How worthless is a penny? The only reason people pick them up off the ground is for good luck. Stores have dishes in which they give pennies away. And there’s a group of people who fervently advocate retiring the penny. In fact, the value of the metal in pennies produced prior to 1982 (that’s the year they switched from copper to zinc) is higher than the currency value of the pennies themselves. We’ve pretty much established that pennies are worthless; however, there’s a New York City based service learning non-profit that has a very different take on the penny. They’re called Common Cents, and they are the creators of The Penny Harvest. Since 1991 they’ve worked with children aged 4-14 to make $6.8 million in grants to community organizations. How have they mobilized kids to do this? By collecting pennies! That’s right. They’ve collected $6.8 million in pennies.
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Being a tourist is fun, even if it makes you feel a little stupid. The only problem with doing touristy things is that you miss out on a lot of what a city has to offer. Major attractions have the resources, reputation, and connections to bring in lots of people, but they often lack the local feel that tourists often seek. Smaller attractions often struggle to get people in the door, despite the fact that they are many times more interesting than their larger counterparts. Cultural Tourism DC is a non-profit organization that is trying to change that in Washington, DC. They aim to “strengthen the image and economy of Washington, DC, neighborhood by neighborhood, by linking more than 200 DC cultural and neighborhood organizations with partners in tourism, hospitality, government, and business.” It’s a perfect idea for a city that is so packed with history and culture that you could probably do the tourist thing every day for a year without running out of things to do.
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Washington DC
Some of the most fun that I had during college was playing in a charity dodgeball tournament. My team was doing really well until we ran into a team of future NHL players, pitchers from the baseball team, and some former softball players (they threw underhand, and they threw hard) in the semifinals. That match was pretty ugly, but even when you lose at dodgeball, you have fun. We’ve seen dodgeball gaining more and more popularity, and with that trend we’ve seen more and more non-profits using dodgeball to raise funds. Best Shot Foundation is a Washington, DC based non-profit that is doing just this. They’re an organization that is focused on bringing attention to the fact “that pneumonia kills more young children than any other disease,” and then doing something about it.
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My parents are in town for the weekend, and I’ve been thinking of fun things to do with them around Chicago. One place that came to mind is Shedd Aquarium. I don’t think that we’ll end up getting a chance to make it there this weekend, but it was certainly a good thought. And once I thought about it, I realized that they’re probably have internships. Shedd Aquarium is much like other aquariums now, but it really stood out when it was opened in the 1930s. The aquarium was founded by John G. Shedd, retired president of Marshall Field & Company, and financed by him with $3 million in gifts. The goal was to bring Chicago up to par with other “cosmopolitan” cities that had aquariums, and by the end of the project Chicago’s aquarium “housed the greatest variety of sea life under one roof.” It also happened to be “the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater collection,” which meant that they had to ship millions of gallons of seawater from Florida on trains to provide a proper habitat for the sea life.
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Often people don’t realize what services are available to them. I see this all the time with college students and Career Services offices—the students complain about a lack of help even though they’ve never stepped foot in the office. Another example is students who are having trouble paying for college yet have never applied for the thousands of dollars of scholarships that are available to them. This same thing happens all the time in the world of government programs—people endure hardship because they don’t know that there are programs intended just for them. We often hear that there’s a need for more programs to help the poor, yet programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit are significantly underutilized. Ladder Up is a Chicago based non-profit organization that has “returned $183 million to 100,000 hardworking families” by providing “free, real world financial solutions that maximize earnings and savings.” Whether it’s helping their clients claim a tax credit that they didn’t know about or walking a future college student through the financial aid process, Ladder Up helps people make the most of what’s available to them.
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Libraries used to be their own little kingdoms of knowledge. If you needed to research something, you’d go to the library and hope that they had what you were looking for. If they didn’t, you were out of luck. The Internet has changed everything. Now we live in a world where our libraries are interconnected and information resources can be shared instantly between institutions. And even there is a resource that can’t be shared electronically, you can track it down instantly. A big reason that this is possible is Dublin, OH based Online Computer Library Center. They started in 1967 as “a regional computer system for 54 Ohio colleges;” however, they have since grown to serving “more than 71,000 libraries of all types in the U.S. and 112 countries and territories around the world.” They’re better known as the OCLC, and they’ve very much an Information Technology focused non-profit.
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I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the plight of “Generation Y” and the bad rap that “we” get, but I think most of it is bunk. Complaining isn’t going to get “us” anywhere. Working hard and taking action will. There’s one exception though, and that’s with the political process where complaining is the preferred way of taking action. Right now we live in an era where older people have mortgaged our country’s future for their own benefit. Yes, they have literally amassed huge amounts of debt to pay for all of things that they want. We live in a Democracy, and there are more of them than us, so they get what they want. And when the bill arrives, they’ll have left the table—to put it nicely. This is a real generational issue, unlike the generational issues that “Gen-Y experts” are constantly talking about. Young People First is a Washington, DC based non-profit startup that is attacking this issue with fervor. They’re sick of “how much lip service was being paid to young voters, yet how little real inclusion in the political process they were offered,” and so am I.
