MBA Students Pledge Summer Pay to Social Impact Internship Fund
This spring, the Net Impact chapter at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business launched a fundraising campaign for the Social Impact Internship Fund (SIIF) to encourage first-year MBA students to donate 0.5 percent of their summer internship pay to benefit fellow students who pursue internships in the social impact field.
By the end of the 2016-17 academic year, 152 first-year MBA students — 55 percent of the Full-time MBA class — had taken the pledge to become a SIIF sponsor.
Run by the Net Impact club, SIIF provides stipends to McDonough students with non-paying or low-paying social impact internships. Since the fund was created nearly 10 years ago, it has offered more than $300,000 in scholarships and stipends to MBA students interning with organizations such as USAID, OPIC, and Kiva. Money raised this year will benefit students taking internships in summer 2018.
By awarding stipends, SIIF allows students to pursue the career paths of their choosing and reduces the financial burden associated with unpaid or low paying internships. SIIF also aims to help realize Georgetown McDonough’s mission of educating principled leaders who serve business and society as well as its Jesuit values such as women and men for others.
Stipends are awarded based on the merit of the internship organization and project, benefit to the student’s career goals, and financial need, among other criteria. Last summer, for example, SIIF recipient Adrienne Rettinger (MBA’17) worked at Alpha Mundi Impact Investing, where she developed a strategic plan for the firm’s board that led to the establishment of the AlphaMundi Foundation.
In addition to the amount raised from MBA students this summer, the club is recruiting support from MBA alumni and the broader Georgetown community to further strengthen the fund and make the school more competitive with other top MBA programs that offer larger stipends for these types of internships.
For more information about the Social Impact Internship Fund, visit the Georgetown Net Impact Club website.