Should nonprofit organizations expect to attract law student interns by offering only unpaid positions? During law school, students are strongly encouraged to take a series of internships during summers and during their second and third years of law school. There are many paid internships, especially for upper grade level positions. In the non-profit sector, however, paid internships are hard to obtain and when obtained they still pay well below comparable work at firms.
What is the difference between interns and intern volunteers?
As a general business model nonprofit organizations typically offer unpaid internships for law students and categorize them as intern volunteers. The U.S. Department of Labor explains that internship and volunteering roles are not interchangeable categorizations, though often used interchangeably. They further explain that an internship is guided towards transitioning classroom work in a major field of study to work experience, while volunteering is guided towards donating time for humanitarian purposes. Both designations may be unpaid, but unpaid internships have certain requirements. Please follow this link for a breakdown of those definitions provided by William & Mary University: intern or volunteer.
How are non-profits usually funded?
Non-profits are philanthropic organizations that usually work on a small budget. They generally receive their funding from grants, individual donations, or other fundraising sources. The funding they receive are primarily to be used for benefiting the purposes of their mission. This means that while nonprofits may want to pay interns, they risk not having enough funds for their permanent employees or to allocate to the services they provide. According to the IRS, tax-exempt nonprofits are required to pay “reasonable” salaries to their employees. So nonprofits that can pay interns, run into the problem of trying to offer competitive rates. Under the constraints of the the reasonable pay standard of the IRS, how reasonable is it for nonprofits to try to compete with for profit firms who can offer much higher pay than the general stipend usually offered? These stipends are typically calculated by living expenses for the duration of the internship, and often only offered after the student has sought out and been unable to obtain funding from other sources.
What do interns generally offer?
Considering the difficulty of paying interns for their service we may ask, what do interns offer? Generally, interns bring in little to no experience, limited knowledge in the field, and are joining for a short term. If internships are generally for the benefit of the intern, why should interns be paid? Some may disagree that internships are purely for the sake of the intern. What legal interns lack in experience, they much up for in the ability to work and handle tasks usually required to be completed by staff at the organization. While time is spent training and giving feedback to a temporary worker, that intern is nonetheless providing services. They are doing intake calls, data entry, legal research and writing assignments, and in some cases much more essential work. It is hard to consider that work as non-compensable.
The bargaining power between the nonprofit and the intern is split, though the organization retains a better position. The nonprofit is aware that law students are not required, but strongly encouraged to take internships during the summers, and in many curriculums required to have external internships during their second and third years. Further, nonprofits are bound by the limitations of the fields for which they offer services. As a philanthropic organization, the nonprofit expects students who wish to work for them to be civic minded and understand the needs of the organization.
Should All interns be paid?
Leaders of nonprofit organizations have budgeting complications unique to their field. They face pressure from their donors to meet expectations of how much service they should be providing with the money they donate and as years progress donors expect the same quality of advocacy while funding is stretched thin. To respond to these pressures, studies have found that organizations resort to cutting overhead expenditures, including facilities improvements, and competitive salaries for qualified professionals. This includes staff at all levels, leaving organizations to frequently resort to hiring less qualified staff, or expecting more qualified staff to accept fractions of what they may obtain elsewhere.
Accepting an unpaid internship extends beyond just obtaining work experience. Interns get to be a part of something dedicated to serving the community and extending services for those who do not generally have access to those services. An intern is not a volunteer, but it may be fair to consider an internship experience as dual purpose by both obtaining legal experience and providing public service. The relationship between the legal intern and the nonprofit is one where each requires the other. Nonprofits understand that they are grooming the nonprofit legal professionals of the future. While today they may only be training a temporary worked, this worker may very well be a part of their organization in the future. Finding those who accept less pay, or no pay, at this early stage, may prepare them for a career of compromising salary for providing free legal services.
Sources:
https://www.score.org/resource/balancing-nonprofits-and-paid-employeeshttps://www.thebalancesmb.com/can-nonprofits-pay-staff-2501893https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i990sj.pdfhttps://www.volunteering.com.au/internships-versus-volunteering-use-top-5-tips-tell-difference/https://www.wm.edu/offices/revescenter/issp/visasandimmigration/f1student/employment/volunteerunpaidinternships/index.phphttps://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_nonprofit_starvation_cycle
Images Courtesy of:
- https://sandhillshabitat.org/2020-internship
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/122652789823110403
About the Author:
Cristian Mejia, at the time of this posting, is a third-year law student at Penn State Dickinson Law. Originally from New Jersey, Cristian graduated from Montclair University and prior to law school, worked as a paralegal at a civil litigation law firm. Cristian has interned with non-profit Immigration organizations, the Adams County Public Defender’s Office and the Department of Justice. Upon graduation Cristian is interested in practicing within the fields of Civil Rights and Equal Protection of the law, Immigration, Criminal Law and Civil Litigation.
I can be contacted at: crm6123@psu.edu or cristian.r.mejia@gmail.com