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Washington DC
When it comes down to it, most of the problems in our world have some sort of economic root. Unfortunately, people rarely see economics as the solution. One non-profit organization that is an exception is Washington, DC based Green America (formerly Co-op America). Their “mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.” I like their approach. They’re not trying to force their ideals on people by regulation or intellectual intimidation. Instead, they’re working towards a building a powerful new economy that not only holds to their ideals, but also works efficiently. They may still be imposing their ideas, but they’re doing it purely with economic power.
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I love our oceans—everything about them. I love swimming in them, eating the food that they provide, fishing in them, watching sunsets over them, and all of the other wonderful things that they offer. However, our oceans are both blessed and cursed by the same thing—they seem infinite. That’s what makes them so great, but it’s also what has led us to abusing them nearly to the point of no return. A little pollution will disappear in the vastness of an ocean. Overfishing doesn’t matter because there are always more fish. Scraping up the bottom isn’t a big deal because we can’t see the bottom. I wish that oceans were that resilient, but they’re not. Oceana is a Washington, DC based non-profit organization that “seeks to make our oceans as rich, healthy and abundant as they were in our grandparents’ youth.” They recognize the value of their oceans, and they’re doing something to protect them.
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Be sure to check out our new contest, Maghound Your Way to a New Job. We’re giving away two one-year subscriptions to an awesome new magazine subscription service that can help you find an internship.
Although most people would probably think you were nuts if you told them that you live your life according to research studies, it’s not that far off from what most of us actually do do. We are constantly bombarded with nuggets of information that tell us what’s good for us and what’s bad for us. It’s hard for us not to take to heart these simplified conclusions from actual scientific research. Some of the most publicized research occurs in the areas surrounding child rearing. Child Trends is a non-profit, non-partisan “research center that studies children at all stages of development.” They’re based in Washington, DC and they’re constantly focused on using science to improve the way children are raised. They’ve been around since 1979, so I wouldn’t be surprise if some of their research actually affected the way in which you were raised.
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Homelessness is pretty terrible, but the problems that it leads to can be even worse. One of those problems is often AIDS. Housing Works is a New York City based non-profit that “provides homeless and low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families with housing, meals, medical care, drug treatment, social support, employment opportunities and other lifesaving services.” The cool thing is the scale that they’re doing this on—they are “the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the United States.” That means that since 1990 they’ve served more than 20,000 New Yorkers.
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Whether you’re trying to land an internship, start a business, get in shape, figure out your personal finances, or get a date, there’s one piece of advice that I’ve found to be the most appropriate. It’s really simple and a little disappointing, but it just works. Do something! Get off your butt and take action. It will get you 80% of the way to accomplishing your goal. I’m not the only one who thinks this. Do Something, a New York City based non-profit, has adopted this two word phrase as their name. They’re focused on encouraging teenagers to take positive ideas and turn them into action. Instead of focusing on a specific cause, Do Something is all about getting teens to do something about the issues that matter to them—whatever they may be.
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Yesterday I told you about TechnoServe and all of the good that they’re doing by spreading entrepreneurism. Mercado Global is taking a similar approach to fighting poverty, but they’re doing it with a very specific focus. They are a New Haven, CT based non-profit organization “that links the world’s most rural and economically-disadvantaged cooperatives to the U.S. market through a model that provides both fair wages and investments in community’s long-term development.” Even more specifically, they focus on working with women who produce handmade products. So, not only is Mercado Global creating positive change in the developing world, but they’re also providing you with shopping opportunities.
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As an entrepreneur I am a strong believer that businesses are often the best way to solve problems. Don’t get me wrong—I love non-profits, but the ruthlessness of the business world breeds efficiency and effectiveness. We’ve seen plenty of non-profits try to cure poverty, yet poverty remains one of the world’s biggest problems. Lately we’ve seen more and more business based solutions aimed at eradicating poverty. TechnoServe, is a non-profit (the irony!) that is doing just that. They help “entrepreneurial men and women in poor areas of the developing world to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.” What they’re doing may sound like some new social entrepreneurship startup, but they have a 40 year track record of successfully transforming the lives of the world’s poor. I guess business based solutions to poverty aren’t a new idea at all.
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Have you ever realized that you were being marketed to? I don’t mean watching tv and seeing an ad that makes you want to buy something. I mean getting a creepy feeling like somebody is watching you, but instead they’re getting inside your head to sell you on something. The beauty of marketing is that you usually don’t realize it’s happening, but when you do, it’s scary. You wouldn’t normally associate this kind of thing with a non-profit, but when I came across The Harmony Institute, I was both intrigued and freaked out. They’re a New York City based organization that uses “cutting-edge scientific research with film, television and new media experiences to help [their] clients deliver narratives that modify behavior and influence change.” Is it just me, or does that sound a little weird?
