“In real estate, I just helped rich guys get richer. Now, I help people get a life,” said Larry Sykes, one of several individuals featured in “Baby boomers find meaning in ‘encore careers’ at nonprofit groups” in today’s Dallas Morning News.

Writer Bob Moos reports that approximately 1.1 million boomers have left corporate jobs to work in the nonprofit world and that many more will follow. “We’re seeing the beginnings of a large workforce for social change,” Phyllis Segal, vice president of Civic Ventures, which publishes Encore.org, told Moos,

Sykes was in his late 50s, working as a commercial real estate broker but getting little satisfaction from his job when he learned about a program that helps homeless people find work via a daily voicemail service that lists openings. When he asked a Dallas charity that feeds the homeless about offering the service, he got a thumbs-up if he could raise funding to pay for the service and his salary.

Sykes did so within two months. The Stewpot Community Voice Mail service has helped more than 750 people find jobs during the four years he has run it.

Bridgespan, a consulting group that helps find leaders for nonprofits, estimates that retiring boomers and the growth of the nonprofit sector will create a need for 640,000 senior managers during the coming decade, twice as many as are needed now.

The need dovetails nicely with the desire to work longer documented in a survey released in June by Civic Ventures and the MetLife Foundation. The survey found that nearly three-quarters of boomers in the U.S. are planning to work past the traditional retirement age, and half of them want to work in jobs with social purpose.

Sydney Farrier, a 61-year-old Dallas resident who used to manage an assisted-living community, is typical of those who have made the switch. She enjoys the flexibility of her current job at the Alzheimer’s Association, where she works three days a week managing seminars and support groups for people with the illness.

She told Moos, “I guess I’m one of those people who’s happier when she’s working. I haven’t thought about retiring. It’s more important for me to know I’m contributing.”