"You're going to do what?" Mimi's manager practically shouted at her. The 42-year-old brand manager told him she had accepted a job as an associate director of an agency that serves inner-city children. It would pay about half her current salary. "Have you lost your mind?" Not at all, Mimi assured him. "In fact, I've really just found my mind, as well as a lot more that's been missing in my work for a long time."

An increasing number of people are leaving the cohort that Utne Reader has identified as a "stressed out nation of wage slaves" to find more personal meaning in their work and a lifestyle that allows for balance rather than constant adrenaline hits. Interestingly, every functional area in the business world is needed in nonprofits as well. So there's no need to stop doing what you know how to do in order to get hooked up with an organization that squares with your values and passions.

But how do you begin to think about such a change? Here's a simple brainstorming exercise. On a piece of paper or with a word-processing program, make the following two lists, side by side: "Functions I Can Perform" and "Passions/Hot Interests."

Take some time with this exercise, developing both lists as long as you can. Then put it away for several days. When you come back to it, rank the items on both lists in terms of enjoyment and importance to you.

To clarify, let's examine Mimi's lists and the top five she put on each one:

Functions:	Passions
Persuade people	Kids
Write good proposals	Families
Work effectively with a team	Outdoor activities
Make strong relationships and maintain them	Making a difference
Try new things	People who care about social issues

Does that sound more like a brand manager for a food company or a leader in a nonprofit organization charged with bringing new life to an old, stuck agency?

Furthermore, it's much easier to swim from this side of the river to the other (from business to the nonprofit side) than from nonprofits to business. So if you're having an attack of meaning-seeking in your life, consider the over-the-counter medication inherent in the world of nonprofits. Here are some Web resources to help you sample what's available:

1. Chronicle of Philanthropy Look here for links to organizations.

2. Nonprofit Career Network A complete directory of nonprofit organizations. See if there are any matches with your "Passions" list.

3. Opportunity NOCs Lists jobs and has a nonprofit library with links to key journals and magazines for almost every field and function in the world. Reading about what they think is important is the acid test of fit for you.

4. Essential.org Links to a wide range of social-advocacy organizations, including Good Works, a national directory of social-change organizations.

5. United Way A list of many local organizations that allows you to skim the wide variety of causes and problems addressed by social-service organizations to see if any match your interests.

6. Worldwide Arts Resources Features classifieds linked to a wide variety of arts organizations, ranging from visual and performing arts to art education.

The best career exploration tool is networking. Start building a list of friends, friends of friends, family, alumni from your college and the like. In short, start talking about what it's like to work for nonprofits. You'll find some of the same problems you find in business (people are people after all), but you'll also find individuals who are sustained by doing work they can really believe in. That might go a long way for you, too!