The mission of the Progressive Policy Institute is to define and promote a new progressive politics for the 21st century. The Institute’s core philosophy stems from the belief that America is ill-served by an obsolete left-right debate that is out of step with the powerful forces reshaping our society and economy. The Institute believes in adapting the progressive tradition in American politics to the realities of the Information Age by advocating a Third Way approach beyond the liberal impulse to defend the bureaucratic status quo and the conservative bid to dismantle government.
The 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute develops public policies to modernize American schools and ensure that all students are prepared for success in the knowledge economy. Through research, publications and articles, and work with policymakers, the Project supports initiatives to increase accountability and equity, improve standards, and increase choice and innovation in public education.
Deadlines: Internships are open until filled. We are seeking to fill positions as soon as possible.
Calling all emerging change-makers!
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) seeks dedicated young folks hungry for systemic transformation to join our fall internship program. The world crisis in governance and economic stability demands that we do our best to prepare to secure and sustain a more just, green, and peaceful future. At IPS we aim to compel action by sharpening young voices and new ideas through training in public scholarship, a term we define as the connection between policy research and grassroots activism. Team up with us for this program, and you can forget fetching coffee and filing folders!
Below you will find the following information:
- THE EXPERIENCE
- COMPENSATION AND ACADEMIC CREDIT
- AVAILABLE INTERNSHIPS (paid and unpaid positions)
- APPLICATION PROCESS
1) THE EXPERIENCE
Each participant in our 14-week fall program will get hands-on experience by working on one of our projects and will receive individualized mentorship and training from one of our IPS public scholars. We will also provide opportunities for professional development through brown-bag discussions, trainings and workshops, and networking events. Although the length of the program is 14 weeks, from September 8th to December 11th, we are more than happy to adjust the time commitment based on individual schedules and needs.
2) COMPENSATION AND ACADEMIC CREDIT
IPS offers paid and unpaid internship opportunities. Interns may also receive academic credit, and our staff is happy to help you fill out any necessary paperwork to ensure you maximize your school funding or academic credit opportunities. IPS offers transportation assistance of $8 per day but does not offer housing assistance.
Changemakers Fellowship
The 2015 Changemakers Fellowship provides funds for People of Color with low-income backgrounds. The Changemakers Fellowship is a part-time fellowship that pays $10.50 an hour for 10-15 hours weekly for 12-14 weeks. This funding may be applied towards any open unpaid internship. To apply for the Changemakers Fellowship, please complete the online application form in addition to your application for an unpaid internship.
This position is ideal for rising scholar activists from underrepresented communities who care deeply about racial justice, economic justice, and inequality, and are ready to think creatively about new policies that better care for people and the planet. To be eligible for the Fall Changemakers Fellowship, you must be a Person of Color with demonstrated financial need and be committed to social change work in Communities of Color.
3) AVAILABLE INTERNSHIPS
The exact hours vary from internship to internship. In general, an average of 15 hours per week is expected for unpaid internships in the fall. Please see each internship description for its specific time requirement.
Paid Internships Available:
Communications Internship
Under the supervision of the Communications Director, the Communications intern will gain valuable experience in writing, media relations, social media, and strategic communications. The selected applicant will be called upon to write and edit pieces for our website, newsletters, and social networking platforms, and to assist with media outreach around key IPS releases.
This internship will offer opportunities to work closely with our communications department as well as with IPS’s nationally renowned experts on the economy, foreign policy, environmental issues, etc. Applicants should expect to commit to 15-20 hours a week.
The ideal candidate will be familiar with IPS’s core issue areas, motivated, flexible, and organized, able to work independently and with a team, and have excellent written and verbal communication skills. They should also possess strong interpersonal skills, patience, and humor. This person should a rising junior or senior or graduate student with a major or commensurate experience in Communications, PR, Marketing, Journalism, or similar areas of study.
