Unpaid internships have been a source of controversy for several years. A quick Google search will bring up many an article, including the Guardian and the NUS. Not quite so prevalent are articles on internships in the charity sector. And the sector goes suspiciously quiet when the thorny subject comes up.
Rob White
Paid Marketing Intern (but is always available for pay rises Joe).
Agree to some degree? Or should I be interned for writing this? Leave a comment below.
I run Pact, a charity for
I run Pact, a charity for people affected by imprisonment. We have around 200 volunteers, including my Board of Trustees, and for the first teim, two paid interns, who are working in our small fundraising team. We have turnover of £3M. The intern posts we have created are for posts for which we couldn't afford the risk and committment of a permanent full time salary, but we want to test the water. For this, we need to attract talented, enthusiastic and hard working people, who want the work experience and coaching, and keep them for at least six months. We have two great paid interns as a result and after a few months the results are already beginning to show. I would be interested to know if people have had similarly good experiences using unpaid interns. Andy Keen-Downs, Pact
I run Roots HR CIC, the UK's
I run Roots HR CIC, the UK's first and only human resources consultancy to deliver through a social enterprise model. We offer two paid internships per year, get fabulous candidates and fantastic input to our organisation from them. Our clients are civil society organisations, some of which are run by very experienced leaders and where meaningful work experience through internship could easily be offered - but where there is no budget or funding for paying those interns. The income of the charity is irrelevant - paying those interns would take money and that is money that will not then be spent on front line services. But what a travesty not to offer that work experience just because there is no funding to pay for it. There may be some whose circumstances mean they cannot apply for unpaid work and that is a real shame - but so is a failure to offer the valuable experience of working in a sustainable civil society organisation as an important stepping stone between education and paid employment.
At our German charity,
At our German charity, offering political education and online campaigns to foster public involvement, we have only paid interns. Additionally, we only accept students still in education, not graduates. There is an organisation establishing these rules as a good practice model for NGOs, called fairwork e.V. (in German only, sorry) http://www.fairwork-ev.de/
We are very happy with this model - as are our interns. Go for it! Eco Scout
European Level, interns self organizing: http://www.generation-p.org/
The promo for this piece said
The promo for this piece said "But is it really right for a charity to have unpaid staff?" It's why I came here to comment on the blog - unpaid staff are called VOLUNTEERS.
Is it appropriate to have volunteers in leadership roles? Roles with a large time commitment? Roles that require expertise? Yes. Board members are such volunteers.
I am firmly in the big tent regarding who is a volunteer: pro bono consultants, executives on loan, court-ordered community service people, online super fans, online community members, and, yes, even interns: they are all volunteers. A much better question to ask is this: why does an organization involve volunteers, including interns? If the answer is first and foremost to save money, to not have to pay people, then such organizations deserve condemnation. Just as some jobs are best done by paid employees, some nonprofit/NGO/charity jobs are best done by unpaid staff! Certain positions should be reserved specifically for volunteers.
When should interns be paid? I blog about this myself here:
http://coyoteblog.posterous.com/are-interns-exploited