Is it more important to have accomplishments or new experiences? To be a leader or to make a difference?

To help you determine your motivations, Jeri Sadler and Rick Miners, authors of Don’t Retire, Rewire!, have developed a list of thirty “drivers” — the goal is to whittle the list down to five. Merrill Lynch has turned that list into a one-page worksheet based on Sadler and Miners’s work.

My Next Phase, offers a range of services from $39.95 to $395. Business Week gave this site an A.

The Career Key offers several self-evaluation surveys and resources.

In tandem with the book, Now Discover Your Strengths, Clifton StrengthsFinder helps individuals identify areas of relative strength.

The Princeton Review Career Quiz from the renowned college preparatory organization can help you sort out your priorities.

Practical Tips — Resumes, Cover Letters and Interviews

Your experience makes you an attractive candidate and a valuable potential employee. Stress your reliability, good judgment, problem-solving ability, ability to listen, comfort level in working with all types of personalities, sense of responsibility, established identity, and sense of purpose.

Resumes

Monster’s Resume Center offers guidance and samples.

Proven Resumes provides resume writing tips and examples.

Cover Letters

About.com offers pointers on how to write a compelling cover letter.

QuintCareers provides an online tutorial for developing an effective cover letter.

The Riley Guide contains a library of links to cover letter tips and samples.

Interviews

Job-Interview.net provides interactive interview exercises.

JobStar Central coaches users through the entire process of constructing a resume.

Pay As Well As Passion

The goal of encore financial planning is different from retirement financial planning: rather than seeking freedom from work, the aim is freedom to work —on things that matter and in the way that works for you.

As USNEWS & WORLD REPORT points out, even a modest income from continued work can cure what ails most family financial plans.

• Continued income from work reduces the rate at which you’ll have to draw down your savings. Financial advisors warn that one of the most common mistakes among older adults is excessive withdrawals in the first few years after they quit working, leaving less money invested for later years.

• Using earned income to replace Social Security payments for a few years can win you a lifetime of higher Social Security payments. By postponing Social Security payments for three years past “normal retirement age,” you can boost the monthly check you collect later by as much as 24% – forever.

• A job may provide health care coverage that would cost a bundle to replace. Medicare coverage kicks in at age 65, but for younger workers, health coverage is a major reason to keep working. And even Medicare doesn’t cover all costs. Out-of-pocket medical costs now take up nearly 20 cents of every dollar of income for people over 65.

• Continued income makes it possible to time their eventual exit from the workforce, for example by waiting for a stock market peak that maximizes the value of savings — valuable flexibility for boomers sandwiched between their elderly parents and their not-yet-independent children.

• Federal tax laws include bonuses to encourage workers over 50 to increase their savings, by allowing additional “catch-up” contributions to tax-advantaged accounts such as 401Ks and IRAs. And deferring withdrawals from such accounts defers the need to pay taxes on those withdrawals.

The new Wall Street Journal Complete Retirement Guide assesses the pros and cons in a chapter called “To Work or Not to Work,” (and also includes sections on balancing engagement and freedom and volunteering).

Fidelity Investments has published a useful report on the benefits of working longer.

Salary.com’s Salary Wizard offers a quick way to benchmark your salary expectations for particular jobs in particular regions.

To find out more about salaries in the nonprofit world, check The NonProfit Times Annual Salary Survey, or The GuideStar Compensation Report.

The Social Sector

The social sector, including not only non-profits but parts of government and private industry, is one of the fastest growing parts of the U.S. economy. Nonprofit organizations alone account for 10% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Many of the jobs in the social sector lend themselves to encore careers, providing social contribution, a sense of purpose, and community involvement. But much of the social sector is also in need of major transformation — in strategy, organization, and funding. The influx of thousands, or millions, of talented and experienced baby boomers can help speed that transformation.

Making the transition to the social sector is not always easy. These resources can help provide an introduction:

Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector, by Laura Gassner Otting, head of the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, provides an overview of the sector.

A new report from The Conference Board, Boomers are Ready for Nonprofits, but are Nonprofits Ready for Boomers? found that nonprofits lag behind the government and private sectors in retaining skilled potential retirees within their organizations and actively recruiting older hires from other sectors.

Bridgestar’s Bridging to the Nonprofit Sector portal contains a trove of information for people considering making the switch from for-profit work to nonprofit organizations.

The Partnership for Public Service is working to make the government an employer of choice for talented, dedicated Americans. The Partnership has a particular interest in encouraging boomers transitioning from the private sector to make encore careers in government service.

Encore Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurs, according to the Skoll Foundation, “are proven leaders whose approaches and solutions to social problems are helping to better the lives and circumstances of countless underserved or disadvantaged individuals.”

The Purpose Prize, a project of Civic Ventures, awards five prizes of $100,000 and 10 awards of $10,000 for people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges and proving that creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation for the common good are not simply the province of the young.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public provides fellowships to social entrepreneurs worldwide.

The Skoll Foundation is a comprehensive resource on social entrepreneurship, including information about grants, conferences, and networks of entrepreneurs.

How to Change the World showcases the book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, by David Bornstein, a senior fellow at Civic Ventures.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship provides a global platform to promote social entrepreneurship as a key element to advance societies and address social problems.

Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship is a research and education center based at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Stanford Center for Social Innovation is located at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Publishes the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Social Enterprise Alliance is an association of individuals and organizations building effective, sustainable nonprofits through earned-income strategies.

Kauffman Foundation focuses on advancing entrepreneurship and improving the education of children and youth.