It really doesn't feel like summer.

Hello all,

I realized I have neglected this blog for the last two months or so. Whoops. I meant to write, but not much has come to mind. I figured, "Well, when something good comes to me, I'll write." However, it didn't seem to work out that way. Now, I might as well write something, so here it is: my last month and a half journey through my New York Cares internship.

For those of you who don't know, I have been interning with the Development department of New York Cares since the end of May. Unfortunately, I'm unpaid, but it has been alright. I just have to watch where and how I spend my money. On normal day-to-day business, I spend the majority of my time emailing people asking for things--raffle donations, incentives, charity partnerships, etc. It was okay at first, but now I'm getting a bit frustrated just because people don't respond (no surprise) and because I am running out of ideas of who to ask. Other things I to are enter data in our system, create excel sheets, and other typical office things. The director of my department thinks I know Excel really well. Ironically, I really haven't had much experience with it until this summer, but that doesn't stop me. If I don't know how to do it, I Google it. I guess it paid off, because now I'm learning and getting much better at it.

The other aspect of my internship that I find really interesting and fun is when I go on corporate projects. When I tell people how sponsorship works with New York Cares, they find it somewhat strange, but it's pretty awesome for the organization that it works this way: When a corporation wants their employees to participate in community service projects tailored especially for them, they have to be a corporate sponsor of New York Cares. I believe the lowest starts at $5k. Basically, they sponsor us with some amount of money that goes straight to supporting our normal projects and then they get a project designed based around what they want to do and what is available. Then the company also has to pay for the supplies needed for their project. Extra supplies get donated to the place/people/organization after the project is completed. So yes, the normal question would be, "What? They have to pay to send their own people to volunteer?" And the answer would be yes, it sounds strange, but it works.

So what do the corporate projects have to do with me? Well, when New York Cares has these projects, they need office staff members to staff the projects and serve as a point person/liason between the volunteers and those they are helping. We get to go out in the field and help revitalize a park or a school, take kids out on trips, or serve meals to the hungry among many other things. It's a lot of fun to meet the volunteers and learn what they do, as well as seeing those that we help and what difference it makes in their life. At one project, the volunteers thought I was a genius because I taped a paintbrush to a long stick to paint a trim that was too high even standing on a ladder.

It has been 7 weeks and I still have a few to go. My summer hasn't felt much like summer because I've been working every day, every week, but it's been rewarding at the same time. I can't say that I would want to do special events for non-profits in the future, but I have definitely learned a lot about how this particular non-profit works.