Fundraising and Development Internship
The Fundraising and Development Team at the Institute for Policy Studies First seeks a detail-oriented intern who is passionate about organizational development, fundraising, and event planning to join our team.
The Development intern will play a key role in preparing for our annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award ceremony. We’ll match your skills to a specific part of the project to own, whether it’s managing a part of the outreach, helping us track the budget, attending walk-throughs at the venue, or helping to draft communications about the event. This truly is a fun project where someone with initiative could take a hold of part of the process and make it even better than last year’s successful event.
This intern will also play a role in our End-of-Year appeal. This project includes attending webinars or events around town with the Development Associate to learn about best practices for the campaign, helping map out the components, and developing a project plan. Interested candidates are also invited to be involved in researching and drafting the text for the appeal.
This internship opportunity will provide training in cultivating new donor relationships, the chance to manage events and projects outside of Letelier Moffit and the End of Year Campaign, and the option to join the development training workshops offered to our staff members.
We are looking to find someone who is eager to help us streamline our foundation prospecting process and learn more about how to do foundation research. The ideal candidate will have solid writing, research, and organizational skills. Knowledge of individual and / or institutional donor prospecting and cultivation is a plus.
Unpaid (Funding available for Changemaker Fellows):
Foreign Policy in Focus Internship
Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) provides timely analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs and recommends policy alternatives. Staff and other FPIF experts write for newspapers, magazines, and other online publications and author books on foreign policy and international affairs.
Interns should have solid writing and research skills, experience with copy editing, student activist experience, and background/interest in several of the following areas: foreign policy, U.S. military policy, military spending, intelligence, terrorism, global justice, security, international development, international financial institutions and trade. Foreign language and overseas experience are helpful.
The FPIF intern’s primary responsibility will be to draft original blog posts and articles for fpif.org. FPIF relies a lot on social media, so we are also seeking folks with basic proficiency in Facebook and Twitter. The best candidates will use these outlets as a way to gather news on their own, since it will help them to both promote FPIF materials effectively and to consider the relevance of their own writing in a broader social media context. FPIF seeks an intern who can commit 10-15 hours a week.
Peace Economy Transitions Internship
We have the first opening since the end of the Cold War to bring down the bloated military budget and reinvest resources in averting climate catastrophe. The Peace Economy Transitions Project is focused on linking action at the federal, state and local levels to make that transition possible. This internship will support the work of IPS’s Peace Economy Transitions Project and its director, Miriam Pemberton. The Peace Economy Intern will do research, writing, production, and organizing related to mapping and facilitating a transition from a militarized to a green economy.
In particular, this fall our research will center on an organizing project in three primary states (PA, CT and TN) and to a lesser extent in a few secondary states (WI, MA, CA, OH and MD) on economic transition planning. This person will also help build an archive of materials documenting the history of economic conversion (demilitarizing the economy). The ideal candidate will be a quick learner, have strong research and writing skills, and have an interest in the challenges of demilitarizing our economy. The Peace Economy Transitions Project seeks an intern who can commit 10-15 hours a week.
Climate Policy Internship
The Climate Policy Program works in partnership with grassroots groups and policy advocates in the U.S. and abroad on environment and development issues with a focus on climate change, energy, environmental justice, and economic issues.
The ideal Climate Policy Intern should possess an understanding of the connection between economic, racial, and environmental justice. We are looking for someone with very strong writing and research skills and the ability to co-design a research plan based on discussions with the supervisor of the project. We also would like this person to synthesize qualitative and quantitative data and present findings/trends in clearly written and visually compelling ways. The Climate Policy Project seeks an intern who can commit 10-15 hours a week.
Global Economy Project Internship
This project conducts research and analysis of a wide range of economic issues, including inequality, Wall Street reform, tax fairness, executive compensation, low-wage workers, and international trade and investment. Interns are typically involved in research and writing to produce policy papers, op-eds, and other project materials. Global Economy Interns also sometimes help develop and implement communications strategies on these issues.
