Insights
With summer internships drawing to a close, catch up on the top jobs interns can do for charities. Here are the top dozen roles for interns to take on
Making the best out of internships is tough when students come and go after a short time. Despite brief tenures, interns are a valuable resource for charities and non-profits.
Interns can provide a fresh perspective, rejuvenate your workforce, and with a bit of luck, be a candidate for that upcoming role.
In this article, we look at top charity tasks for interns.
We already know that Gen Z and Millennials are on the forefront of social media and content. Learn from your interns by having them help you curate content.Have them search for funny memes, stock photos, and viewpoints. Make them feel valuable by adding their finds to your social media profile. Don’t forget to include interactive content.
Use your interns to update your graphic and video editing skills. Ask them to familiarise themselves with the free, professional editing platforms out there. To make things even more interesting, they might even be able to teach media teams how to properly use filters.
Some of the most rewarding experiences come from working on projects. Former Charity Digital intern Zoe Ruibal-Buxton says: “When I was still an intern I took on the Meet and Code project and I really enjoyed working on this, as it’s a really nice initiative that offers grants to education and youth charities to help them fund their own coding/digital skills events for young people.” For Zoe, working on specific tasks proves just how much internships matter – she is now a Marketing Executive at Charity Digital.
Finding time to test out all the new gadgets and digital software is tough when teams are so busy. Internships provide charities with the perfect opportunity to trial software. Have your interns check out free programmes, virtual environments, and new devices. There’s a plethora to choose from, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more.
If you’ve taken on interns with writing skills, put them to use drafting sections of grant proposals. They can easily help with background research, including finding information about the grant givers, previous winners, and what evaluators are looking for.
Donor and supporter feedback are important but time consuming. Interns can save charity teams time by sending out and compiling feedback. Have them stay organised by using digital tools like Survey Monkey and Google Forms.
Ask your interns to help you organise big meetings. Using digital tools like Doodle, Calendly, Microsoft Teams and Google Calendar, juniors can easily corral invitees and send out meeting times. Once the meeting is over, don’t forget to ask your teams to distribute recordings.
As a start, interns can help by researching supporters and donors on the CRM system. Ask them to filter the list down so that marketing teams can save time. The research not only helps charities refine strategies, but helps interns understand who the target audiences are.
Additional resources are great for helping with data entry, analysis, and bespoke reporting. Internships can provide a welcome relief for those producing ad hoc reports. They can help with enter and edit meeting notes in Salesforce, export reports on Xero, and provide updates from project management platforms.
Pushing the innovation strategy forward takes effort. Interns offer a different perspective and might help charities touch base with younger supporters. For teams stuck in a rut, interns provide a breath of fresh air when it comes to new ways of doing things and staying up to date on digital developments.
Coming as no surprise, being part of fundraising events are amongst the best experiences for interns to learn from. They can help out by keeping track of virtual participants, manning concession stands, moderating Q&A sessions, and helping to make digital recordings. In addition to providing interns with a sense of fun and charitable purpose, they can be the key to launching smoother events.
On concluding their internship, let your juniors be ambassadors. You can invite them to share their experiences on LinkedIn, as well as more personal social media sites. To keep the internship programme going, have them recommend others to join up to your cause.
Join us on the 11th of April for our webinar with Dell we will explore how AI is already impacting people and communities, the meanings of AI safety and AI literacy, and how charitable organisations can take action on digital and AI inclusion.