Thomas Holland and Jeffrey Brudney, puts students on a path to become executive directors, program managers, and to take on other organizational leadership positions. Mallon has expanded the program since his start in 2014.
“I felt my mandate was to continue the success of delivering the M.A. program,” Mallon said. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve enhanced it by increasing the array of curricular offerings.”
The INPO now offers undergraduate and graduate certificates available both in-person and online. The institute has also developed 14 Double Dawgs programs, with partnerships ranging from the Institutes for Women’s Studies and Latin and Caribbean Studies to psychology, social work, theater and finance. The program attracts students from schools and colleges across the university, forming a unique and valuable network for them to utilize after graduation.
As demand for the program has increased, so, too, has its staff. The number of instructors has grown from two to six during Mallon’s tenure, and each brings a specific and heightened skillset to the program.
“It’s a testament to the fact that the number of students taking our courses has increased a lot, that we’ve wanted to bring in expertise from the community,” Mallon said. “These are professionals who are part-time instructors, but that’s by intention, because they are bringing in so much hands-on, up-to-date, cutting-edge direct management and leadership experience.”
Tony Mallon teaches a graduate level class in the social work building. (Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski/UGA)
While the institute instructs students in the classroom, it also makes an impact in the community. With hundreds of nonprofits in the area, Mallon leads INPO’s efforts to serve their operations, offering a variety of programming to support these organizations and the populations they serve.
INPO’s Nonprofit Training Series is a set of community-based workshops for current nonprofit leaders, which relies on partnerships with the United Way, UGA Office of Service-Learning and Athens Area Community Foundation.
Similarly, the Interdisciplinary Alliance for Nonprofits — a joint effort with the School of Public and International Affairs, Office of Service-Learning and Fanning Institute — is focused on how area nonprofits can access the university’s resources, including its diverse intern pool, technologies like Handshake, and partnerships with professors who can perform applied research. Most recently, this group, led by Rebecca Nesbit, completed a salary and benefit survey of Georgia nonprofits and will present the results to the community in October.
The institute’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) initiative has also garnered the spotlight. Similar to the VITA program operated by the College of Family and Consumer Sciences throughout Georgia for many years, Mallon has partnered with a local nonprofit, East Athens Development Corporation, to provide free tax preparation services to the East Athens community. The program improves family economic well-being and stability while offering financial literacy interventions for individuals and experiential learning opportunities for students in the School of Social Work.
Additionally, the institute contributes to the Africa Civic Engagement Academy/Mandela Washington Fellows Program, where it helps to develop training curricula, workshops and mentorship for early to mid-career African nonprofit leaders.
These programs and others provide career development and pathways for students in the institute. Mallon holds close relationships with the INPO students and helps them chart a course for their futures. Program alumni have formed a network to help matriculating students, while INPO’s director continues to improve the program and its curriculum, so it can continue to provide opportunities to today’s students that weren’t available to him years ago.
“The benefit is that the field of nonprofit management is still very young as a profession,” Mallon said. “This degree is very applied, and very specific to the skills needed to run a nonprofit.”