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Have you ever heard the term B Corporation? It’s “a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” If you’ve been following One Day, One Internship for a while or you’ve been reading through our archives, you already know of quite a few B Corporations—Better World Books and New Leaf Paper are a couple that we’ve already featured. Each of these companies has met “comprehensive and transparent social and environmental standards via the B Rating System” and then officially amended “their corporate governing documents to incorporate stakeholder interests.” They’ve all done this through B Lab (or B Corporation, there’s still some ambiguity in their name), a Berwyn, PA based non-profit organization that is behind the B Corporation movement.
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For nearly as long as humans have been around, we’ve been building shelters—places to sleep, eat, work, and play. And nearly as long as we’ve been building shelters, we’ve been doing it artistically. Function is still our primary goal—it’s the reason that we build things, but it’s amazing how development, architecture, construction and engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, and urban planning come together as an essential part of human culture. The National Building Museum in Washington, DC was started to “advance the quality of the built environment by educating the public about its impact on people’s lives.” Yes, it’s a museum filled with artifacts and objects related to the history of buildings, but it’s more than that. It’s really about “fostering lively discussion about a wide range of topics.”
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Washington DC
I love it when I get great recommendations for companies/organizations to feature from readers (if you have one, let me know at willy@onedayonejob.com). That’s how I found out about Gloucester, MA based Action Inc. I was sent a link to this article about how the non-profit agency will be getting “$8.5 million in federal stimulus money over the next three years to improve energy efficiency in low-income households from Gloucester to Haverhill to Lynn.” The cool thing about the project is that it not only focuses on reducing energy consumption, but it also focuses on helping low-income people save money that they’re literally burning away. Action Inc. is all about economic security, so their work goes well beyond energy efficiency. It also includes Advocay, Youth Outreach, In Home Care, Housing Loans, Job Training, Emergency Shelters, and Toy Drives.
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Three months ago when I featured the American Lung Association’s Jobs, I mentioned a good friend who is battling lung cancer. From what I’ve heard, he continues to be doing well and fighting for his life. Unfortunately, I recently learned that my grandmother is also facing a battle with lung cancer despite the fact that she stopped smoking before I was born. It’s obviously very upsetting for my family, and we’re going to do our best to get her through this. I don’t usually like getting too personal with these posts, but there’s no better way for me to introduce the American Legacy Foundation. They are a Washington, DC based non-profit organization that “is dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit.” I’ve seen what tobacco can do to people, and it absolutely amazes me that anyone chooses to smoke these days, but many do. It may be their right to do what they want with their bodies but I’m glad that the American Legacy Foundation is working hard to push them towards a smarter, healthier decision.
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I doubt many of you would disagree with the assertion that the “mainstream media” has some major issues that need to be worked out. Take the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. Yes, he was a great entertainer. Yes, the way that he lived his life was totally perplexing. Yes, people are fascinated by him. But did we really need all that coverage? It’s just one example of how our media is failing us, but I’m sure that Free Press would be willing to give you many more examples. They are a non-profit, “national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media through education, organizing and advocacy.” Free Press advocates “independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications,” and they do this through a number of campaigns: Save the Internet, Stop Big Media, No Fake News, Local Radio Now, Stamp Out Postal Rate Hikes, Save Our Spectrum, Community Internet, Public Broadcasting, Pentagon Propaganda, White Spaces, and Rate the Debates. They’re based in both Washington, DC and Florence, MA, and they’ve been working since 2002 to fix what they call a failing media system.
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I know that most of us were taught in school that slavery ended nearly 150 years ago, but, unfortunately, that’s not really true. Slavery and human trafficking continue to plague our world, even though most of us aren’t really aware of it. Polaris Project is a non-profit organization is not only bringing awareness to the issues surrounding human trafficking and modern-day slavery, but also combatting them. They do this by “conducting direct outreach and victim identification, providing social services and transitional housing to victims, operating the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) serving as the central national hotline on human trafficking, advocating for stronger state and Federal anti-trafficking legislation, and engaging community members in local and national grassroots efforts.” They’ve been at it since 2002 with offices in Washington, DC; Newark, NJ; Denver, CO; and Tokyo, Japan.
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New Jersey,
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Washington DC
As a kid, I always enjoyed a good playground. What kid wouldn’t? It’s your first sense of danger. Monkey bars, slides, and contraptions that spin you around until you want to throw up may not seem all that dangerous now, but I’m sure that there was a point in your life when you were intimidated. And that’s why you grew up to be such a successful young adult—all that time on the playground. PlayPumps International also brings success to children through playground equipment, albeit in a very different way. Of course they enable kids to enjoy childhood and have fun in the face of danger just like all playgrounds do, but they are also helping to end poverty in developing nations around the world. You’ll see why in a second.
