Finding, Paying for, and Getting the Best Work from Nonprofit Interns

IN THE TRENCHES

By Kelly A. J. Powers

In the summer of 2001, the leaders of the Women’s Wilderness Institute had an idea that would, in one stroke, expand its efforts to provide camping trips for girls and women and help subsidize trips for the neediest participants. The charity in Boulder, Colo., decided to develop an adventure-travel program for affluent women, with the intent that the fees earned would subsidize the scholarships — which 60 percent of the institute’s girl campers need.

The challenge, says Laura Tyson, the group’s executive director, was learning how to attract enough adult campers who could afford the fees to make the plan work. For this, the institute needed help — which it found, Ms. Tyson says, from a talented group of interns from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The charity prepared to enter the adventure-travel market. “We knew the market was hot, but we needed to know what resources we could get to make the marketing push,” she says. A team of graduate-level business students studied the adventure-travel concept, she says, and determined that it was feasible. They surveyed the program’s intended audience, and determined that short trips would work best for these busy women. The students also helped the institute develop a marketing brochure. Their efforts paid off handsomely: In the summer of 2001, the institute started its first set of adventure-travel programs. Today, fees from those excursions, which now number 30 offerings that include hikes, rock-climbing expeditions, and ski trips, cover 10 percent of the institute’s scholarships for needy girls. The group now considers the adventure-travel programs to be a permanent source of money for those scholarships.

For resource-strapped nonprofit organizations, interns can be valuable assets. And because many colleges and universities require internship work — and many high schools now also require community-service work — the pool of potential interns has never been bigger, say academic career counselors and nonprofit leaders. Charities can find promising interns by marshaling their financial and other resources, marketing their internship opportunities to likely candidates, and creating relationships with local educators. Successful internships marked by consistent supervision can help those interns fulfill their promise and can bear long-term benefits, not only for the students, but also for the charities that employ them: Interns who reflect fondly on their nonprofit experience may bring more potential donors and volunteers to those organizations.

But before an eager college student can be matched with a needy charity, compensation of some sort — often in the form of a stipend — needs to be arranged. Some programs with a national reach, such as the Everett Public Service Internship Program, can help subsidize nonprofit internships. The federal government’s AmeriCorps does not consider itself an internship program, though often the young workers it sends to charities fill entry-level staff slots that nonprofit employers view as internships. Other charities may turn to local or regional organizations for help in hiring interns. The interns at the Women’s Wilderness Institute were subsidized by the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, a project of the University of Colorado. For the past six years, the center has helped funnel graduate-level business students into nonprofit internships.

A grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, in Kansas City, Mo., helps the Deming Center supplement interns’ pay. The center received help from the Boulder Community Foundation in identifying charities that needed interns, and word of its needs spread through local nonprofit employers, says Kathryn A. Simon, the center’s director. “We received much publicity, and a steady stream of requests,” she says. “We recognize nonprofits can’t afford the professional level of help that M.B.A. students can provide. We’ve created a way for them to get the help they need and allow our graduate interns to earn a living.”

A Prime Time for Recruiting

Although some interns are compensated with stipends, students also complete internships to gain academic credit, burnish their résumés, and increase their networks of professional contacts. In many cases, young workers opt for the internship route to test their commitment to a profession that intrigues them, says Christopher Pratt, dean of career education at Columbia University. “Nonprofit interns are attracted to a charity because of their belief in the issue it addresses, and because the charity matches the vocational goals of their major,” he says.

This may be one of the best times in recent memory for charities to recruit interns, he says. Because businesses have suffered the greatest job losses during the current economic downturn and the nonprofit field has seen growth, he says, students are reconsidering the long-term benefits of nonprofit internships for their careers.

“Certainly after 9/11, many more of our students are interested in the nonprofit sector,” he says. “Because our baccalaureate students are most interested in where the preceding classes have gone — did they go on to Goldman Sachs? — this new interest in nonprofits could be interesting.”

However, charities face some obstacles in selling colleges and their students on the benefits of nonprofit internships. Often, it’s a problem of perception: Career counselors, for instance, may view working at charities solely as community service, not as a path to jobs after graduation.

