My Internship Experience

My name is Michael Lee, I am a Senior marketing major, Communication Minor at Stonehill College.  2013 has been an exciting year for me between studying abroad in Rome earlier this year, to living in New York City for an advertising agency internship, and now here at United Way of Greater Plymouth County as the marketing intern. 

I wanted to intern at UWGPC to bolster my resume with another marketing internship.  But I feel that I have gotten so much more out of my experience than that.  I really had no idea what to expect from working with a non-profit because I simply had no prior experience working in the non-profit sector.   

Without working at UWGPC or any other non-profits, you would have no idea the amount of challenges that they have to overcome.  I wrote a blog earlier this year about Dan Pallota’s TED talk about “how we think about non-profits all wrong.”  It’s true; non-profits have the most limited resources yet the most restrictions.  With all of the restrictions the need for volunteers has never been more important.  And that’s where I came in for UWGPC.

My intern duties included taking charge of the social media presence for UWGPC, designing and sending out our Constant Contact e-newsletters, conducting site visits with United Way’s partner agency interviews and writing articles.  I feel lucky that I was able to learn many different important skills that I’m going to be able to use in any area of the business world.  I especially loved the agency visits to other partners like the Family Life Center at the Y, the Brockton Area Workforce Investment Board, and Mayflower RSVP.  The visits are interesting as you get to see all of the challenges that the agencies have to deal with everyday as well as the positive impact that they have on the local community.  Some of the things that I saw at these local non-profits are things that I will remember for the rest of my life. 

I want to personally thank all of the dedicated UWGPC staff especially Kim Allen who was responsible for making sure I always had work to do and teaching me a lot of the valuable skills needed to complete all of the marketing intern tasks.  I couldn’t recommend this internship enough to anyone looking to learn important skills needed to succeed later in life.