Real Life Experience vs. Certifications vs. Degrees
The Truth No One Wants to Admit in the Nonprofit Military-Community World
There’s a polite fiction floating around the nonprofit and military-community sectors:
“We hire based on qualifications.”
But when you strip away the HR language, the board requirements, and the old-school assumptions about how people learn, the truth is much simpler.
There is only one credential that actually matters in this field:
Real life experience.
Everything else — including degrees — is secondary at best, and decorative at worst.
Let’s talk about why.
Real-Life Experience: The One Thing That Actually Makes Someone Effective
In nonprofits, advocacy, community support, military family services, and survivor programs, the work is human. It is messy. It is unpredictable. It requires instinct, judgment, and the ability to navigate complex systems while keeping people calm, informed, and supported.
There is no classroom that can teach:
how to communicate with a grieving spouse or frustrated veteran
how to solve problems when resources are limited
how to work with government agencies that move at a glacial pace
how to advocate without burning bridges
how to mediate conflict, manage personalities, and build community trust
how to think three steps ahead because people’s lives or benefits depend on it
how to operate in crisis-response mode because that’s how military families live
These are skills earned through lived experience, not lectures.
People who have actually done the work — surviving spouses, caregivers, long-term volunteers, community organizers, advocates, military family leaders, and operations staff who have held everything together with duct tape and determination — understand the mission in a way no textbook can replicate.
If you’ve lived it, led it, and navigated it, you’re more prepared for this field than someone with three degrees and no real-world exposure.
Certifications: The Practical Middle Ground
Certifications may not carry the emotional weight of experience, but they do something degrees rarely accomplish:
they give specific, job-related skills.
CRM? There’s a certification.
Grant management? Certification.
Project management, donor systems, financial oversight, community leadership, public affairs, crisis communications? All certifiable.
Certifications are:
faster
cheaper
practical
focused on real tools
aligned with actual job duties
If real-world experience is the engine, certifications are the upgrades that make the engine run better.
And in many cases, someone with solid experience plus a few targeted certifications is far more qualified than someone with a bachelor’s or master’s degree who has never worked a case file, written an appeal letter, engaged Congress, navigated the VA, or managed a nonprofit program.
I am a firm believer in employers offering continuing education in the form of certifications. This is the best way to train and retain employees (outside of valid recognition and compensation).
Degrees: The Most Overrated Requirement in This Sector
Here’s the part no one likes to say out loud:
Degrees are the least useful credential in nonprofit military-community work.
They are not worthless as a whole — they matter deeply in fields like law, medicine, engineering, and research. But in the spaces where humans, crisis, service, and community intersect?
Degrees do not teach what the job requires.
Degrees do not teach military lingo, acronyms, or slang terms
Degrees do not prepare you to handle real community issues.
They do not teach how to de-escalate a family in crisis.
They do not teach VA policy, DIC regulations, survivor benefits appeals, resource navigation, or how to keep a nonprofit running with a budget that could fit in a lunchbox.
They do not teach military culture, trauma awareness, caregiver realities, or the lived experience of service.
In many nonprofits, degrees have become a lazy barrier — a way to thin the applicant pool without actually evaluating who can do the work.
A person with:
real experience
a working knowledge of community needs
crisis-management instincts
hands-on advocacy
leadership under pressure
will outperform a degree-holder every single time.
Yet too many employers stubbornly cling to degrees as if they magically create competence.
In this field, they don’t.
The Honest Hierarchy
If nonprofit military-community employers truly want qualified people, the ranking should look like this:
1. Real Life / Real World Experience
The gold standard. The core. The thing that cannot be taught or replicated.
This is what actually prepares someone to serve people in crisis, navigate systems, and lead with integrity.
2. Certifications
The practical support system.
Certifications add structure, technical skill, and formalize what people already know how to do.
3. Degrees
Nice if you have one.
Completely irrelevant in most nonprofit military-community roles.
Should never be used as a barrier to keep out the people who have already been doing the work.
The Bottom Line
If employers genuinely want impact, stability, and strong service:
Hire the people who’ve lived it.
Train them with certifications as needed.
Stop worshiping degrees that don’t match the work.
Real-world experience is not a bonus.
It is the qualification.
And the sooner our sector admits that, the better we’ll serve the communities who depend on us.
