Haas for Students Kicks Off Campaign for Nonprofit Internships

Haas for Students, a student-run program that helps fund first-year full-time Berkeley MBA students with nonprofit and public-sector summer internships, is currently seeking applicants and donors.

The program asks first-year students with private-sector internships to donate one day of their summer pay to the campaign. Haas for Students also is raising money through activities such as an ice cream social on April 20 and a fundraising event before the MBA talent show on May 6.

Last year, Haas for Students raised $49,000 through donations from 40 percent of first-year MBA students, corporate matching donations, and fundraising events. Seventeen interns received funds from Haas for Students, in amounts ranging from $500 to $5,500.

This year, the target is a 50 percent student participation rate and 10 to 15 student intern recipients, according to Sarah Kwon, MBA 11, the fund’s manager.

“I was attracted to Haas because of its commitment to developing leaders in the nonprofit and public sectors,” she says. “I think this fund is a crucial part of that because the lower pay for summer nonprofit and public-sector internships is a disincentive to go into those fields. A lot of places say that nonprofits are important, but the students at Haas put their money where their mouth is.”

Some of the internships Haas for Students may be funding are for organizations such as Living Goods, an Avon-style door-to-door network in sub-Saharan Africa that sells essential health care items to the poor; Buckelew Programs, which provides housing and social services to clients suffering from mental illness in Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties; and Dignitas Project, a nonprofit that builds new schools in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

The deadline for application submissions is the end of April. Nora Silver, director of the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, and the selection committee, made up of some first-year students and second-year students who received funding last summer, will meet during the first week of May to decide the amount of funds each recipient will receive.

Students may donate at a table in the Haas School courtyard or online at https://givetocal.berkeley.edu/egiving/index.cfm?Fund=FN1218000. (Make sure to enter 10265-55608 in the “Special Instructions” box.)

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