June 4, 2009 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Morgan Shoaff spent the summer before her senior year at Wichita State University designing a logo for a project to prevent teenage suicide. She earned $2,500. But far more important, she made a big life decision, settling on a career in the nonprofit world.
Ms. Shoaff’s two-month stint last year as an intern at CrisisLink, a suicide-prevention hotline and information-referral service in Arlington, Va., was supported by the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Community Summer Jobs Program, one of a handful of grant programs that enable cash-strapped nonprofit groups to hire high-school or college students over the summer.
At CrisisLink, Ms. Shoaff didn’t simply function as an extra staff member, says Marshall Ellis, her supervisor and the charity’s director of development. She also brought a youthful perspective, and the design and marketing skills the organization lacked. Without her, he says, the group would not have the new logo for its youth suicide-prevention program or as much information aimed at teenagers on its Facebook page and Web site.
“Everyone on staff is doing 110 percent,” he says. “There isn’t extra capacity on staff to do new things.”
Internship programs supported by grant makers also provide students with an introduction to the nonprofit world, and the potential to nurture future charity leaders, foundation officials say.
“What we’re asking the nonprofits is to include them in a board meeting, to show them their [Form] 990s — not just have them licking envelopes or something,” says Jeanne Snow, executive director of the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation, in Traverse City, Mich. “We want them to understand what the nonprofit is all about.”
Ms. Snow’s foundation will spend about $19,000 this year on 10 internships for high-school students.
Although ExxonMobil has been increasing support for its nonprofit internship program in recent years (committing $987,000 this year, up from $860,000 in 2008), smaller grant makers have cut back on such programs due to the bad economy. The Denver Foundation, which started its nonprofit internship program in 2007, has had to cut support from $50,000 for 10 organizations in the program’s first two years to $35,000 for seven organizations this year, says Cinque McKinney, associate program officer at the foundation.
Extra Help
Getting free or low-cost help is especially important to nonprofit groups during these tight economic times.
Mary Loring, grants manager at Sisters of Color United for Education, a Denver health charity, says that although donors to her organization have not yet backed out of commitments, “I’m afraid that hit is going to come this year.”
Sisters of Color relies heavily on grants, she says, and the intern she hires this summer with money from the Denver Foundation will help manage grants and enter data into donor-tracking software. She has a hired a second intern to help with that job, selecting a student who applied through the Denver Foundation program but paying for the intern from money she scraped together from her general budget.
“That will take a load off,” she says. “Once they learn the skills, it’s fairly routine.”
The administrative assistance will enable Ms. Loring and her staff to focus on recruiting more individuals to support the organization and starting other long-term projects.
Patrick Dexter, community-relations adviser in the Exxon Mobil Corporation’s Fairfax, Va., office, says this year he has received more calls than usual inquiring about the Community Summer Jobs Program. But annual applications from charities have held steady at around 100 for 60 slots over the past several years, says Emily Swenson, senior director of programs at Volunteer Fairfax, the volunteer center in Virginia that administers Exxon Mobil’s program in the northern part of the state and in Washington, D.C.
Busy Season
Several of the charities that received the grants say summertime help comes in handy regardless of the economy.
“Summers are very busy here, so it’s an ideal time to have more hands on deck,” Ms. Loring says. In addition to their administrative duties, her two summer interns will plan and run activities for summer youth programs that use art to convey public health messages.
This summer, the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay, in Traverse City, Mich., will use grant money from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to conduct an algae survey of the bay. The project involves spending about three days a week on a boat, for about four to six weeks, says Andy Knott, the center’s executive director. Those hours would stretch an already overworked staff of two full-time and two part-time employees, he says.
And though the center often uses volunteers, Mr. Knott says, “it’s sometimes hard to get a volunteer commitment for the time it takes to do this kind of project.” His organization will use $1,500 from the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation as well as portions of its research grants to hire two summer interns this year.
Quality Applicants
Ms. Loring has found that hiring interns through a formal program has resulted in a higher quality of candidate than she has seen in the past.
“We struggled with our random interns who have come our way,” she says. “They weren’t necessarily students who were interested in what we do and in a nonprofit career.”
On the other hand, the Denver Foundation vetted students’ applications before sending them on to Sisters of Color. Out of eight candidates, Ms. Loring says, “we had a terrible time choosing.”
For his part, Mr. Ellis says he would like to woo Ms. Shoaff, his former intern, as a full-time employee, but instead he is helping her find a job elsewhere because he cannot afford another salary.
Ms. Shoaff, who graduated last month, will spend the summer working as an intern in the Washington office of Care2, a for-profit Internet company, with headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., that links nonprofit organizations to one another. She will also be hunting for a permanent job at a charity.
“I’ve applied at a few places, and it sounded like the position was open,” she says, “and then I got a message: ‘Oh, we’re not hiring for that position anymore.’”