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I never thought that I’d hear the words “city” and “harvest” used together as often as I do these days, but now it seems that every city has a farmers market, urban vegetable gardens, and restaurants with hyper-local cuisine. Oddly enough, City Harvest means something slightly different when they talk about harvesting food. They are “a non-profit organization founded in 1982” and “the world’s first and New York City’s only food rescue program.” What does that mean? It means that this year they will “collect 26 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms.” They’re harvesting anything and everything that they can (as long as it’s up to their food safety standards) to feed New York City’s hungry. It’s a brilliant idea, and the organizations longevity proves that it’s working.
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food,
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non-profit,
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A child’s first sign of teenage (pre-teenage?) rebellion often begins at the radio dial. The parent’s up-to-this-point unchallenged decision of what to listen to while in the car is called into question, and all hell breaks loose. If there are multiple kids in the family (or even just in the car), the negotiation can quickly becom more heated than a multi-lateral peace process in a war-torn nation. The parent will fight hard to maintain his or her right to National Public Radio, but the kid will persist in his or her challenge to hear something that feeds a suddenly “eclectic” taste in music. Often the parents cede this battle in hopes of winning in the future (bad idea!), which results in the parent’s driving the kids around the mini-van listening to rap music that would be a lot more offensive if the parent knew what some of the words meant. Eventually the rebellious tykes will grow up and realize that they too want to be more cultured, and they slowly, but surely come around to listening to NPR. Or maybe some kids just never speak up. They like NPR from the start. Maybe those are the ones who end up taking internships at NPR.
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radio,
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Last month I got an e-mail from a One Day, One Job reader named Lindsay Dick who has landed in an Internship Coordinator position. Her extensive internship experience during college has led to a job managing an internship program! It’s funny how that works. The organization that she works for is a Cocoa, FL based non-profit called To Write Love on Her Arms. They’re “dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.” If you don’t know a lot about these issues, check out TWLOHA’s Facts page. It sounds like an amazing organization, and if its internship program is run by one of our readers, it has to be good.
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Last year we took a look at internships with Phantom Fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July, but this year it’s a weekend, and that means non-profit internships. I decided to play things a little safer, so my first thought was The National Council on Fireworks Safety, but they don’t appear to have any jobs or internships. That led me to the Itasca, IL based National Safety Council, which is also concerned with fireworks safety. Fireworks safety is just one small piece of what the National Safety Council does though, as their mission is to “educate and influence people to prevent accidental injury and death.” And that’s just want we want to do on July 4th.
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safety
At some point during your internship search, you’ve probably read at least one article about what to wear to a job interview . If you’ve already had an interview or two, you were probably stressed out about the decision: blue shirt or white shirt? or some other mundane detail like that. For a lot of people, what to wear to an interview is a much bigger issue. That’s where Dress for Success comes in. They are a New York City based non-profit that aims to “promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.” Every year Dress for Success and their affiliates across the world help more than 40,000 women become better prepared to land a job.
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There are countless celebrities who support charitable causes. There are many who throw their full support behind a single organization; however, few celebs are as personally invested in their charitable work as Michael J. Fox is. Why is he so invested? Because his life is on the line. He is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, “a degenerative disease of the brain that often impairs motor skills, speech, and other functions.” If you’ve seen Michael J. Fox on tv lately, you’ve seen what Parkinson’s does to the human body. It’s a tragic disease that will hopefully be cured due to the work of the New York City based Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. As an accomplished actor and someone who is living with Parkinson’s, Michael J. Fox is the perfect person to lead the fight against the disease.
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If there’s one criticism that I often hear about the non-profit world, it’s that they’re plagued by inefficiency. It’s certainly not true across the board, but taking the profit motives out of an organization can certainly create efficiency issues. Additionally, things like organizational structure, egos, and political agendas can disrupt for-profits and non-profits alike. Root Cause is a Cambridge, MA based non-profit strategy consulting service that “envisions a world in which the public, private, and nonprofit sectors work together to invest and re-invest in the most efficient, effective, and sustainable solutions to social problems.” In other words, they want to find the absolute best way to solve the world’s social problems, and then work with social innovators and social impact investors to make things happen.
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Most scientific literature isn’t what I’d call an easy read, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you aren’t beating down the doors to get your hands on the newest research papers. Unless you are a big consumer of research literature, then you probably don’t care much about the openness of scientific and medical publishing, but you should. Open sharing of information can significantly promote innovation, and who can argue against wanting more advances in science and medicine? The Public Library of Science is all about open sharing, as they are a San Francisco, CA based “nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource.” They were founded in 2000, and since then they’ve been pushing for scientific and medical journals that “are immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use.”
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