New Economy Maryland Internship
The New Economy Maryland Project at the Institute for Policy Studies seeks to help build an economy that better serves ALL our people and protects our planet. We are strengthened by the intellectual and activist resources of the New Economy Working Group, and we celebrate a wide range of creative solutions to advance the much-needed New Economy.
We ask that our intern be smart, passionate, have a great attitude and be ready to help us develop an integrated social media and face-to-face outreach campaign. We will provide substantial professional and leadership development opportunities.
During this intern’s tenure, we will be planning for a major public event with the incoming Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, Annie Leonard. We are seeking an intern to help us with the planning of this event, and we welcome help improving our website, Facebook page, and Twitter outreach.
The ideal candidates will have a familiarity with New Economy principles and interest or experience in fundraising and event planning. Our focus is on the great state of Maryland, so it would be a bonus to arrive with some existing contacts or familiarity with the state. Our key early focus is our September 19th event in Baltimore, so we’d love someone who could begin before the official start date of the internship if possible. We are seeking an intern who could commit to working 15 hours a week.
OtherWords Editing and Writing Internship
This project is responsible for the distribution of commentaries and cartoons aimed at amplifying progressive analysis in the national conversation. It empowers readers to become more engaged citizens. About 1,700 newspaper editors subscribe to our weekly editorial package that consists of three columns, four op-eds, and one cartoon. Most of our subscribers are small dailies and weeklies in America’s heartland.
OtherWords interns will help with two or more aspects of running OtherWords such as drafting tweets, searching for images, proofreading, and fact-checking. They will also write their own op-eds and blog posts related to current events, drawing from their own experiences and expertise on topics that they choose in conjunction with the editors. The applicants selected will work closely with OtherWords Managing Editor, Emily Schwartz Greco.
Ideal OtherWords applicants will have excellent writing skills, be news junkies so they can quickly digest the information conveyed in OtherWords commentaries, and have worked on a school paper or gotten comparable journalism experience prior to this internship. OtherWords seeks interns who can commit to 15 hours a week.
Criminalization of Poverty Internship
This project conducts research and reporting on the various components of the criminalizing of poverty. It maps and lifts up movements and policies that are working to transform intersectional injustice into intersectional justice.
Through research and writing, the Criminalization of Poverty intern will delve into criminal justice reform issues and look at poverty through this lens with a focus on race and gender. This person will focus on the movement of families of incarcerated youth, school-to-prison-pipeline, and juvenile justice. In addition to stellar writing and research skills, social media and graphic design skills are a plus. This project is seeking an intern to work 15-30 hours per week.
4) APPLICATION PROCESS
IPS encourages applicants to apply for more than one internship.
Please send the following materials to nextleaders@ips-dc.org with “FALL 2015 internship” and your top 2-3 internships of choice in the subject line.
- Resume
- Cover Letter
- 2-page writing sample
For your writing sample, we say, go wild! This can be a blog piece, an essay excerpt, a letter to the editor for a newspaper, an article in your school’s newspaper, etc. Feel free to provide a couple sentences of context if you’re excerpting your selection from a larger piece. The important thing is for us to get a sense of something you’re passionate about…oh, and, we’d love to see if you can string a sentence together, too.
For your cover letter please make sure to include the following information:
- Top 2-3 internships of interest (can include a mix of paid and unpaid positions)
- Tell us about a movement that you’re passionate about and how you would like to see this movement create change.
- What skills, experience, and/or knowledge would you bring to our Fall internship program?
- Time commitment including start date, end date, hours per week and days of flexibility
If you’d like to apply for the Changemakers Fellowship, please fill out the form here in addition to sending your materials to nextleaders.org.
Any questions can be directed to Emily Norton, the Next Leaders Program Manager, via email at emilyn@ips-dc.org.
Fall Application Deadlines: Internships are open until filled. We are seeking to fill positions as soon as possible.
Website to Apply: https://www.progressivepolicy.org/about/jobs/