Help for Students Seeking Internships with Nonprofits

The BU Career Development Center offers Yawkey and Santander internship programs for students interested in the nonprofit sector. Photo by Cydney Scott

Are you a freshman, sophomore, or junior who’d like to intern with a nonprofit, but cannot afford to without getting paid? The University’s Center for Career Development (CCD) offers two programs that provide stipends for those who line up a nonpaying internship with a nonprofit organization. Interested students are invited to attend an application prep day on Saturday, November 5.

One program is funded by the Yawkey Foundations, which pledged $10 million to BU in 2014 for the Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Program, which supports sophomores and juniors interning with local nonprofits; the second, funded by a three-year gift from Santander Bank, is designed for students taking internships in the summer following freshman or sophomore year.

Students selected for either program will work closely with CCD staff during the course of their internship to set goals, discuss their progress, and write reflective essays.

“Both of these internship programs are meant to create opportunities for students to pursue internships in the nonprofit sector,” says Lauren Soares (CAS’13), the Yawkey program coordinator. “These internships are valuable opportunities, but if they are unpaid, students are sometimes unable to consider them. Since these are paid, they encourage students to participate in jobs they otherwise may not be able to.”

To be considered for either program, students must have a GPA of at least 2.5 and must attend the CCD’s career directions workshop (which helps students identify and develop skills, values, and interests and think about how best to maximize their time at BU) and a BU-funded internship program information session.

Those accepted for a Yawkey Nonprofit Internship during the academic year will receive a stipend of $1,500; those accepted for a summer internship will receive $3,000. Under the terms of the program, BU students can intern at any Boston area nonprofit; for those taking summer internships outside the Boston area, the nonprofit must fall under one of the Yawkey Foundations’ six key issue areas: health care, education, human services, youth and amateur athletics, arts and culture, or conservation and wildlife.

To be eligible, applicants must also already have a qualified, unpaid internship before applying.

The Yawkey Foundations were established under the will of longtime Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey. He and his wife, Jean, had a long relationship with BU dating to the early 1950s, when BU played all its football games at Fenway Park, and Terrier quarterback and baseball standout Harry Agganis (SED’54), “the Golden Greek,” signed with the Red Sox as a first baseman. Today, the Yawkey Foundations support improvements to health care, human services, and education. The Yawkey name can be found throughout Boston on hospital buildings, community centers, and most famously, on the street bordering Fenway Park.

Salimata Diakite (COM’18) completed a Yawkey Internship last summer at local nonprofit Tailored for Success, which provides economically disadvantaged women, men, and youth looking for jobs with free business attire, interview coaching, and personal and professional development workshops. After finding out about the Yawkey Internship program through a friend, Diakite applied and was selected.

“The program’s workshops and requirements provided context for my internship experience and helped me think about the next steps in my career,” says Diakite. “And the $3,000 stipend was great, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to work at an unpaid internship.”

The Santander Sophomore Internship Program is open to those interning in the summer following their freshman or sophomore years; recipients receive a stipend of $3,000. To be considered, students should have an internship in a traditionally unfunded setting, such as nonprofits, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), although students with internships in small or medium-sized businesses with a low volume of revenue are also eligible.

Unlike with the Yawkey program, applicants for the Santander program don’t have to secure an internship before applying, but funding is contingent upon their getting a qualified summer internship before the end of the spring semester.

Former Santander intern Casey Nakamura (CAS’18) worked this past summer on Capitol Hill for US Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii). Nakamura, who grew up on Kauai, says the Santander program provided a lot more structure than the usual type of internship and helped her form a tighter relationship with her internship mentor, an aide in Hirono’s office.

“I was upfront with my mentor about the internship requirements, and I was able to go to him whenever I had a question,” says Nakamura, who plans to go to law school. “I would definitely recommend applying to the program. A lot of the other interns I was working with in D.C. didn’t have anything like it.”

The Funded Internship Programs Application Prep Day is Saturday, November 5, from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., at the Yawkey Center for Student Services, 100 Bay State Rd. Event details and registration can be found on Handshake.

Important deadlines for both programs can be found on the CCD website.