At the University of Pennsylvania, for example, undergraduates are required to complete one semester-long internship. But students in some majors end up working for charities in greater numbers than student in other majors. For example, says Patricia Rose, director of career services at the university, 25 percent of students from the College of Arts & Sciences work with nonprofit organizations, compared with 4 percent from engineering or business majors. “However, you can’t generalize about who does or doesn’t go to work in the nonprofit field,” she says. “It all depends on what your career goals are.” It also depends on the job market for interns, she says: An engineering student may not find as many opportunities in the nonprofit field as an English major.

Finding those opportunities, though, may simply be a matter of charities getting the word out, says Ann Higdon, head of Improved Solutions for Urban Systems, in Dayton, Ohio. Her nonprofit organization trains young people to build houses, and she has hired interns whose college majors were construction technology, engineering, and computer technology. “For example,” she says, “our last intern in computer technology worked on developing a Web site, designed our annual report, and did classroom computers.” Ms. Higdon, who recruits her group’s interns from the local Sinclair Community College, advises nonprofit managers to reach beyond college career-development services, and work directly with the academic departments most likely to include students with the skills needed.

Beyond working with faculty and staff members, campus organizations may also help charities find interns. At the University of Pennsylvania, the Civic House, a student-run group that coordinates campus volunteerism, has provided many interns to nonprofit groups in the Philadelphia area. One beneficiary has been Joint Action in Community Service, a national organization that helps graduates of the federal Job Corps program.

Interns who work at Joint Action in Community Service — and at many charities these days — are exposed to more than just the nonprofit field, says Stefanie Eshleman, deputy regional director of the group’s Philadelphia chapter. “Our students are gaining experience in how a nonprofit works,” she says, “but because of the recent increase in the privatization of government services, and a new emphasis on finding partnerships with the for-profit community, an intern here actually gets experience dealing with all types of organizations.”

Clear Expectations

Career counselors say that nonprofit organizations, because of their more limited resources and staff, have a reputation for not supervising interns as thoroughly as businesses do, but they also say that good managers can make the intern experience worthwhile for both the interns and the charities who use their labor. Carefully matching students to their assignments and making employer expectations clear from the start makes success more likely.

Before an intern’s first day, a nonprofit employer should define the internship’s goals, says Ms. Simon. She points to her university’s experience with sending students — mostly candidates for graduate-level business degrees — to work for local organizations. “Our projects have a set scope,” she says. “Rather than just sending in the intern and letting them think something up, I work with the executive director to set this up beforehand.

Setting clear goals — and keeping assigned responsibilities reasonable — are even larger priorities when working with interns who need to complete the internship for work-study pay or academic credit. “They’re there to learn, and for them to have the flexibility to make mistakes, and learn about their career field,” says Ms. Eshleman. “It’s a lot to also expect them to run a program for your nonprofit.”

A nonprofit employer should also articulate routine expectations. “My biggest one is be clear of your expectations of their general performance and behavior — not only for the hours, but also the dress code, lunchtime, and sick policies,” says Ms. Eshleman, who supervises at least four interns per semester. “For many interns, it’s their first time in the workplace. It’s been my experience they’ve been very receptive to rules; they just want to know.”

Just as important as the experience itself is a supervisor who can help the intern interpret the experience. The people that Joint Action in Community Service serve have many needs, and Ms. Eshleman is sensitive to helping her interns not get overwhelmed. She checks in with her interns at least weekly.

“We have a written code of conduct, and we establish very clear, tangible expectations,” she says. “If all of these are set up in advance, any time you see a deviation from the rules, you can pretty quickly address and correct them. Also, having a set time to discuss things, and having them be a private, confidential time can also help the interns speak up about potential problems.”

There are other benefits to the close contact between intern and manager, she says. “You end up learning something from the interns,” she says. “Asking them what is surprising, what have they learned, what has been difficult, are all important questions. And best of all, it gives the nonprofit manager an opportunity to see the organization through fresh eyes.”

What are the most successful intern recruitment methods your charity has used? Tell us about your experience in our Share Your Brainstorms online discussion group.