Internship Location: Chicago
Organization Type: Nonprofit
Policy Areas: Nonprofit Management, grant writing
Throughout the summer, I have had the opportunity to serve as a Nonprofit Management Intern for The World Music Foundation (TWMF) which is a nonprofit organization located in Chicago, Illinois. TWMF’s mission is to use music to open minds and to develop a tolerance of differences between people through music. Research continues to show that there are lots of benefits to learning and experiencing any kind of music but the largest strides in growth come from music from outside of one’s own culture. This growth does not just stop with the students that TWMF teaches, but it has the potential to spread across communities. TWMF works with underfunded schools to match students with instructors based on what instrument the student wants to learn both remotely and in person. TWMF also will host musical performances and programming with up and coming artists who are choreographers, dancers, singers, and/or play instruments. The main departments at the WTMF are Podcast Production, Marketing and Social Media, Nonprofit Management, and the Metaverse and NFT Strategy, all of which I had the opportunity to work with. Throughout my internship, I did a lot of researching and writing grants, creating and maintaining budgets, assisting in managing public relations, email outreach regarding funding, and the training of new interns under the supervision of the Executive Director, John Gardner. With John’s guidance and the guidance from the Public Affairs Internship course, I feel better prepared to enter the Nonprofit sector knowing how a nonprofit works and how to analyze the organization that I am working for to understand its policy needs and where I can help the organization accomplish its goals.